Source: jnac.deviantart.com via Lynn on Pinterest

Life is going to teach you what you need to know, that’s for sure, but it’s up to you how quickly you learn what’s on offer—you get to choose how many times you undergo each lesson plan.

You can look away, run away, and hide away all you like, but whatever it is you’re fighting against—whatever lessons you haven’t fully committed yourself to learning yet—well, they’re not just going to back down quietly.

Whatever you resist is going to persist.

The lessons you need to learn are the lessons you need to learn, and Miss Cheeky Universe is going to keep on throwing them in your pathway until you stop tripping over them and falling, and instead, see them for the shiny gems and jewels of direction and transformation that they are.

You don’t need to practice yoga four hours daily, or necessarily go to vipasana and sit in complete silence for 10 days straight. You don’t need to trek the mountains of Tibet, or live in a cave for seven months in the jungle. You don’t need to revoke all your belongings and wander through the pastures of life to find the opportunities for growth that you’ve been looking for.

All you need to do is open your eyes.

There scattered there all around you, layered and loaded into your life.

There is so much growth in the daily struggles, in the things that happen to you on such a regular basis that you’ve over-looked them as places for growth and labeled them as annoying, or frustrating, or simply infuriating aspects of the life you’ve chosen to lead.

Every traffic jam you find yourself stuck in is jam-packed with opportunity to practice patience and surrender, mindfulness and choice. You can get pissed off and resist it and fight it and work yourself up about it, or you can accept the fact that you’re stuck in your car for a bit and enjoy the ride.

Life is full of undesirable circumstances and uncomfortable interactions that land in your lap as though magnetized to your skin, so may as well start seeing them as opportunities for growth.

How do you want to see things—annoying as f*ck, or as an opportunity for transformation?

Yes, obstacles can be frustrating, but if you shift your perspective and think of them as opportunities for expansion instead, it takes the edge off a bit.

For example, my daughter is a little sleep-fighter. She’s amazing once asleep, but sometimes just takes ages to get there. I spent a lot of time resisting this fact and thinking that I must be doing something wrong if she wasn’t passing straight out when I put her down for her nap—maybe she didn’t run around enough, maybe she could have eaten more, maybe I should have let her have a longer bath, or more reading time, or maybe I should have given her more strokes….or maybe Ayanna just takes a little while to wind down and fall asleep.

Maybe it’s not something that I need to fight.

Turns out it wasn’t. As soon as I stopped resisting against Ayanna’s uber long wind down to sleep, the length of it lost it’s power over me. How long she takes to fall asleep doesn’t matter anymore—I plan for it now, allocating time before she actually needs to be asleep for her to sit up in her crib and talk to her bears, wrap up her bunny, drink her water and cozy her crib up. I’m not scared she won’t sleep anymore—I know she will, but I also know she’s going to just her sweet time getting there.

So, instead of getting frustrated, I get lunch made up. I get the laundry folded or I take the opportunity to write on the deck while she winds down. I’ve turned these moments that used to upset me beyond belief into moments where I get to practice all the stuff I preach about.

Practice makes perfect, or at least it makes better.

So stop shying away from your life lessons, don’t even waste your time trying to pretend you don’t see them, because they’ll only keep on showing up.

And actually, I think good ol’ Universe arches up a bit and fires extra remembrance ammunition in your way when you ignore her love notes—no one likes to be ignored.

So give your head a shake, your eyes a rub, and get yourself into the process of seeking out the opportunities for growth sprinkled all around you.

Our lives are packed full of chances to shed whatever patterns, whatever habits, whatever thoughts and actions we have that don’t help us in becoming brighter, and ultimately better, versions of ourselves.

Sounds ultra cheesy, but it’s ultra true.

So next time one of these little sparkly diamonds pops up in your path, don’t crunch your eyes shut and skulk away from it, looking for growth or goodness somewhere else. Face that shit. There’s something there in it for you, otherwise it wouldn’t keep happening again and again and again.

There’s something for you to learn in whatever it is you’re resisting, that’s why it keeps persisting—life’s little lessons are shimmering and shining everywhere.

~

Ed: Lynn Hasselberger

Like elephant health & wellness on facebook.