Every now and then the need to escape life’s challenges can have us digging deep trenches for disappearing or may provide us with speedy athletic legs to help us make a run for it. Challenges often create powerful emotions which are often difficult to handle so we go searching for an escape method. To escape from powerful emotions we may be tempted to stuff our faces with chocolate, cake and cookies while we hide in our homemade trench. The trench happens to be opposite the t.v. which plays our favourite movies over and over again filled with fake storylines providing temporary relief from our own reality.
When I was just a young kindergartener I remember walking into the classroom on my very first day of school unable to understand the English language as I had been bought up speaking Finnish. It was overwhelming to be amongst an army of kids that I could not understand nor communicate with. The moment the challenge of the language barrier became too overwhelming I made a run for it out of the school grounds all the way back home. The school was conveniently within a good walking distance of our family home. I escaped school on many occasions!!!
It is never easy when circumstances are opposing. Even as an adult you can’t help but wonder whether you have been put on ‘Santa’s naughty list’ for the whole entire year.
The mind can begin believing that since bad things are happening I must be a bad person.
That theory gets thrown out the window as soon as you take a good hard look at yourself and recognise that despite your imperfections in general you are not a bad person, therefore why all these difficult scenarios?
So it seems that opposition or challenges happen to good people and bad people. No person is safe from life’s incredible challenges. Everyone is going to have a trying time at some stage.
Opposition is resistance.
It may be a person in your life who is opposing you! Stopping you from moving forward, they may be in such an advantageous position that the obstacles they are throwing on your path have a major effect on your life. It’s often baffling as to how a person can have so much time and energy into making life difficult.
We may sense the resistance circumstantially. It could be the challenge of trying to find a job, which is one of my current challenges. After applying for jobs left, right and centre you start feeling as though the world has gone silent on you. All you want is an employer’s attention and time so as you have the possibility of getting employment.
Once you are dealing with unforgiving resistance in your circumstances whether it is with employment or with people the resistance often snowballs.
For me it snowballs into my thinking!
Then I am coming against resistance in my mind. The doubts start playing space invaders with a galaxy full of fears. The mind becomes another battle ground. All of the possible reasoning’s I come up with for why life is being so difficult is enough to provide material to write a script for a new movie.
When opposition or resistance is at its best circumstantially or in our minds the need to escape fragile emotions triggers all sorts of reactions.
For myself it shows up in eating sugary treats to becoming so overwhelmed within myself that I struggle to make the most of my day. The day sort of turns into a dud like a blank bullet, the shell exists yet there is no power in it.
Resistance builds strength!
Personally resistance is not my best friend. If I can avoid it, I will. However, it seems there are times in which resistance is unavoidable. Most of us have heard the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”!!! As much as I am aware that hard times do make you stronger it doesn’t make it any easier getting through it.
I may not react as much to this current circumstance as I would have years ago yet it doesn’t make it less painful.
As a first time single mum the resistance is felt that much more. When in a marriage or relationship any resistance can be split between the two of you. It gives you that extra support to make it. I’m learning how much more I need to grow in strength as this new life of mine has changed my responsibilities as it is up to me to get things accomplished!
On certain days I just escape into my bedroom, my safe haven…. Just long enough to give those emotions permission to feel. A good cry never killed anyone. If you need to cry then cry, why try and push it down and pretend that you are OK when you know that you are not.
The good news is that powerful emotions are not turned on permanently! Opposition and resistance might continue to be present for some time yet the negative affect it has on you wears out over time compared to how strong it is in the beginning. Which fits in nicely with the saying: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.
We do grow stronger with resistance…
The way that I would have responded to challenges as a young person is quite different to how I respond now. I have grown stronger over time. I overcame the language barrier and kept going to school until I finished. I had other challenges that took over once I could speak the language.
As we venture through life it helps to look back long enough to remember the challenges you have already overcome! You made it and you are still breathing….
This past six months for those of you who have followed my journey would have gotten a tiny picture of the challenges I have been faced with, perhaps you can also relate them to your challenges. I’m looking forward to the day I can write about these challenges turning into triumphs!
It will come, I know it….
Be inspired and most of all remember to keep SMILING 😀
♥
The Change that changes you 