Have you learned these five powerful life lessons?

I’m offering a free call about the important five life lessons girls can learn from friendship drama (it’s going to be SO GOOD, check it out and sign up!) but it also got me thinking, you can learn these life lessons from work stress, parenting, or any kind of relationship challenge.

Five Life Lessons

Take a look at these five life lessons and see if you have mastered them yet. You’ll know you are still learning if life keeps slapping you upside the head with the same lessons over and over again. 

People get to do whatever they want.

This life lesson drives us all bonkers because life would be so much easier if people would just do what we tell them to do!  But as we all learned, you can’t make a baby sleep, eat or poop, if they don’t want to. You also can’t make people like you, be nice to you and you can’t make your husband remember Valentine’s Day. Neither can you make bosses treat you fairly. You can’t make your husbands pick up his socks or take out the trash. Nor even get kids to do their homework, if they don’t want to.  Just like the book, “He’s just not that into you”, realizing “People get to do whatever they want” will set you free. It helps you stay in your power, and take control of the things you actually have control over. If you get frustrated with how other people are behaving, then life is still trying to teach you this lesson.

The only constant is change.

One thing we do that helps us feel safe in the world is we categorize things into two categories: black & white, good & bad, mean & nice. The problem is, life isn’t black and white. There aren’t “mean girls” and “nice girls”, we are all just girls, sometimes we say mean things, sometimes we say nice things. Believing we are only one or the other, sets us up for perfectionism and self-hatred. People are always evolving. Your best friend today might change her mind tomorrow. Your boss thinks you are great today, so she gives you more work tomorrow. You are feeling good financially so you move to a nicer neighborhood, now you feel poor. Black & white thinking gives us the ILLUSION of safety, but an easier way to go through life is to remember we are constantly evolving and to focus on how we want to grow.

Feel your feelings.

If you are fully engaged with life, you are going to experience negative emotion. We don’t get to pick and choose some feelings and not others. To be fully human and feel fully alive, we need access to our full range of emotions. When friendship drama happens, or any challenge in life, it’s a great opportunity to learn how to feel a feeling all the way through. Where in your body does that feeling show up? What color is it? Does it have a texture? Does it appear to be solid, liquid or gas? Getting really familiar with your emotions creates a long-lasting and trusting relationship with yourself. You aren’t dependent on other people to act a certain way because you know, the worst thing that can ever happen to you is a negative emotion and you’ve got it down. Once you realize you can feel any feeling that comes your way, you have nothing to be afraid of.

You get to decide what you make it mean. 

Your friend doesn’t want to be your friend anymore. You get fired from your job. Your teen has depression. Your husband forgets your anniversary. Bad things happen but you get to decide what you make them mean. You can decide to make it mean “I’m a loser.” “I’m a failure” “Nothing ever goes my way” “My husband doesn’t love me.” but those thoughts don’t feel good. You get to choose the thoughts that feel good to you. “My husband doesn’t care about celebrating anniversaries” might feel freeing. I give my husband permission to forget our anniversary” might feel empowering. Many people experience something negative and without even realizing it, they pick up beliefs about themselves that aren’t true “I’m unlovable” “I’m not worthy” Stopping the negative self-talk is the most important step to living an honest, fulfilling life where you know your power and trust yourself.

What do I want?

Every life challenge or experience is giving another clue about who we are meant to be. Our job here on Earth (as I see it) isn’t to follow all the rules and live a perfect life, it’s to figure out who we are meant to be, and be that person! To use the natural gifts we were given, to help make the world a better place. When someone betrays your trust, your job is to use that experience to add to your list of “This is what I want” and “This is what I DON’T want.” That’s it! No drama necessary. You hate your job? (or lack of a job?)  Be specific and add a few items to your list. Do you want more autonomy around your time? Perhaps you are thinking, “I want co-workers who get my sense of humor”. Or “I don’t want to sit at a computer all day”. “I don’t want to work weekends.” The older we get, the more we get to know ourselves. As our list becomes more refined and specific, our life becomes more finely tuned to who we really are and what we really love to do. Do you have a passion for empowering girls?