Throughout the years there are certain lessons we all go through, many lessons are inevitable but unfortunately certain lessons are ignored although crucial for personal development. The lessons in many ways can be, difficult times, failure, unlucky moments or disguises of lessons dressed in camouflage that is built to fit in with adversity. Certain lessons teach certain things each unique in its own way, when lesson skipped we miss out on a lesson. When I got a call from my brother to surprise me with the fact that he was going to become a first time father at the time I sensed a bit of worry in his voice. Well who isn’t afraid to become a first time parent, it’s the fear of the unknown. The most powerful driver of fears, the fear of the unknown is the number one killer of execution and initiation of courage. It’s a natural way of being for us to seek safety, just like animals we are built to survive, the survival of the fittest and under all circumstances we are built to ignore danger and seek safety. The fear of the unknown is almost the same as walking into a pitch black cave without knowing if we will be eaten alive by a wild beast so naturally we avoid all possible dangers especially dangers that can kill us. Fear of the unknown in many ways is our comfort seeking sensor that doesn’t want us to do anything that can threaten our safety therefore we become safe zone creatures and avoid all possible risk especially associated with doing something that has a potential of jeopardizing our safety. When becoming a first time parent we go from living for our self with lots of freedom and flexible schedule to following a schedule of an infant and sacrificing many comfort associated factors we have built over time, beginning phase of parenthood is not comforting feeling even one bit. My conversation with my brother was about the forging process of self discovery not about the potential problems that were never going to happen. I shared earlier that 98% of all fear we have is an illusion and we focus so much on that number that it effects our reality today.
There is just something about experience and pressure that forges you into who you really are. You know the saying “true colors come out with time” well I think true colors come out with lessons of time through experience. This is an experience that will bring out the best in you, this lesson will connect certain parts of your brain synapse that were not connected before, this lesson will make you better, it’s the lesson that will make you, you.
Often I hear from peers that they have too much on their plate and as the matter of fact I feel that way sometimes as well, no one is immune to adversity. The only real difference in controlling the “life to dos” and letting it control us is our approach and recognition of the matter. If we think things just happen to us they will always just happen and will always control us, if we think of them as necessary lessons that we need to experience in becoming our better self that’s exactly what will happen. We will become better with handling what we call issues and utilize experience to our advantage to self discovery and become happy with what is VS being frustrated with what’s next.
If we go back and think of our best relationships, the people that have gone through the good and the bad with us, the ups and the downs along with time and struggle we usually develop the strongest relationships with them. We can most likely count on one hand how many deep, meaningful relationships we have. Many can call these people our “BFs” best friends. Time and so called struggle doesn’t just bring us closer with our partner or friends it also filters out the people that should have not been there in the first place. Over the years I really learned who my BFs are and over time I developed a deeper relationship with my spouse through adversity we faced together. I also stopped wasting time with people whom I falsely had friendships with as they were not in my life to offer a helping hand when needed but they were with me for the fun and excitement times, I call them “friends in need” as they are only around when they need something.
Developing a deep and meaningful relationship with ourselves is no exception. The good friends become best friends through rough times and bad ones disappear. Unless we put ourselves through tough lessons our good will never come out and we will never realize our true self and therefore never find out how great we are. My true self keeps on coming out the more lessons I go through and usually the true self is the best self. We can’t expect to have a good relationship with ourselves and realize who we are without the struggle or the lesson that we need to live through to discover our own personal relationship and learn who we really are. Same goes for adversity of life, starting a business, having children, making a commitment, making a sacrifice, all these things don’t just test your will but they test the learning of who you really are.