Lesson Learned

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.” ~Chuck Palahniuk 

Life has a funny way of teaching us lessons. When there is something you need to learn, something that you need to work on, the same situation will continue to repeat itself until you either learn your lesson or find a healthy way of dealing with that particular issue.

Think of the movie Groundhog Day. Once Bill Murray realized that he was living the same day over and over again, he came up with ways to fix the things that went wrong before. He learned how to fix the relationship with the object of his affection. He even learned to deal better with the annoying insurance salesman who approached him every morning. It wasn’t until he learned to accept his fate that the cycle of reliving each day ended. He also became more compassionate and more sympathetic—an overall better version of himself.

I hear people say: Why do I keep going through the same things in relationships? I’m with different people, but things always end up being the same, or they act just like someone who I used to know. Some of these people give up, some get stuck in a vicious cycle of their own making, and others don’t even realize that they are basically chasing their tail, repeating the same situation over and over.

A good question to ask is: Am I reliving the same scene, over and over again? What’s my part in that?

It might not be in relationships, but in different situations, like at work for example, when the same issue comes up disguised. If you work with the public it could be the same issue with different customers, until you find a way to deal with it or until you learn the lesson.

Early on in my yoga teaching (and let’s be honest here…..it still happens sometimes in phases of my current life), I have noticed times when every single student (and random person in public) I come across is upset, angry, or annoyed, and at first I would react in a similar way. We are all mirrors of ourselves. After a number of people with the same, or similar issue, came up to me, I started to try to find different ways to resolve the problems—for example, not taking things personally and showing empathy to the person I was helping. A pattern, or lesson, here could be described as: How to stop taking things personally and how to view problems as opportunities. In other words, what is God doing in my life in this moment?

Had I not experienced the same problems with customers and made the necessary changes, I would possibly still be in the process of learning that lesson. I’m still working on this; some lessons take longer than others. Instead of reacting to situations, when something comes up and seems familiar, I try to stand back—if even for a second—to think. For a while it will seem like coincidences playing out, but over time the pattern of your lesson will come up. This is the lesson you need to learn at this time.

What are your current lessons? Pause for a moment and meditate/pray on it. It could be a lesson in humility, or a lesson in gratitude, or maybe you may need to learn empathy to see things from the other person’s point of view. Instead of reacting all the time, every time something challenging comes up it could be an opportunity to learn.

One lesson I’ve needed to learn recently can be summarized with a Shakespeare quote:

“To thine own self be true.”

I’m realizing that, no matter what other people say, do, or think about us, it is our opinions of ourselves and God’s view of us that really matter. And, when making decisions, sometimes it is good to question our own intentions. Think: What am I doing here? Or what am I up to? What is God inviting me into in this moment?

Ultimately the question I’ve needed to ask myself is: Am I being completely honest with myself? What is the particular reason why I’m scared of change? How does my reaction reflect my trust in God?

There are times when opportunities have come up for me to change my residence, or my place of employment, lessen the load of my schedule, or have reached a monumental goal—the peak—and have nothing planned after that………..and I haven’t seized the opportunities of these moments. I’ve stayed in place. Why?

When I started being honest with myself, I realized that this fear of change was a big issue for me. I needed to handle it because, if I did not, situations would continue to come up where I was forced by circumstances to make a decision involving a change. It felt infinitely ungrounding to take the coat of habit—good or bad off and discover what it would be like to live without it.  For me there was so much grief not dealt with.

I learned that not making a decision is in itself a decision—and that my fear of change was actually a fear of failure. Failure that I would no be seen as having it together.  Fear of sitting alone with myself and actually feeling all that I had not dealt with—the death of my brother, the failure of a marriage, the reaching the mountain top goal and then feeling as though there was nothing beyond that because it had been a focus or so long. That was when I noticed the pattern of things breaking, or circumstances changing, forcing me to deal with my inability to sit and grieve.

Find your pattern. Find your lesson.

A good way of recognizing patterns in your life is by listening to your feelings, your intuition. I’ve found that when I am involved in a pattern, my emotions run a bit stronger, kind of like a warning from my subconscious mind (AKA the Holy Spirit) to pay attention to what’s happening.

More often than not, I recognize the pattern when the situation has ended, or changed. Hindsight is 20/20 in this way. It can be difficult to recognize a pattern while it’s playing out. So, usually we realize what happened afterward. And that is okay. In turn, life will continue to send us ways to overcome our patterns and learn our individual lessons.  If not….we are just sent the lesson again.  Might as well get on board rather than reliving your Groundhog Day.

The key is to be alert. When you’re open to recognizing a pattern, you can change it by learning the lesson, and in doing so, change your life.


Onward.

Trish