Episode 130

Listen to “Exploring Gratitude for Challenges and Missteps” on Spreaker.

It’s not easy to explore and connect with gratitude for challenges and missteps, especially if we continue to carry the sting with us as regret or anger.

Challenges and missteps shape us; help soften or sharpen our edges, create or loosen our boundaries, work through emotions of loss, anger, what could have been. These situations may also reveal pain or raw spots that have gone unnoticed, taking us by surprise in a big way and causing confusion or discomfort in the process.

The thoughts and emotions we experience when we encounter challenges and missteps are always valid. What’s important is to acknowledge and feel them as part of the growth and healing process, not make them the enemy.

On this episode of the Flirting With Enlightenment podcast, I talk about the power of the stories we tell ourselves. When we mentally review them over and over and focus on how things are challenging, hard, or ways we “messed up”, it becomes habitual. Soon it’s hard to tell if we are operating from a place of truth, or just branching out from the same story that focuses on the challenges and missteps of life, rather than an intuitive decision-making place. It also helps us cling to a story out of fear, self-doubt or change.

I also discuss why it’s important to sit with emotions and experiences before jumping directly into positive story or platitude. Part of why we are on the planet is to have human experiences, and experiencing a range of emotions is all part of our growth. If we let the mind jump into explaining all the reasons why something is or isn’t true, we are allowing it to guide a heart-specific process and explain our feelings to us, rather than actually feeling the truth of them. These patterns help us avoid actually feeling altogether, and make it hard to have gratitude for challenges and missteps as teachers.

In the podcast I include simple ways to see when are letting stories from past hurts overrun our current mindset, and how easy it is to jump to “what it all means” before we’ve been willing to be with what is actually happening in the now. Newsflash – this doesn’t help us work towards true healing and reaching a space of neutrality so we can move forward with clarity and truthfulness, or experience true gratitude for challenges and missteps to move into a deeper layer of awareness and healing.

If you would like to listen to other episodes on similar topics, check out Learning and Growing Through Crisis Energy and Cultivating Inner Strength. Want some 1-1 time with me? Let’s get some time on the schedule using the schedule feature at Creative Katrina.