“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
–Walt Disney
Think back to a time when you felt you lost everything. When was a time when your life seemed out of control and chaotic? Maybe you lost a loved one, or a huge business account. Or maybe you felt betrayed by a friend. You lost your job, or maybe an intimate relationship ended. Go back to that time and remember how you felt.
It was awful. Even though divorce had been my choice, I felt like I had failed. Emotionally, I let myself get to the point where I was the failure. My young son moved to California with his dad and I began the tough journey of single parenthood with my daughter. My self-worth plummeted and rather than feel those emotions, I drank more. Reliving that time in my mind brings back those same feelings.
Did you relive that time in your life? Then you remember your feelings at that time, too.
Here we are now…and we lived through that crushing time, didn’t we? Sure, looking back, maybe we think we would have done things differently, However, I think we did the best we could considering the awareness that we had at that time. We’re much smarter now and hopefully we learned some things from that hard time.
Here we are now…and we lived through that crushing time, didn’t we? Sure, looking back, maybe we think we would have done things differently, However, I think we did the best we could considering the awareness that we had at that time. We’re much smarter now and hopefully we learned some things from that hard time.
I heard a motivational speaker say this, “In the darkest hour is where the brightest light can shine. Sometimes our darkest season is the time where we need to step back and reflect on what God (or The Universe, if you prefer) has for us.” My experience has been that my toughest times caused the most growth in my life if I took the time to be still and listen for the lesson. Those times of reflection afforded me the perspective change needed to reinvent, rebuild or re-purpose. How can we harvest the good from those experiences? We can do what we did before in tough times…we rebuild, reinvent or re-purpose. We can get curious and ask ourselves some questions. What am I learning about myself during this time that will be valuable for my future? Where is the opportunity? How is this a wake-up call for me? How do I need to change the way I handle stress? What strengths are serving me and how do I develop those even more? Has my purpose been altered and if so, how? These are just a few. We will make it through this, just like we made it through the other hard times in our lives. This crisis, like all others, will pass.
And perhaps one of the most meaningful things we can do after walking through a hard season is to use what we learned to help someone else through theirs.
There another question we can ask ourselves; who can I serve during this time? Many of my best lessons have come to me when I was endeavoring to shine the brightest light in someone else’s darkest hour. My challenges didn’t seem so tough when I reached out to listen with others. AND I was given a perspective that I hadn’t thought about before. Purpose to reach out to others because we are not alone in this.
Do you need to talk? Do you need a thinking partner to reinvent, re-purpose or rebuild? I would enjoy brainstorming with you and I’m just an email away.
Reinventing,
Jan
Jan McDonald
Maxwell Leadership Certified Team
www.johncmaxwellgroup.com/janmcdonald
https://www.linkedin.com/in/janmmcdonald