Dealing with the rough patches

You’ve been doing your spiritual work; affirmations, visualization, meditations, and life is going pretty well. All of a sudden, something you perceive as negative pops up in your life and you are completely blown away! How did this happen? Negative experiences aren’t supposed to happen to someone surrounding themselves with positive energy, right?

There was a time when that’s exactly how I thought. When I first began to shift the way in which I lived my life and viewed the world, I was constantly caught off guard by the challenges I faced. I would question all of the work that I had been doing; certain none of it was working if “bad” things were still happening in my life!

I realize now that this kind of thinking was the ego’s way of sabotaging the progress that I was making. It is a bit silly to thing that “bad” things should happen to good people. Did I really think the world was created to punish the “bad” and reward the “good”? Who determines what is good and what is bad anyway?

Some might say that God is the one who determines what is right and what is wrong. With so much divisiveness in the world with respect to religion, the next question quickly becomes whose God? Is it the God of Judaism? Christianity? Islam? I once hear it said that there is no right or wrong, there is simply what is, and what is not. The first time I heard it, I was immediately struck by the truth of it. What in interesting way to shift your perception of the world! Instead of coming from a place of judgment, look at the world in terms of what is and what isn’t!

After listening to many inspirational speakers and reading a lot of books, I have learned how to look at life’s challenges from a different perspective. Instead of allowing a negative experience to shift my vibration, making myself angry or depressed, I am learning to accept that the experience has happened and figure out how to move on from it. There is no point in getting angry, or crying myself to sleep over things that cannot be undone. If there is a lesson to be learned, I want to be open to that lesson so I don’t have to go through that experience, or another one like it again. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have emotional reactions anymore, but I refuse to permit negative experiences to consume me or my life for extended periods of time like I used to!

I have had to find meaningful and effective ways to shift my mood from negative to positive when those challenging experiences come my way. Sometimes I like to take a walk with my dog to clear my head. Another way I try to shift my energy is by listening to fun, happy music. I have playlists on my iPod that can lift my spirits halfway into the first song! What I find to be really therapeutic is writing. Putting my thoughts down on paper allows me to review my experiences and consider the lessons that I have learned.

There are many different ways to shift one’s energy. Whether it is playing with your kids, exercising, or simply reading a book, we all need to find “go-to” strategies that we can turn to when life presents us with obstacles. How do you turn your lemons into lemonade?