and Sprinkles on Top

Your “Old Self”

Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Deb in A Little More Focused, As the Web Turns, The Girl

In my perusal of blogs, I came across this post by Christine Kane last week – Part One of a two-part series entitled “How to Turn a Set-back into a Comeback”.     Part one goes through six reminders about set-backs, things that we truly need to understand and embrace before we are able to move forward.    I was re-reading the post tonight after sending it to one of my ATG Editors and stopped here:

2 – You’re not going to get back to your “Old Self.”

Sometimes during set backs, we just want things to be the way they used to be. We want our Old Self back.

But think about this. Your “Old Self” was the self that was living so unconsciously that this situation was created in order to wake her up!

You don’t want “Old Self.” You want EXACTLY who you are now. Warts, bruises, disillusionment, and all. These things transmute into wisdom. A New Self. A Wiser Self.

She is there, waiting for this stuff to fall away so she can rise up.

via How to Turn a Set-Back into a Comeback.

It’s interesting to sit back and realize that everything that has happened to each of us in our lives will stick with us forever.  In some cases, we take for granted the good things that happen in our lives.  Or we try to ignore the bad things in our lives.   We can muddle through the days and the nights until suddenly we realize that weeks have passed – or  months – and we are simply exisiting.

Or we can be active participants in our lives.

Take what has happened and learn from it.

Too much of the last few months, I have allowed life to happen to me.  I have lived a life of reaction.  It’s not a way to live life, but it certainly seems a way to shorten life.  In fact, Number 5 on Christine’s list is “we often become addicted to reaction”.  It’s a cycle – a perpetual cycle.  In order to stop the cycle, however, we have to make a conscious decision to (1) recognize we are simply reacting and (2) stop it.  I know there will be days, like the day I rushed to the hospital, where reacting is necessary.  But in order to heal, I have to break as much of the cycle of reaction as possible.

I had mentioned earlier that “faith” was my word for 2010.  There is no way I will be able to find my faith again – the faith in people in my life, the faith in the goodness of strangers and the faith in me – if I don’t accept that life evolves and people change.  I am harder on myself than anyone else, and if I am to accept the fact that people change and change is often a good thing, then I must accept the fact that I am an ever changing and evolving creature.

I want to change.  I want to evolve.  I want to learn.  I want to be a wiser woman, to  embrace my bruises of the past, and actually live life.   Life is short, too short.  And if I am to find my faith in the world, then I need to be an active participate in life instead of reacting to events or watching the world go by.

Tags: Change, Christine Kane, Comeback, Faith, Setback