Living Through Your Challenges
The Importance of Recognising Our Stories
Challenges are messy, let’s be honest they aren’t fun, but truth be told all of us go through them. I don’t know of anyone that hasn’t had one that has shaped who they are today. However, they create a ripple effect in how we show up in the world. If you’ve had childhood trauma of any description you will have stories that influence how you react and respond when placed in certain situations. This can be from money stories to worth issues and beyond, I can almost guarantee that if I spoke with you for a short period of time I could pick up on some of your trauma stories.
I don’t want to get stuck in the story themselves, but it is important to acknowledge that they exist otherwise you are bypassing some pivotal aspects of how you can live through them. If we ignore or pretend the stories don’t exist, then we are often left wondering why things are the way they are. You might still ponder the thought occasionally why am I reacting this way in a particular situation. If you’re open to exploring it this is where we get a lot of our wisdom from, when we redefine our triggers, we have the chance to discover the wisdom they have to provide for us. When we don’t see our triggers as bad or wrong but as insights to be gained it free’s us up to be able to move forward. It often results in less reactivity next time we are placed in a similar situation.
Strategies To Move Through Your Challenges
“Finding wisdom in your challenges is part of the process to getting through them.”
Sarah Yeoman
Image: Brett Jordan Unsplash
The next time you find yourself reacting in a situation that surprises you, take the time to notices what was said that upset you.
After you have recognised that you have reacted in a way that you didn’t expect consider when else have you had this reaction.
If you can recognise a specific event or person that make you react in similar way, consider how it made you feel and why. This is where you start to find the gold. If you can start to recognise a pattern it helps to find what is driving it.
Some common themes that may come up are:
Having your worth questioned such as a money story around “I am not worthy of spending money on myself”, this can come from a time you heard your parents say “We can’t afford that” and you turned that into “I’m not worth spending money on” and so the story and influence began a long time before you even realise that you have created this story. Please remember that many of us have similar stories and you are not alone in having to navigate childhood experiences that influence who you are as an adult.
Another example might be:
People pleasing, this if often also taught in childhood and reinforced along the way. Women in particular are often taught to keep the peace and therefore say yes when we want to say no. We then often feel resentful when we have committed to something that we don’t really want to do. May be a parent praised you for being the “good girl” and you have just kept that habit going because you were made to feel guilty when you said no. Now you’re in your midlife transition and starting to say no but you don’t understand why you feel so guilty and people are shocked when they hear you say no for the first time. This makes you feel uncomfortable, so you resort back to saying yes to avoid that guilty feeling. Then you start saying things like “when is it going to be my time”, but the truth is that you have to create your time and that might mean learning to move through the emotional wave of guilt when you say no. Most often after you have said it a few time and you’ve got over disappointing others you realise that you feel less resentful and more at peace because finally your needs are being met. Over time people will adapt to you saying no and it will reset a healthier dynamic in your relationships.
Once you have recognised your patterns and habits that have been created through conditioning you can then start to reset your relationship to yourself and others. You will most likely have to move through an emotional wave of discomfort until you adapt to putting yourself first. Please remember that this doesn’t make you selfish, the least selfish thing you can do is make sure that you are being looked after as this takes pressure off others to do it for you. This is true for others; there will most likely be a dynamic shift in your relationships when you take ownership of your responses and take your power back from letting other control how you respond.
During this phase you are going to need to learn to navigate your nervous system responses. Some strategies to help are deep belly breathing - 10 deep belly breaths are enough to reset your nervous system back in rest and relaxation from your fight and flight response. Aromatherapy is another strategy, there are a lot of premade mixes to help with soothing and calming yourself. Listening to music has been shown to help calm the nervous system down in particular classical music, but whatever works for you (for me it is usually solfeggio frequencies).
A Word About Long Term Challenges
Now I do want to acknowledge that some challenges last longer than a short reaction as a response to another person. The world is filled with keeping us under stress and hypervigilant to what is going on around us. Most of these challenges take a slightly different approach, however some of the above strategies work in these situations as well. Long term illnesses, family issues and work-related problems tend to sit in the longer-term challenge side of things.
Again, at its core is learning to look after yourself first and invest in strategies that keeps you centred and out of the hypervigilant state. Meditation, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) are some great options in the moment and when you find yourself getting wound up with what you can’t control.
Other options include having support that is outside work and family to help manage your challenges. Why outside the family? well, they aren’t involved in the situation and are more likely to be objective when discussing those personal things that upset you and you are more likely to be able to speak openly and vulnerably which helps the healing process.
My Personal Journey With My Challenges
I know personally I have struggled with the transition to the online space and continue to navigate my way through it. Along the way I have gained insights around stories I have told myself about how it should look and be done. The lesson for me has been learning to let go of expectations and that I can create an online business that fits my needs and doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. It has been a challenging couple of years to get myself to this place, a lot of experimenting and still not quite finding the right fit. I keep trying though and am getting closer to something that I enjoy doing, sometimes the strategy is to keep trying something different until you find a level of peace that feels good to you. Part of this journey has been recognising my stories and how they keep me stuck in patterns that haven’t been healthy.
Human Design and astrology have helped immensely to help navigate this space. They have allowed me to understand myself better and with greater depth. I haven’t used them to define myself but as a doorway to recognition of ways of behaviour. I have the gate 51 which is the gate of shock, which helped me understand that these challenges are a part of how I navigate life. I need to be shocked to create shifts and changes, and I can see how that has played out throughout my life and learning that I am also here to do that for others. Some early shocks were shifting out of teaching into massage and later shifting into the online space after not being able to work in 2020 and 2021 and the passing of my father in 2021. Being shocked has helped me realise where what I am investing my energy into is not in alignment. I wrote another blog about tower moments and how they are designed to realign us onto a different path and that without them we often remain stuck in patterns that aren’t helping us.
Another aspect of my human design is that I am a 1/3 sacral manifesting generator, and this means that I am here to experiment to find my way forward and other aspects of my chart definitely highlight that I am not designed to do this without challenges.
Don’t Let The Challenge Stop You From Continuing To Try To Find What Works For You.
Challenges will always be present, but it is how we manage them that either results in the potential for peace and insights to be gained or leaving us in a place of frustration and annoyance. You have the power to make the shift and finding a way that feels in alignment to you is possible.
It might not be human design that helps you but someone who can see your patterns and helps you navigate a way forward that brings you more peace and joy. I encourage you to continue to find what works for you and not feel pressured to follow someone else’s way, they can provide insight, but it is ultimately up to you to determine what works for you. That will often come with some level of trial and error and is rarely found on the first try, so please don’t let that discourage you from keeping going. I believe the effort will be worth it.