Unexpected Teachers

Why do we cross paths with certain people in our lives?

It is sometimes mind boggling to me just how many people I have crossed paths with in my life and how they have had an impact on my life and also how I may have had an impact on theirs.

I have had (and still have) people in my life who always look out for me and who are always there at just the right time! I may not have been there for them in the same way, which sometimes makes me feel guilty and somewhat selfish. Then again, I have been there for other people and may have been there for them at just the right time.

There are people who have been in my life for so long that I would not want to imagine life without them and then there are people I have known for just as long or even longer where the relationship has just naturally disappeared.

Then there are times when we come into contact with people who present us with challenges (sometimes unreasonable challenges) or who seem to make our life a misery whenever we come in contact with them. I have crossed paths with my fair share and on reflection I often handled these situations very badly, usually with negative emotions like anger and frustration. I still go into that automatic way of reacting some times.

Then I started thinking; “what if, for some reason, I attracted these people and behaviours into my life ?” and my initial reaction to that was, “why on earth would I want to attract these people into my life?”

I obviously don’t sit at home at night consciously thinking about attracting challenging people and situations into my life!! I’d like to think I have some degree of sanity left! But, what if these people are sent to teach us something? (I mean me of course!)

Is it possible, that if we go through a spell of being continually exposed to people we generally consider inconsiderate, arrogant, rude, demanding etc, it could just be another opportunity to learn a lesson we may have missed the first few times?

If I take my “need for approval” as an example. I still go through spells of needing approval from external sources to feel good about myself, which means I haven’t fully mastered this lesson yet. I am, however, much more aware of it than when I first wrote about it 18 months ago. Still, I am crossing paths with people where this resurfaces. At the moment it is predominantly in the work arena, which  I think is because unless I do a certain number of sales each week I am made to feel “not good enough” or the phrase that they prefer to use is: “This is not where you want to be!” so when I have weeks of doing well I have this urge to phone my boss and tell her, which gives me nothing more than a “well done”! When I step outside of that circle I don’t even care about the “well done” because it really means nothing.

All I want is to be allowed to do my job and do what is best for my clients whether that leads to a sale or not!

At this point this post nearly turned into another long rant about work but I will save that for my journal.

I do know that no one can make me feel as if I am not good enough unless I let them or unless I feel that I am not good enough.

Maybe this is just one of those lessons that will take some more practice for me to learn and when I have truly mastered it, I will no longer come in contact with these kind of people.

Perhaps the lesson within the lesson is for me to remember that when I do come in contact with difficult people it is just another lesson for me to learn!

Luckily I meet more happy, loving, caring and inspiring people, who I learn so much more from than the difficult ones.

I don’t have a huge circle of friends but the ones I have are priceless and I am forever grateful to have crossed paths with them and to have them in my life.

I have the most wonderful family who I love dearly.

And then there are all of you wonderful people I have met and connected with through blogging.

I am struggling to find the words to express my love and gratitude for the sincerity and kindness I have experienced since I started writing here.

You have inspired me at just the right time.

You have picked me up when I felt down.

You have made me laugh and made me cry.

Whenever I visit your blogs, I feel so at home.

When you visit here, I feel blessed.

I have learned so much from all of you and I feel so privileged to have crossed paths with all of you.

Thank You

Being in Love

How did I manage to fall for you so deeply?

Knowing that it will never become a reality.

When I first told you how I felt you made it clear that it wouldn’t happen and yet the feeling is here stronger than ever.

Spending all day with you yesterday was the most beautiful gift and while I am reduced to loving you from a distance I cherish every moment I have with you. I am grateful we have remained close friends and that there hasn’t been any awkwardness between us. I know you want to try and work out your relationship with him and I sincerely hope it does work out. I will still be your friend and hopefully one day the feelings for you will diminish to the point where I will allow others in. Until then, nobody else stands a chance!

Being in love with you has at times given me the most wonderful feelings of joy and happiness and at other times (like now) it hurts. Do I hold on to the hope that maybe one day we will be together or do I try to find a way of letting go and accepting that maybe we are only meant to be friends?

I know that you feel something for me too but I also understand why you want to work out your relationship. It would be very selfish of me to assume that you would be ready for a new relationship at this point anyway, and I really do not want to be a confusion in your life.

However, I don’t know how to stop the feelings I have for you and I sometimes wonder if I am destined to spend the rest of my life alone. I know I sound like I am coming from a point of self pity here and I guess that right now there is an element of that.

I have been in love before and eventually the feelings disappeared. With you it seems to go the other way. Is there a reason or a lesson for me here??

Maybe one day I will know the answer!

You Can Heal Your Life

Every now and again a little ray of sunshine comes your way when you least expect it.

This particular ray of sunshine came my way in the form of a gift from my dear brother.

