Life is a journey. Embracing the journey can sometimes be challenging. Throughout life, no matter our age, we are faced with expected and unexpected challenges and change. One way to learn to appreciate these challenges or changes is to think of them as a season.
A season of change.
Change can happen in a variety of ways. Change can be sudden or gradual. Change can create ripple effects and can be felt in many different places in our lives. Regardless, it is important to remind ourselves that this season will pass and another season will inevitably begin.
When we are faced with a dark, gloomy season, it can be hard to see the sun. The sun is still there; it is just masked by the clouds or rain or plain gloominess of the day. It can seem like this season will last a lifetime. However, like many seasons, the gloominess, rain or clouds will eventually fade away and the sun will shine again.
Within our own season, sometimes our body does not want to let go of the “dark” and does not want to accept change. It seems like the clouds and gloominess will never lift. Our response may be to try and ignore the feeling associated with the change, whether it is because it’s painful or just plain hard to recognize the season.
Therein lies the challenge.
We have to make a decision.
Decisions are hard and sometimes take some self-reflection. In these moments of self-reflection, learning self-awareness of how our body physically feels and how we feel emotionally (emotions are tricky; sometimes one emotion may coexist with another), we can gain better control of self and make a decision of how we will react (what our behavior will be) to that moment or season. Through that self-awareness we can gradually gain control over how our body is feeling physically and emotionally and decide what we are going to do with our choices, our behavior.
"We can gain control of our season and embrace the change (even through the difficult)."
All the same, sometimes the temptation may exist to not recognize our emotions or feelings. When we tell ourselves to “just get over it” or “I don’t want to feel or appear weak,” our emotions may become hidden or subdued. Sometimes life takes over and those emotions or feelings are ignored, pushed deep inside, or simply not recognized for one reason or another. The thing about our life journey with each season is that those emotions or feelings don’t go anywhere, even if they are ignored or not recognized.
They exist.
They exist in each season along our journey. And they linger and are disguised in our choices of relationships, careers, daily motivation, or our subconscious…in all parts of self!
The awesome thing is that through self-awareness, we can learn ways to gain control over those parts of our self and to learn to embrace the challenges in our journey even when it’s hard.
Why?
Because each and every one of us is worth it. There is value in self. There is value in you. There is value in the journey with each season of life.
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