Ripples #1260: Accepting All Challenges
July 17, 2023
PEBBLE
Don’t look at your problem as taking something out of you. Rather look at it as putting something into you.
-source unknown, shared by Tom in Jefferson, WI
BOULDER
To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like.
-Mike Gafka, shared by Shellby in Kokomo, IN
PONDER
Some people believe everything happens for a reason, while others think that stuff just happens without much order. Most of us are somewhere in the middle….open to believing that there are often hidden gifts, messages, and/or learnings in the way things unfold, but also making room for the fact that sometimes, stuff just happens.
Way back in Ripples #1239: Making Room for Messiness we explored Bruce Tift’s “Stages of Dissolving Internal Divisions” that suggests we can learn to embrace even the “less sppectacular” parts of our inner selves that we sometimes struggle to accept.
A few months after that issue came out in I was hanging out with my Patreon Peeps for our April Zoomy Zoom on Mindfulness (if you’re a podcast person, we upload the audio to The Ripples Pondcast), and I shared with them how I had printed out the seven stages and hung it in my office to help me think about how I’m relating to various challenges that I’m grappling with.
The list reminds me there are a range of options: I can’t do anything until I recognize something as a challenge, and I have a choice to merely tolerate something if it’s really loathsome. With the right mindset, I have options that include accepting, liking, welcoming, commiting and even loving the challenge for the lessons it has to offer.
It’s important to remember that we don’t HAVE to work our way up to those higher levels for every single challenge…the real value is recognizing that you have options available to you, different ways of relating to a challenge. Your choice, whether conscious or unconscious, will have an impact on how you relate to and deal with a particular challenge in your life.
How about you choose a challenge you’re facing right now, and play around with the list to see what it has to offer?
Peace,
Paul
P.S. Remember that I’m enjoying a few weeks offline as part of my summer break. I’ll be back in action soon, and I have Ripples lined up for each Monday I’m out and about. See you soon!