As with any new book, one has sense of excitement of what little gems this new adventure may hold. At the same time you hear the little voice in the back of your head saying; “Are you going to follow through this time?”

Having read the first few pages I felt a sense of warmth all around me as if there was love actually flowing right out of the book itself. (I realise I have lost most of you at this point, but bear with me!)

If you are at the point of despair and struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel, please give yourself this gift of love.

This is the most heart warming book ever written and I can guarantee that regardless of the challenges you are facing, the light at the end of the tunnel will suddenly appear before you.

Louise offers you the most simple and straight forward instructions and creates a journey for you that is filled with love, magic and joy.

Let despair, fear and worry be a thing of the past and feel this ray of sunshine in your own life.

The Need For Approval

The biggest discovery I have made so far about who I am and what have controlled my life up until now has been the fact that for some reason I have had a desperate need for approval from others!

My parents, bosses, friends, strangers, clients, colleagues! No matter who, I would find a way of getting their approval even if it meant going against what I believed in!
Going hand in hand with that was my need to avoid conflict at all cost even if the cost of that would be sacrificing my own beliefs!
I would happily find a way to agree with anybody regardless of their argument just to keep the peace.

From a positive point of view, this behaviour did teach me to find the good points in any argument, but ultimately it lead to a lot of pain in terms of losing my own identity and my self esteem and as a result I completely lost touch with who I was, what I liked in life and saw myself as nothing more than just being on this earth to serve others no matter what!

I am not after sympathy here, but my guess is that I am not the first person who has felt like this and I am pretty confident I won’t be the last and if, when you read this, you can associate with that feeling then I am here to tell you that there is a way out of this way of feeling.
I am not completely there yet but I can see light at the end of the tunnel!

I would love to give you a step by step guide to how I came to this realization, however, it has taken me quite a long time to get to this point and has involved a huge amount of reading and learning and asking myself a lot of questions. I will try my very best to explain how it happened for me and I hope that in doing so you may get an idea or think of questions to ask yourself.

Now in order for me to do this I will have to explain a little about myself and my family.
I have a younger brother, who is the kind of guy who always happens to be in the right place at the right time, who, from an outside point of view, seems to have nothing but luck coming his way and, who, in addition to that have the good looks to go with it.
Now, I am not coming from a place of envy here (well not anymore!!!!) but I did start to question the fact that if we come from the same family and seemingly had the same loving upbringing then why did we turn out so different? Why did he seem to turn everything he touched to gold with hardly any effort and I had to work VERY hard for the same results or less?? I kept asking myself those questions and I also started to ask my parents about our upbringing and whether they had treated us differently in any way, which of course they denied, and only now do I realize that this may have been a fairly insensitive question to ask in the first place. I also tried to ask my brother similar questions because I wanted to find out how he managed to always get what he wanted and what went on in his head but of course he couldn’t give me a concrete answer.

All this is going on while I am learning about affirmations, the law of attraction, setting goals, visualising and the rest of it, a long time before “The Secret” surfaced.
As far as my brother is concerned I came to the conclusion that for him it happens subconsciously, which on one hand left me happy for him and on the other left me none the wiser as to why I didn’t have that automatic skill and how to develop it.

It came to a point where I hit rock bottom (Again – no sympathy please) and could not face the outside world let alone work and had to phone in sick, which in itself was extremely difficult because as soon as I had done so the guilt came flooding in.
For about 2 hours that morning I just sat still staring into thin air with thoughts flying around in my head not knowing what to do, not knowing how to get my life back together, already dreading the next day and this was at 8 in the morning.

I don’t mean to sound magical in any way but after those 2 hours of just staring into thin air something happened; I just grabbed a pen and an A4 notebook and started writing, and I wrote solidly for nearly 3 hours. (If you have read the Writing a Journal entry this is where my journal started.) It was like I was having a conversation with another part of myself and the answer I was looking for just came to me: I am 3 years older than my brother and for the first 3 years of my life I had the full attention of my parents; I was the most important person in their lives, I had 100% approval at all times no matter what I did.
Then My brother is born and all of a sudden I have to share all the attention and have to work for the approval, whereas he didn’t know any different.

I am aware that this sounds like text book psychology but this was the turning point in my life in the sense that for the first time I gained complete clarity on how I developed some of my behavioural patterns and it has helped me, not only become aware of them but more importantly find a way of changing them.

This happened 6 months ago and I still find myself slipping into the “trying to please” pattern now and again and my point is that a life long habit takes time to change but it WILL change as long as you are aware of when it occurs. Learn how to break it and most importantly persevere and never give up! The only approval you need is from YOU!

Once I have mastered that bit I will be back to let you know how.

Until then, feel free to email me with stories or questions or post a comment.