When it hurts, observe. Life is trying to teach you something.

When it hurts, observe. Life is trying to teach you something.
It would appear so obvious. We are continuously going about our day to day experiences, with full expectation of everything going per plan. And then, suddenly, it isn’t.
This is expressed in myriad ways throughout billions of lives, but the common denominator is the pain that is felt when things stop going our way.
It happens personally, professionally, publicly and privately. Regardless of where or how, the bottom line is that it hurts.
Far more important than weathering the short term pain is the understanding that the pain is coming into our lives because there is a lesson attached to that pain. It does not matter whether we expect that we need or deserve the lesson, it is there, in our face, waiting for us to process the information and do one of three things. Ignore it. Discard it. Or learn from it.
Many teachings profess there is another part of us that lives outside of this dimension. This alternate being guides us through emotion…. Positive or negative. Those emotions are a guidance system that provide a beacon for our navigation through life.
Others do not believe this to be true, and see a deity that is communicating to them through these actions and call them an act of God, or similar.
Today’s aphorism just calls it “life.”
Does it really matter what you call it? Or perhaps is it more vital to recognize that there are forces at work that help shape our actions, behaviors and in this case, our reactions? Would it not be prudent to see this as a feedback loop in which we are more readily able to understand when things are not going our way, that perhaps we have to choose an alternate tactic to finding what we are most seeking in life?
A romantic experience decimates us, so get up, grow past it and move on. A business experience pounds us down, so learn from that lesson and grow stronger. Other circumstances put us in a tough bind, grow past them.
Otherwise, we are left in the continuum of disappointment and despair provided solely by our own inability to see the forest for the trees. In our resolute state of mind, an invariable course of action can be a potentially dangerous choice to make in life. Tenacity and determination are essential in life, but they have to be balanced with an ability to right our course of action when life shows us we are off the path to success.
So many things in life are going to hurt. That is inevitable.
How we choose to react and grow from those instances become the details that ultimately define us.
Happy Thursday!
Leave a Comment