Attitude is everything in life. You think positive and positive things happen, therefore when you think negative...well, you get the picture. February was like that for me. I came into it with the worst attitude. I was sure that February was going to be torture and guess what? It was. You see, I had it in my head that such a great injustice had happened to me last year in February, the weekend of my birthday, Valentine's Day, and Family Day weekend to boot, that I couldn't even begin to forget what had happened to ME, and on days that were impossible to forget. I set myself up for a terrible month and it really was. There were numerous losses, anxieties, lack of communication, misunderstandings, I dreaded my birthday, and I felt like I was failing at parenting... Just an all round shitty month. And, because I had already decided that it was going to be a tough month, it felt like the world was against me, everything was going wrong and I was angry, sad, resentful, I felt alone, unwanted and preferred to be left alone, I was not a happy person.
Some of you may understand these feelings and some of you may not, and that’s ok. You see, I’ve been on this roller coaster before and so, knowing how I was going to feel, I had my safety bar in place. I wrote some affirmations that would help me get through the month and I continued reading from my unlimited list of ‘self-help’ books. This time it was Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Mastery of Love. I was reading the chapter on healing the emotional body and it spoke about opening wounds, cleaning them and keeping them clean until they healed. This passage was somewhat of a lightbulb moment for me: “The truth is like a scalpel because it is painful to open our wounds and uncover all of the lies. The wounds in our emotional body are covered by the denial system, the system of lies we have created to protect those wounds. When we look at our wounds with eyes of truth, we can finally heal these wounds. You begin by practicing the truth with yourself. When you are truthful with yourself, you start to see everything as it is, not the way you want to see it.” In that moment, I realized that the truth was that I was not a victim, that these were just events that had happened and not necessarily happened
to me. They had nothing to do with me, it was others’ insecurities, their fears, their lack of self-esteem, etc. So, now I look at these situations as life lessons. There’s no blame, no hatred, no resentment just sadness. Sadness for my loss of friendships, people, new adventures and time.
While I was so busy being miserable, I almost dismissed the good things that happened like birthday wishes, even though I had purposely hidden my birth date on Facebook, a lunch date with two of my favourite gals, a dinner date with my favourite young man, some understanding with said man, and heartfelt conversations and letter writing. Yes, there are things I cannot change but I’m starting to believe that stuff happens and people come and go for reasons unbeknownst to us at that moment. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned or help to be had and given or just learning to appreciate what you have in the now instead of focusing on the past and future.
I’m realizing that I seem to fall, all too easily, into the ‘Comfort Zone’ trap and that's when I start taking everything for granted and put my dreams and aspirations in the back seat. So, now that I’ve put my miserable February behind (well, mostly), I have a new motto for March:
Get out there and follow those dreams!
Lots of love,
Julie
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