I used to be a nationally ranked Bridge player…you know, that game you mom invited all her “gal friends” over on Thursday afternoon to have a “party bridge” game together. It was a real social event. No, my experience was in the worldwide competitive duplicate bridge world, where every hand was pre-dealt and you were ranked based on how You did with that hand compared to everyone else playing in that event sitting your direction. Competitive? Oh my gosh, dog eat dog! Cheating became an art for some, but most just ate up the competitiveness and fought to win.
Unlike this bridge experience, the truth is each and every one of us is dealt a different “hand” in life: where we grew up, the background of our parents (being our most critical influencers in those formative years), the neighborhoods in which we lived, the schools we attended, on and on. We also have the impact of all those events that occur in our lives: many good but also many that may have robbed us of our sense of joy, our view of the world, and even worse, perhaps our view or belief in ourselves. If we remain active (to a lesser extent if not), we continuously experience new happenings.
The beauty is that we all are created differently, and then develop uniquely with all those environmental, relational, emotional influences that impacted our lives, making us the “one of a kind” person we are (and prayerfully, understand we CHOOSE to become.) So, here we are in the first month of a new year, able in this moment (as we can in any moment) choose New Beginnings or we can choose to stay where we are. It is truly just a choice, but one that is incredibly powerful as it will impact the results you have in life.
My choice? Always has been “Green and Growing.” I view my life as an ever evolving. open to learn and open to grow every single day. How about you?
Let’s start with understanding the incredible opportunity a New Beginning brings instead of focusing on perhaps the loss of what came before. When we focus on the loss what happens, we tend to get depressed and fall into some old thinking patterns that create a feedback cycle sounding like that violin. “If only” becomes a repeating phrase in our thinking which just drives us further down the path of “I am a train wreck,” or “Life really stinks,” or “I just have bad luck,” or… Here’s your chance to reflect and journal on some of those phrases you have found yourself reciting in your mind …
Event/History |
My Language Around it |
This gets you where? More depressed, with a greater loss of confidence, and the white flag of surrender may even show up as “I have no future.” I cannot begin to tell you what happens inside of me when a client says, “life sucks.” You see, we have what is called feedback loops…we all have them whether we acknowledge them or not. Most widely recognized in the field of mindset work are those that resonate with some level of negativity. Perhaps you can begin to recognize them before they take control and drive you down the “bunny trail” of depression that might run for an hour, a day, a month a year or life.
Here are some thoughts that you can truly feed into your mind, help displace the loss, the negative patterns and, which if you keep, recite and memorize for these times, you will enhance your ability to climb out of the negative flow, and into a “I can overcome” mode.
1) Change is a beautiful experience as it opens up all sorts of opportunities and newness that I never would have perhaps found if I had stayed on my course.
2) What lesson did I learn? How will it bless me in my life moving forward as learning and growing are activities I never want to stop experiencing.
3) What in this experience is a tremendous take away to build me into an even better person?
4) Life is never quite how we expect it nor plan it, so surrendering to the happenings, and taking on the challenges that arise is yet one more blessing for me to become the person I was meant to be.
5) I need to find ways that certain projects and activities in my life do not work to get that much closer to the ones that will!
6) Iron sharpens iron…so every challenge I experience although perhaps overwhelming at the time just makes me into a better person.
7) Life will never be perfect…but I truly am at choice in how I respond to anything and everything and that is what makes me who I am!
You see, when you start allowing things or happenings, or even other people important to you control your emotions or your response to your life, you have given away incredible power to that person/event. And in a time of loss, giving away this control only doubles down on the loss as you surrender your power of your mind, and potentially rob yourself of your incredible future which lies ahead. Find a mentor if you are stuck, you never need an “excuse” for why life didn’t work out, as you can shake it off, discover the lessons in the learning process to make you even better, now empowered to continue the trek at an even higher level than before!