Are you leading your best life, or are you just living life? Are you making the most of each moment and everyday or are you just going through the motions and living? Most people today do not lead their lives, they just accept it for what it is and are not looking to make the needed changes so that they can lead their best lives.
Change is hard. Change means putting the work in to make yourself better. Change means that something needs to die for there to be re-birth in your life. Every day, a little part of us dies. The old version of us dies to allow us to make room for the new improved version. People hear the word death and associate it with a bad thing, but the death of the old version of us is nothing but positive.
Getting married, the old version of us being single needs to die. Are you becoming more financially stable, the poor version of you needs to die. The mindsets are changing and the old versions of yourself are no longer relevant.
The smallest changes today may not look like much and may seem modest, but over time those small changes will add up to an astonishing transformation. Starting college as a freshman, graduation seemed so far away, but then you graduate in what seemed like a blink of an eye. Class by class the change was modest, but the steps to the final goal were nothing short of amazing.
I am sure as you sit there and read this, you can think of so many other examples in your own life. You never thought you would be living in the house that you are today, but here you are. You never thought you would be married (or divorced), but here you are. Life is hard. There is nothing easy about it. This is not going to change, but the harder things get, the deeper you need to dig. The deeper you dig; the deeper and harder things will get. The difference is that you are now prepared for the hard things that are coming your way, and they won’t seem as hard as they used to be. It must be hard. If it wasn’t, there would be nothing to celebrate. There would be nothing to learn from.
No matter how hard things seem to get, you have to keep going. As you keep going you need to remember to practice self-forgiveness. You need to have empathy and compassion for yourself. We have compassion for others all the time, but what about ourselves? Your compassion must include yourself or it is incomplete (Jack Kornfield). It is ok to not know all the answers. Some use the word fail, but you only fail if you do not learn. So, I replace Failing with learning. You either win or learn. There is no failing.
We cannot have all the answers. That is the point of life, to learn and lead the best possible life and to become the best possible version of yourself. This doesn’t happen overnight, but when it does, you will look back and see the journey was worth all the work and effort you put in. You may not understand the situation now, but when you look back, it will all make sense.
Whether it is heartbreak from a relationship. Whether is it not getting the job that you want or not getting the promotion that you deserve. It may not make sense now, but as the journey continues, it will be those learning moments that define and prepare you for what is coming.
Social media makes us measure ourselves against the impossible every day. We see all the rich and famous or influencers doing this or that. Won’t we don’t see if the behind the post. Behind the camera. We don’t see all the tireless nights and effort that they had to put in to get where they are today. Make sure that you are measuring yourself against yourself and yourself only. Your journey is yours and yours alone. Their journey is their journey and how they got there is up to them to decide and what they can live with and not live with. You make the same decisions every day.
I have clients tell me all the time that they do not think their lives are getting better or that therapy is working. These are the moments that us as counselors live for, because we get to show our clients all the work that they have put in and not even realizing how far they have come.
I have a client with severe anxiety who had panic attacks 4-5x a day. He told me that therapy wasn’t working. I asked him when his last panic attack was, he said three days ago and then proceeded to say “see therapy is not working. I am still having attacks”. It was that moment that I made the client realize he went from 4-5 attacks a day, to 1-2 a day, to one or two every couple of days to one a week and now having one a week. That’s a win. That is therapy working at its best. That is a win to celebrate, and we sometimes need someone to help us see the little wins that are actually big ones.
A client came in the other day and said that nothing has changed. I said nothing. She said well maybe something. Maybe life is 1% better today than it was yesterday. That one percent is moving in the right direction, and that one percent is one percent better than yesterday. After even further discussions the client realized that they were more like ten percent better than yesterday as they forgot about all the other good things that happened. We need to make sure that we take the time to reflect on each day and how we can use that information to build up and make tomorrow even better. This reflection is the difference between leading your life or just living it.
You can accomplish anything that you want. You have already done the difficult part. You need to reflect and realize how far you have come and how much you have learned. This is only the beginning. Keep going, you have a lot of fucking work to do!
