The ol hamster wheel of disappointment, that keeps spinning and looping. Why do we stay on this wheel. A disappointment hits, and the broken record of all past disappointments start chiming in. They fill up our hearts and heads, spilling out, blurring the lines of why we were disappointed in the first place, soon we go bobbing on down the rivers of self-pity. Diving off the ‘cliffs of insanity’, plunging down into ‘the pit of despair’. (Ahem, cheeky Princess Bridge reference :D)
Can you relate? This month I had my driving test. Oh!, praise the lords of driving, the day was arriving thick and fast. I had put so much effort into practicing, forcing myself out into the car, sweating, shouting, flustering and enduring the general feeling of tenseness. I was ready for this day to arrive, so I could get to the next level. Disaster! I managed to overlook the physical car being ready. It was not. I wasn’t even allowed to sit the test. Que teenage style melt down, pan out to a shot of me in an open field, falling to my knees, arms thrown up to the heavens, shouting, WHY ME????!!!
What did my head automatically do? of course it just hop, skipped and jumped right onto that hamster wheel, and off I flew around in circles, reliving all previous failures, and not just driving failures! FFS! Eventually, I managed to slap myself into shape, and tell myself to build a bridge, and GET OVER IT! Ssssssseeeeeeesssh! That wheel is exhausting. It makes you feel bad right down to the core, it really is a self-inflicted pain, like picking a scab and reopening a wound. So silly! Albeit sometimes our lessons can be far bigger and harder to take, but we cannot keep reliving each one, on loop, this is for certain.
It was a major learning curve for me, it took some time to extract my positives, I was very angry! Now I can look back and just say; well that was ridiculous. I have improved my driving and my confidence in the car. I still have work to do, I must keep going with the practice and not drop the ball. Consistency is key, and not letting small blips in the road permanently stall momentum forward. The last time I took my test, I failed, I allowed that experience to stop me getting back into a car for over 2 years. Not this time!
We have the power to stop our heads going down this path. In my previous post Old Habits Die Hard I’ve talked about the recognition of a pattern of thought, and this is what enables us to pull ourselves out of a cycle. It’s not healthy to default to this feeling every time something doesn’t work out or doesn’t go according to plan.
What disappointments have you faced, in your past, that have held you back from moving forward, or continue to hold you back? We have got to learn to get off this wheel and put our feet back on terra forma, get busy picking our Ego’s back up and going for this life we have. If we can’t get off the wheel, soon our outlook on our lives, and who we are will get stuck and not change for the better. Each time we try to stop the wheel spinning, and work at pulling ourselves back, we get stronger and quicker at doing so, we become more resilient and ready to take on our lives from a more positive perspective.
Shine your bright light, dust off those disappointments, stop carrying them around with you. Big shoulder rolls and shrug that shit right off. Disappointments suck, but they don’t need to follow us around for the rest of our lives. Be open to learn from them, grow and take those lessons on the chin. Tomorrow is another new day ready for the taking. Dust yourself off, don a smile and sail into that new day. ‘It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, and I’m feeling good’.
A journey of self help and love 