A few weeks ago, as I stepped out of my house in the late evening to walk my dog, Sadie, I started to slide on the ice outside my front door. Whoa! I looked around and saw that a thin layer of ice was covering the entire sidewalk and road!
I had to walk her, so I figured out pretty quickly that if I walked on the grass it was safer. I slowly made my way up the block, carefully easing across each walkway that intersected the grassy patches.
I made it safely to the top of the street and a nice big patch of grass. Whew!
I relaxed and heaved a sigh of relief as I walked on the grass. Suddenly – SWOOSH!! My feet slid out from under me and I crashed to the ground! Instinctively, my left hand extended behind me to try and break my fall and I felt a sharp pain in my forearm. Crap!
Having dropped Sadie’s leash as a fell, I shouted for her to come back, which she obediently did. I looked around trying to assess the situation. What had a slipped on? I was being so careful! (It was a plastic utility cover on the ground in the grass).
My left forearm was hurting. Boy was it hurting!!
It seemed everywhere else was ok. I was able to get myself off the ground (no one else was around) and started picking my way gingerly on the grass back home, my arm screaming loudly the whole way. I was pretty sure I had broken something.
When I got home, I told my husband what happened, again exclaiming “I was being so careful!”
I am so grateful for all my physical therapy training and healing experience. I knew exactly what to do. I wrapped the affected arm and wrist with an ace bandage, did some EFT tapping while I iced it for 15-20 minutes, and took two Motrin for the pain relieving and anti inflammatory effects.
I asked my husband for help with getting undressed – even though he himself was sick with the flu. (In the past I would never have “bothered” him because he was sick). I then called my best friend, a practicing PT, and had her validate my decision to wait till morning to go to get an X-ray (there was no obvious displacement of the bones and it was too risky to try to go out in that ice that night).
I heard myself reiterating my shock that I had slipped and fallen when I was “being so careful.”
I was able to sleep comfortably and get a good nights rest and had x-rays the next day that, thankfully, showed it was a bad sprain, not a fracture.
A few days later as I contemplated how this experience was here to serve me, I remembered how I had exclaimed over and over again … to my husband, my friend, the doctor at the urgent care clinic: “… and I was being so careful!”
I had to laugh at myself as I heard Spirit’s response:
“That’s not the point, Helen. It’s not about being “careful”. It’s not about trying to control the circumstances of our life in an attempt to keep ourselves (and our loved ones) safe. It’s about trusting that every experience is an opportunity – to experience, learn, practice or heal something.
Choosing this perspective in itself creates a different response: We relax into our experiences, instead of fighting them, allowing us to flow through them faster and easier as opposed to getting stuck or struggling through them.
We may not have the ability (power) to control the circumstances of life, we do have the ability (power) to control how we respond to the circumstances. How we respond, how we choose to look at, and be with, an experience or a circumstance, can change the outcome of the experience and how it serves us.”
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Every time I have a challenging experience and I am able to move through it powerfully and confidently, I know it’s because I already have tools in my tool-kit to draw on. I have developed a level of resilience, flexibility, strength, courage, and faith. I have honed my ability to shift my focus, receive support, and my willingness to surrender and trust.
We don’t develop these abilities in the middle of a crisis. A crisis gives us the opportunity to practice applying them, seeing how well we have learned them – what we’ve mastered and what we still need to get better at.
This is the reason my clients do the work they do with me. This is what personal development is about: developing the inner strength, resourcefulness and resilience that allows you to weather life’s storms with ease and grace. To reach out and ask for support when you need it. To resolve conflicts quickly and experience happier relationships. To respond to the stresses of daily life differently – allowing you to have more joy and peace, more flow, less struggle – no matter what is happening.
Every one of my clients came back from celebrating the Christmas holidays with their families reporting how wonderful it was. How different it was from previous ones. More joyful, less stressful, more connection, not taking on other people’s issues and being less judgmental and more loving towards them.
How would your life be different if you invested in growing yourself this year? It is one of the smartest and most lucrative investments you’ll ever make!
You can begin by booking a free conversation with me here.