Often we feel overwhelmed by a situation. We have done everything right but still our plans go awry. We look around us and blame it on the world. This person screwed me; the conditions were not right; etc. And saying this is fine. Sometimes it might be smarter to drop something and forget about it. But sometimes it may be worth stopping for a moment and looking at the situation, and asking yourself whether you can take responsibility for what happened?

Taking responsibility reveals the lesson

It is only when we take responsibility for something do we provide ourselves the opportunity to change the outcome. If you refuse to look at the outcome and say it was someone else’s fault you will never be able to properly see what went wrong and understand how to solve the problem and learn the lesson. It has been said that “What we resist persists, and what we look at goes away”. So maybe you can see that as you open yourself to something rather resisting it, the problem might fall away when you realize that maybe it wasn’t a problem. Maybe what happened was exactly what needed to occur in order for you to move forward and grow into the person that you dreamed of becoming. We live in a society where we have been taught that to make a mistake is “bad”. We spend our whole lives trying to be right but here is something we all need to learn, being right all the time is actually “bad” and learning how to make a mistake in a constructive way is actually so right you wouldn’t believe.

Mistakes you want to make

It has been shown that taking yourself to the limit where you make mistakes is the greatest way to learn, if you deal with the lesson appropriately. Instead of reacting, slow down. Don’t take the mistake as a failure, as a personal attack on your sense of self-worth, but realize that this is one step closer to reaching your goal. This mistake is not an error but instead an opportunity to learn. The more our minds and bodies create impulses that experience and overcome difficulties, the better we will be able to handle these problems in the future. The better we handle problems, the faster we can deal with them to the point where they are no longer problems but a momentary challenge, just like the way a baby learnt to walk. At first even crawling was a serious problem but eventually the baby learnt how to crawl, and then how to steps. Walking suddenly became only a challenge and ultimately it was so automatic that not only did the baby not have to even think about walking, but as the child grew up it could do things like running and surfing as easily as breathing. Without these mistakes the baby would have never made it past the first step.

Outside of now

So ask yourself could this problem be a part of your lesson in order to reach your goals. Try looking at the situation from a higher perspective, one that is outside of only the present moment. Instead think about what this experience means to you in a year’s time or five years time. Now look back and look at how relevant this problem in the scheme of your life that has been. By looking at the problem at hand as a lesson to learn rather than a mistake, you create your space as the actor not the reactor of your life.

Acting or reacting

When you react, you are reacting from an emotional space. There is a difference between feelings and emotions. You actively generate your feelings. Feelings guide your actions powerfully and are the best space to make decisions from as they come from a place of control and clarity. Feelings can take form when you practice gratitude. Give thanks for what you have and where you are in your life and give thanks for your dream and what you are trying to create. Even try and appreciate yourself. Name five things you are thankful for about yourself. (Learn more about gratitude in “Gratitude gets you Zen”).

Breaking the loop

You react instinctively with your emotions. Typically your emotions are your ego. They contain your deep seeded fears and flare up in a primitive attempt to protect you. But if you react from your emotion, from a place of fear, you are likely to end up in the place that you were trying not to find yourself at. Your emotional instincts are at a level of your brain that is equal to a dog. While they are wonderful creatures they don’t have the higher intellect to break a conditioned response. What is interesting though is that with time without the stimulus the response would extinguish. What this means is that when we stop looking at the issue as a problem we will stop having a fear response that will cause us to perpetuate the cycle. Warren Buffet, the greatest investor that lives today said that one of the most important thing about being successful is not to be so emotionally reactive but to take a moment and move beyond the emotional reaction. Control your emotion and then make your decision.

The Steps

So I ask you to try to take a moment and see if you can feel the way through and go beyond your emotions. You will find clarity in yourself. How? The answers are always the simplest things. Breathe. Breathing is a powerful way to create space for you from your emotions and be able to reach your true feelings separate from them. Your emotions can act like a fog where you can’t see passed the moment and don’t know the direction you need to take to get where you are going. Your breath is a cool breeze that begins to move away the layers of this stifling emotion that enables you to take a step back and a step up. Your feelings that you generate are a bright light that begins to burn away the fog and clear the path. You will finally see your way through the fog, and always by holding true to your dreams, to your highest joy, you will find your bearings and set sail again confidently, trusting in yourself and the outcome.

Good Luck!

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