Lessons from Life's Trials and Tribulations
Our most valuable lessons are revealed by our most challenging moments.
“What rings true is that everything we grow through in life will work out for our good.”
― Tyler Perry
Chances are you've experienced a few challenging moments (or maybe weeks, months, or years) in your life. Times you were tested, challenged, put through the proverbial ringer. Times you wondered why it was all happening and what it all meant. Times you emerged battered and bruised, and stronger in ways you neither recognized nor understood at the time.
Those were the most pivotal moments of your life...
In those moments we don’t just learn lessons, we earn lessons. Lessons baked into our bones. Lessons that become part of who we are and define the way we navigate the world from that day forward. Lessons that at times drive us forward and at other times hold us back.
And it goes deeper than that…
We didn’t experience our most difficult moments and walk away with clarity regarding the lessons we earned from the experience. For many of us, it took years to even think about what happened that shook us to our core, let alone unlock the lessons we earned.
And that is why we are driven to understand.
I get it. I lived in that place for many, many years. Hiding my most difficult moments in sealed jars on a shelf behind a door I never opened (and pretended didn’t even exist). Struggling occasionally to make sense of what happened, then convincing myself it was better to leave it in the jars alone.
Until it wasn’t…
After multiple brief searches across more than three decades for the meaning within my most challenging moments, I realized the message I most wanted to share was inside those jars. Yes, we all have multiple jars of varying sizes from the most challenging moments we have experienced. It is our way of protecting and defending ourselves as we seek respite.
What I have come to realize is I was actually locked inside the jar with the all the feelings and emotions that impacted me in that moment. The memory and meaning associated with that moment were frozen in my mind, viewed through the lens of who I was when it occurred. That version of me was unable to process what occurred, let alone identify or acknowledge any gain that came from it.
Then one day it all changed…
I realized what was keeping me trapped, feeding the voices telling me I wasn’t good enough, and holding me back from living the life I was intended to live was the stuff only those jars could reveal.
It became obvious to me if I didn’t figure that out, my purpose would never be fulfilled. I would continue to struggle because I was hiding my reality from myself (and everyone else) and seeing everything through the eyes of someone (aka a younger me) who could not possibly make sense of it.
So I opened the door and freed my jars, allowing the younger versions of me to emerge and read the labels. They were what I could not see from the inside, and written on them was the path to unlocking the lessons earned from my trials and tribulations.
The lessons had been there all along, but I couldn’t see them. They had shaped and molded me into who I was, and were responsible for a lot of great things that had happened in my life and my career. Things I am convinced would not have happened in the way they did had I not used the earned lessons I had never acknowledged.
That led me to start sharing my backstory and something very interesting started to happen. People who needed to hear my story began crossing my path in the most unexpected places. Often they would share something with me that let me know they too had jars where they had locked away the trials and tribulations of their lives.
To my surprise this sharing would often occur without me saying a word. It started to feel like I was meeting them for a reason. Something I had long believed (aka there are no coincidences), but never experienced the way I do today.
Those experiences convinced me I needed to go further and do more, that I had been called to share the lessons earned from my most challenging moments to help others unlock their earned lessons from their life’s journey.
That’s why I have chosen to dedicate the fourth quarter of my life to doing just that. To living in alignment with my passion and purpose. To share the lessons earned during my most challenging moments in service to others in the hope I can inspire them to do the work to unlock their earned lessons.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to join me to do the work to unlock the lessons you have earned from your life’s trials and tribulations so you can experience the joy that comes from living your life with passion and purpose.
P.S. Thank you for reading this post. In the weeks and months ahead I’ll be sharing more as I create the foundation content for the book I am writing. If you’d like to follow the process, please subscribe so you will receive new posts.