LiveLifeHappy
Rolling along in life we actively make choices in every moment, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. Many of them seem so simple and inconsequential, easily gliding by us as our auto-pilot does the heavy lifting. So when the sting of a few unexpected “life slaps” sneak up, at first they can feel like little mosquito bites; a pinch with a tinge of redness that’s just plain irritating. Soon you realize you keep going back to it, scratching it, and before long it starts getting crazy itchy and pulling in all of your attention. Now you have a choice to make — are you going to keep picking at it, regretting how you’ve handled it so far, or are you going to learn to change how you deal with it, giving it a chance to heal you?
This is a similar choice we face in almost any life situation — focus on regretting what we’ve done or choose to learn from it and heal.
Most of the time we have no idea that we are even facing this kind of choice in a structured way. Our fears, negative experiences, disappointments and familial influences can keep us stuck, and then we spend a considerable part of our life growing out of these dynamics to reveal our personal truth (if we have a deep desire to truly know ourselves). Each of these dynamics influences our perspective on life and how we choose to handle what happens in it, determining if we stay stuck or move forward.
While this all seems completely logical when viewing it through the mind, the bigger truth is most often revealed when we reach a crisis point — that’s when we are the most open to looking at the power of what we do as a force of habit or select to do as an active choice. And the truth is, seeing what we can learn and RECEIVE as the truth and value of that learning vs. focusing on regret and what we could have done differently is the sweet spot of true personal power.
The choices we make and paths we take are just as important as the ones we let go. The human desire to know the why and what-ifs often lead us to a tangled web of mental blocks that end up keeping the mind distracted, while the emotional aspects of an experience remain tangled up, wiggling around, messing with our current as well as future choices, paths and sense of self.
It’s easy to slip into regret, even though it’s the most costly for us emotionally, mentally and physically. The mind loves rolling in the possibilities and what-ifs that can never be proven and probably never will in the way you expect, yet it can be so tempting to stay here and think – because thinking does not require any risk or vulnerability. Learning about your own hand in your circumstances can be scary and is definitely one of the hardest things to learn how to manage without feeling guilty or trying to change the quality or dynamics of a past experience.
So knowing you always have the choice between regret or receiving the real gift — self-love through inner discovery and learning — what do you choose? I try my best to always choose love, and not just because it’s Valentine’s Day.
Oh, and an awesome side note — I wrote this post and then randomly found the quote while searching for a picture, not the other way around. Love when that happens!