As a coach, I typically run into people that are stuck somewhere in their life. Their typical tactics that they learned as kids no longer work and the situation is asking for them to level up in their life. Every single person alive runs into these spots – they are part of our growth as human beings. Many of us really stagnate ourselves in these spots refusing to change as who really wants to know that their previous theories no longer work?!
Many of these stuck spots are related to stories that we learned as children that we took as facts. As kids, many of us, like Abby in the picture, are determined veggies are bad for us. Some hold onto this story for life and avoid vegetables like the plague, while those that choose to challenge their story find out that vegetables are actually great.
One story that pops up regularly is the victim triangle of running between the victim, persecutor, and rescuer. This dynamic is in just about every book and movie that we have seen. Repeatedly. It is also seen as the norm so refusing to buy into it all of the time is seen as odd. We all fall into it at times, but we can learn to not live there all of the time.
What I have seen as an extension of the triangle in spiritual groups is blaming a person for when something bad happens in their life that they created it. Way to blame the victim in a situation when they are still trying to get their feet back on the ground! Honestly, shit happens. Shit even happens to everyone at different points in their lives to various degrees. These things are not because people are bad, asked for it, or in anyway invited these things to occur. There is absolutely no reason to shame yourself or others. Ever.
I had a child at 31 who became very ill a few months after birth and died at 13 months from an incredibly aggressive and undiagnosable disease. Through this, I could have blamed my husband or myself. I could have blamed our families. I could have blamed all sorts of things. There were zero things in either of our family trees that would have lead anyone to believe that we would have had anything other than a typical healthy child. Yet, I still heard really fascinating ideas and theories from people that had absolutely no clue what they were talking about as to why it occurred.
Shitty things just happen to occur to people as part of life. They don’t make you a bad person or evil or any other category anyone decides to try and label you. The focus should not be on what happens, but on how you navigate what occurs. Do you rise to the challenge and open up to your major learning experiences or do you crawl into a ball away from the world? Neither is good or bad, they are just different. In fact, at some points, we all need to crawl into a ball away from the world to prepare to be ready to fight like hell – it can seriously power up your energy reserves.
Personally, I feel honored to spend time with people who have gone through intense life experiences as they are incredible to hang out with as they have so much depth both in the down emotions and in the up emotions. They don’t spend their time trying to numb out and just be okay with no actual feelings up or down. Also, they are actually incredibly fascinating as they do not see life as black and white as they realize that this idea is incredibly untrue. Life is filled with significant variety in colors, textures, and nuances.
There is no wrong or right way to grow – there is just the ways you choose to go about your growth. What I have realized is that the same lessons in different forms come back into our lives quite regularly and from different perspectives until we have learned what we are meant to from the experience to move on from it. Even then, people going through similar events will find you in your life and befriend you as you are meant to show them, if you desire, that they can make it through what they are facing and begin to thrive again. It is incredible when it simply clicks for you and you recognize what it is you were meant to learn.
Perfection is a myth perpetuated by those that are incredibly far from perfection. Life is messy, dirty, and interesting because of this. Could you imagine how boring life would be if everyone was perfect and had nothing to learn or grow through or from?! I don’t know about you, but spending all day hanging out with robots does not sound like an ideal experience, unless you are creating and programming them. Okay, having them do housework and monotonous tasks would be awesome, but as my only interactions with others, that would feel incredibly lacking.
What are areas in which you are working through growing and expanding? I’d love to hear from you!