The deeper insight that I uncovered in the aftermath of my biggest life lesson to date totally bowled me over.
If you have read the previous two posts linked to this life lesson – The hard lesson that taught me that my gut can be trusted and 3 immediate take-aways from my biggest life challenge to date – you may have noticed that I don’t tend to dwell on the emotional experience and impact too much.
I prefer to focus on the learning as the learning is what is going to take me forward. The learning is what will help me grow and evolve.
That said, this life lesson rocked my core. In the early days, I felt like a typical victim. I was angry and hurt. And I was frustrated that I wasn’t given the chance to explain myself and learn what had gone wrong. To get closure.
Coming out the other end of this experience there was a lot of debris scattered around filled with disappointment, doubt, confusion, low confidence, low self-worth, and low self-esteem.
My conclusion at the time was that this debris had created limiting beliefs leading me to act and behave in certain ways.
Over the months that followed, I continued to reflect on my experience and work my way through the debris.
Then one proverbial day…
Meet bombshell #1:
I realised that the set of circumstances linked to this humongous life challenge had shown up multiple times throughout my life, going all the way back to my teenage years. Crikey! We’re talking decades!
Meet bombshell #2:
Each time these circumstances had appeared in my life had all been opportunities to see and eradicate certain beliefs linked to low self-esteem and self-worth.
And last but not least…
Meet bombshell #3:
The previous bombshells led to a massive realisation that being pushed to the edge like I had been through this experience, had been a blessing. My friend’s actions and reactions had been a blessing in disguise.
Consciously or unconsciously, he had done me a favour!
Sure, while in the thick of it, it didn’t feel anywhere close to being a blessing. But in hindsight, it’s clear that he did me a massive favour as he helped to shine a light on something that kept me small and prevented me to grow.
Through this experience I discovered the power and courage to take a stand for myself, to value myself, and to stop thinking of myself as a victim at the receiving end.
I discovered conscious choice.
Now I have a greater appreciation for and awareness that there is no escaping my responsibility of being true to myself, not hiding who I am, and not listening to my inner wisdom and guidance.
I wholeheartedly appreciate that situations and circumstances that seem to ‘happen to us’ provide opportunities to let go of patterns and shift beliefs.
Whether my friend and I had agreed to do this for one another before we came here, I don’t know. But what I do know is that my friend and I still have a deep connection and a strong friendship.
I can only speak for myself, but it seems that we both learned the lessons we needed to learn from this experience, and so I suppose we both did what was needed at the time, to help each other grow.
