Even Broken, See the Opportunities
“If you’re broken, ask yourself this question; what if the worst things that happened to you were the greatest opportunities you’ve ever been given?” ~ Matt Kahn
Understand Your Expectations
As we go through our lives, we stumble over and through the obstacles that lay ahead of us. Some of my obstacles were about family treating me poorly. To my surprise, expectations are the worst things you can look for or want to live by. Bottom line, I expected people to relate and treat me the same way I treated them. I found that although many of us would love the world to work this way, my big lesson in life would come out of this very thinking.
Although most families want strong ties like a mafia clan, however, having just the opposite can absolutely bring you in to your light. Just living my best life and minding my own business, the universe had other plans. As I continued down the road of raising my scholar athletes trying to instill integrity and honor on the way, it turned out that I was being polished as well. While engaging in many sacrifices for my children, I was being plucked like a chicken one feather at a time. Even though my girls were living in a manner that helped them assimilate to the tight quarters with small purses of college life, I was being transformed for my second act.
Notice the Opportunities
Just as Matt Kahn has stated, those very worst things which broke me ended up being the greatest opportunities for me. Hiding under the family crest, little by little family became nothing that I neither remembered nor dreamed. I was being quietly removed from my tribe. My expectations were like tall tales working as the blinders on my eyes. Even though nothing dramatic had actually happened like me stealing the family jewels or me sleeping with my sister’s husband, each family member quietly exited from my life. What was hard to understand was that it was from no doing of my own.
Little did I know I was entering this phase in order for the universe to crack me wide open. During the stages of raising my children as the scholar athletes that they were presented to me as, the universe was nice enough to use their activities as sort of a way for me not to see the hurt coming. It was as if everyone dressed up as a crazy character in a nightmare and were told they would win the Oscar if they acted as mean as they could. It seemed that the more I invited them to be with me, the farther away they would go. The more I reached out, the farther they would run. As my father died from cancer and a stroke, they decided to let me feel the most heinous emotions by not letting me know when his surgeries were and by letting me know he passed by a text message and Facebook post hours after he was gone.
The Universe Steps In
Most importantly, they took their love away from me without a care in the world. After a long time of hurting and working on myself, I realized that I was being prepped for something else. I mean, how am I supposed to help all the moms in the world, if I’m still living in a comfort zone? I was being selected to bear witness to the most unheard of actions from family members and being taught by those I’ve never met to stand strong in the pain, look for the lessons I need, and learn to be grateful while hurting. I’ve learned how strong I truly am.
By being stripped of my family which was the most important thing to me at that time, the universe took me out of the painful situation, and it placed me in a space where I can help others going through the same thing. While going through this, I learned how meditation helps teach you how to sit in the pain, yoga movements help keep my body stretched, and being grateful between each breath has helped lower my blood pressure. I’ve learned that the key is to let these things happen. Let what does not serve you fall off while letting those important things shine.
Finding the Opportunity
When looking at the hurt and finding the opportunity of what it’s really here to teach, what you find is opportunity. By seeing that my family members were only acting the best way they knew how, it kept me out of the pain. It is their own pain that they are dealing with and some don’t know how to deal with it, so they continue to spiral. Others, take their pain, pack it up, and move into the darkness too afraid to look at it.
By looking at it, it helps me see that this disconnect only reconnected me to the universe and my true path. Staying in comfort of what we think normalcy is only interferes with our growth. By moving through the worry and regret that we may feel or even carry, we learn to put it down and realize that we don’t need to live in a survival mode.
Opportunity Comes with Peace
Living isn’t about constant worry about having enough or being enough. When we drive by the lemon and avocado trees, we don’t hear them whining about how worried they are about getting enough water and sunlight. They use the opportunities that come to them to live peacefully.
While living through the drama of my family and in-laws, it made me realize that they were trying to create sadness for me because they are living in darkness. Because they never took that step out of the light and shine their true selves, they tried to take the light of others like me. Some try to do this by using the old adage that we’re not good enough for them. Because we all yearn to be wanted, loved, and belong, they use that same hurt they’re feeling of not being enough and using it to drag us into their same world.
Pieces turn Peaceful
What we need to remember is exactly what Matt Kahn and Kyle Cease promote which is that the world isn’t acting against us, rather it is for us. Since many reside in these sad and unpleasant feelings, it only feels safe and secure to them. Once we venture out into the world to do what the universe has signed us up for, we learn that survival mode was our safe place. We learn to go out into the world, pray and meditate on the ways we’re supposed to move forward, and acknowledge those who help with a warm thank you.
As our soul ventures out on its plan, it learns that its passion and grit is what moves us forward. So as you go through hurtful times where you feel broken, remember that you’re only getting better. You’re basically being pruned to be the best you ever.
Why comfort will ruin your life | Bill Eckstrom … – YouTube
The Growth Rings
