Truth Bomb Tuesday: This sounds good on paper, but it’s a bit dangerous.
“Don’t ask why this is happening TO you. Ask why it is happening FOR you.”
Someone dropped that little mantra on me the other day. It stirred up a few things in me and I had to sit with it for a bit to figure out what I really made of it.
In the end, I’m very conflicted.
On one hand, I love it.
I think it’s a great practice – a great discipline – to refuse to see yourself as a victim.
As soon as you adopt the posture of a victim, you give away all your power. That’s practically the definition of ‘victim’ – it’s someone who stuff happens to.
And so if you refuse to see yourself as a victim, that’s a good thing. If you then pull a bit of psycho-spiritual ju juitsu on it, and flip it on it’s head and ask yourself, “what do I stand to gain out of this?” that’s awesome too.
It’s always good to meet the world as an opportunity hunter – and to see the world as a place that is endlessly throwing up opportunities for you to grow and be a more awesome version of yourself.
And it’s great to check in with yourself, and find the lessons and growth in setbacks and challenges.
This is a great practice to have.
BUT…
But I do think we need to be careful about constructing the universe as some sort of psychic guru who only cares about our growth and development, and will orchestrated the entire flow of time and matter around helping us become a better property developer.
I find this very unlikely.
I don’t think this is how it works.
I think the spiritual laws are probably a lot like physical laws in flavour. Atoms don’t follow gravity because gravity has a special place in its heart for atoms. It’s just how it works.
And I think we will often live in patterns that reflect our deeper beliefs and attitudes. If you believe that people are horrible and always out to screw you over, then there’s a good chance you will attract those people into your life.
If you drop an envelope containing $1,000 on the way out of the bank, it’s much more likely that it’s because you have a belief that you’re not worthy of money than it is because the universe has some particular lesson in mind for you.
That said, sometimes life will give us lessons. When we shift our beliefs about ourselves, some parts of our life will become incompatible. That can potentially throw up some challenges – some hard lessons might have to be learnt.
I’ve seen that happen.
So look, yes. Meet adversity with an opportunity mindset. That’s awesome.
But don’t imagine the ‘universe’ cares a dot about teaching you a lesson. That’s just not the universes job.
That’s your job.
Don’t give away your power.
DB.