“What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be.” ~ Unknown

One of the most freeing moments in your life is when you find the willingness to let go of what you thought should be and embrace what is.

As I look back on my life, I realize that anytime I was devastated over something not working out, whether it was a relationship, a job, a move or an opportunity I thought I should have, I was actually being re-directed to something better.

There’s a great qoute by Eckhart Tolle that resonated with me years ago:

“Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”

I get disappointed just like everybody else when something doesn’t work out the way I want. But I have had the experience of losing something good, only to be given something better so many times over, that the disappointment fades much quicker and instead I wait patiently to see what the universe has in store for me instead.

My most trying times, my most painful, what the f**k times—those times I wailed into the night, “Why is this happening to me?” thinking I’d never recover from the curve ball that life had just thrown my way. Those are the times that redefined me and led me to something better.

I started to look at those moments, not as defeats, but as necessary to unraveling what was happening in my life at the time, and learning that I can rise from it and redefine what my own happiness is.

I work with a lot of clients who look at their failed relationships, their single status, the recent loss of their job or their financial situation as things that “should never have happened.” There is blame. There is shame. And there are so many judgments about themselves, so much insisting that things need to be different in their life right now in order to be happy.

I tell them there is something better for them. I know it sounds cliche but it’s always true. To have faith that there is a divine plan in place. That even if the experience of what they are going through is devastating and depressing and exhausting, they will discover things about themselves in the process and that something else will show up that is far better than what they had.

We choose how to look at any situation we’re given in life. We can look at every heartbreak and every disappointment as something that never should have happened…as some horrible injustice that took place in our lives.

Or we can look at these things as an opportunity to go within and look at ourselves. Because the truth is, every single experience we attract in our life is really just a mirror being held up to us, to look at something we’re unwilling to see.

But need to see.

Life isn’t “supposed” to be any one way. The only area of my life that has played out the way I envisioned when I was a child is my career. I’d even go so far as to say it’s far better than I ever envisioned.

My love life…not so much. But I had a real breakthrough recently when I came to the realization that I had unconsciously bought into the fantasy all these years that I had to be married to be happy. That I had to raise kids with a partner. That there is only one soulmate for me in this world. And that if I didn’t have that life, I was a failure or someone to be pitied.

Nothing could be further from the truth. My life looks so much different than what I thought it should be at the moment, but I trust 100 percent that there is something far better, something I have probably never felt or knew existed for me on the horizon.

I released something good, in order to make space for something better.

Our souls are all on their own unique journeys, seeking out people and experiences to teach them what they need to learn and grow, before traveling back home.

Some souls choose some real sh*t-storm situations to learn, and some choose the gentler route…but as a friend of mine once told me, “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.” (Zig Ziglar).

So remember that when you’re going through a total sh*t storm experience. Remember that it is supposed to be like this, whatever it is in this moment, and accept it.

Whatever you’re going through, it’s leading you somewhere you’re meant to be. You just don’t know it yet.

Trust…just trust the journey. Work with it and know that you’re headed somewhere just a little bit different that where you were pointing your arrow, but far better than where it was intended to land.

 

Author: Dina Strada

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: McKinley Law/Unsplash