One thing I know about myself is that I don’t always act on what I know.
There are a lot of things where I know better, but don’t do better. Or I might do better once and then don’t do it again. Or I do better for a week and then I completely forget that I have adopted a new practice.
That’s the topic of today’s podcast. We often know what to do, but don’t do it. Today, I offer the challenge for us to start doing what we know.
I learned a lesson from Louise Hay many years. (Louise Hay is essentially the mother of self-love/positive affirmations movement.) One of the things that she taught (and this is my paraphrase) is that problems are opportunities we create when we want to grow.
Problems give us an opportunity to see if we truly have learned and healed. The way we do this is by creating another situation similar to the one that hurt us, or that we found challenging before. Then we get to show up, respond, and react differently based on what we’ve learned.
I personally think this sucks, and the first time I heard her say it I absolutely hated it. Then I saw it play out in my life and I realized that she was right.
One in particular problem I thought I would never face again was being in a relationship with a narcissist. I just knew that was one thing I would never existence again. Then, I found myself in a relationship with one.
It showed up in a different form so it caught me off guard. And it took me a while to notice and accept what happening. Once I opened my eyes, I realized I was both witnessing and experiencing the same pattern all over again. But this time, I caught it and got out.
I’m proud of myself because the second time around, I noticed what was happening, I addressed what I saw and asked for a second opinion, and then I observed so that I could be certain and once I was I left with no apologies.
And I must admit, I was initially mad at myself for going through it again. I felt terrible because I brought that person into my family and it was embarrassing to be in another failed “relationship,” even though it wasn’t an intimate relationship.
However after a while I realized that I could be proud of myself. The first time I went through it and didn’t even know I went through it until 10 years later. This time I saw it while it was happening double checked, and made a run for it. I stood up for myself and protected myself and handled it in a way I never would have in the past. Just the fact that I was aware of what was happening in itself showed me that I’ve grown and that I’ve learned.
Although the experience still hurts and there was damage done that is long-lasting, I’m still grateful because of what I gained. Going through being in a narcissistic relationship twice taught me how to recognize the pattern. That’s a gift not just to myself, to my daughter, and to my friends, but it’s also something I can teach on my various platforms to save people from experiencing what I went through, it at least it can bring them the awareness to get out. (I actually did a video about it that’s available on my Facebook page. If I remember I’ll link it here. I may also add it to my podcast page.)
But anywho…. the reason I bring this up is because a lot of times we’re so hard on ourselves when we go through something that we’ve been through before. When we find ourselves in another bad relationship, or dealing with another person who treats us the way that someone has in the past, we don’t realize that maybe this is an opportunity for us to show up differently for ourselves. Maybe this is an opportunity for us to handle the situation differently and regain our self-respect.
So we can be a little kinder to ourselves. When we see patterns repeating in your lives, we can recognize that and act accordingly. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we haven’t learned anything, it might just be an opportunity for us to show ourselves what we have learned.
The other important takeaway from this is that sometimes we act like we don’t know what we do. There are probably practices that you have used in the past that have been helpful, that have made you more productive, more organized, more successful, that have allowed you to get more done, get more rest, have more balance in your life, or more joy, peace, fulfillment.
For whatever reason, we stopped doing what worked (and likely it was for a valid reason). Regardless, there are things that we already know, or maybe there’s just a thought that keeps coming back to us… of something to implement in our live that will make things better, simpler, and more efficient. We can stop pretending we don’t know and stop ignoring the urge to get back to that….
So the challenges for us today are to begin to do the things that we know will help us live our lives in ways that feel better. And for us to be kinder to ourselves when we find a problem resurfacing and recognize it as an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we know what to do. We can handle it differently.
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