It can be wonderful to think back on experiences of the past years, months, days or moments, your Yesterdays. The ‘good’ ones the ‘not so good’ ones down to the ‘worst’ ones.
Your experiences provide the lessons that will help to define you, they are your guide helping to navigate you on your journey, the more painful the experiences know that the lesson for you is great.
Experiences of enjoying a nice meal, getting compliments, spending time with special friends, successes or achievements at work, or a fantastic holiday are all experiences that create wonderful feelings of health, happiness, contentment, love, confidence, power, prosperity.
There are some experiences you smile back on because you walked through them so easily, maybe you had help or maybe you just seemed to know exactly what to do.
There are ones that took some determination and you’re glad for them to be over, you’ve moved on.
Then there are experiences that haunt you every day. Maybe you have come to accept them as a part of who you are and how your life will always be, or maybe you live in hope that someday they will go away. The experiences that cause you pain, that you relive every day of your life.
There is the pain in the experience because you resist, you resist because you do not want to identify with the experience. the experience will persist and repeat itself until you identify and come to understand the meaning and the lesson.
Like a mother in childbirth, the pain will only subside when the new life is born. Surrender to the experience and stop resisting, ask yourself what could life be trying to say to you. What is the lesson? Search your feelings then let them go.
Today reflect on yesterday’s experience and it’s lessons. Look for the areas of resistance and let them go so you can move on. Don’t allow yourself to be reliving the painful experiences of yesterday again and again.
Start living the lessons.
The good feelings are easy. It is the challenges you need to pay attention to. The things that did not quite work out well, the painful ones. Ask yourself, what do you need to do differently or not at all.
Sometimes the answer to the why comes when you decide on the how. The how can take you to a new place where you find courage and strength you never realised you had in you.
The challenges are there to guide you, and the lessons will define you.
Your path is unique to you and the journey is yours alone, no one can walk it for you.
Let every day be like the first day of the rest of your life, as your experiences yesterday will have left its mark on you. It is you who will decide what that mark of change will be. Will you step forward facing and releasing some fears, doubts and achieving goals or will you remain stuck in yesterday, more confused, more doubtful more fearful?
The changes in your life can be so small that you may hardly notice, yet if you persevere the joy will come as you realise you’re feeling stronger and walking taller. Begin to look for answers, and life will bring it to you.
Like a baby you have adapted and learned and grown; you are no longer a baby but the process has not changed. One step at a time is all is needed to move forward. Some challenges have many parts, work on them one piece at a time.
Reconnect with your feelings, learn what your pain means and what it is telling you, do not hide from it.
As a child your feelings were very important to you, when you felt sad or unhappy or in pain, you cried until someone removed whatever caused you pain, then you were a happy child again. A child does not spend time wondering if that unpleasant experience will return tomorrow, they act as if nothing happened, all is well.
You have grown up and suddenly, feeling sad or lonely or hurt is frowned upon and you are considered weak and not normal to express them. You now live every day resisting in silence these painful feelings as you believe you have no one to make the pain go away.
You have become conditioned to live your life by society’s rules that do not always serve you. To believe that crying is a sign of weakness and that it is not socially acceptable to discuss your ‘problems’, this is not ok. To pretend as if you are ok serves everyone except you.
No one talks of ‘good’ Mental Health, it is only used to refer to those who have expressed or who have shown visible signs of not being able to cope with the challenges in their lives. Those who have responded in a human way by crying out, because something does not feel right.
The thing is we all have challenges in their lives, we all have some mental frailty, some weakness trying to overcome. Some have just learned how to hide it well, some for fear of being stigmatised or ostracised. Some pass it off as a new attitude so it’s considered ‘cool’ or acceptable. Some have hidden it for so long they have begun to feel like they are the ‘normal’ ones. Some skilfully project the pain they feel unto others.
The challenges are the cause of the pain and there is no shame in pain, face it and begin to look for the answers so you can smile again. Delve into the pain if you must, but never hide from it. Cry out for help if you must, someone will hear, and never apologise for being you.
Your life is your responsibility, and no one can help if you don’t want to make a change.
Remember you were not always feeling this way. if it does not feel right do everything you can to make it right again.
Your challenges are your guides, face them with a new attitude. Face them knowing you are never alone.
How are you feeling today, have you found out the lessons in yesterday’s pain?
If you have, then like a child, have no fear for tomorrow, all is well.
By: Elera
Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Whiteway and copyright Free Range Stock, www.freerangestock.com”