All alone. Things didn’t turn out the way I thought. Was it me? Was it them? Why didn’t I see it coming? Was the situation that bad? What do I do now?
Most everything in life happens over time. We spend at least 12 years in school. For some, it could be 16-20 years in school. Building a career happens over a lifetime. Raising a family could take 20-30 years depending on the number of children you have. Losing 10 pounds never happens in a day.
Good things, that last, rarely appear in an instant. Bad things also took time to build. Even though they may seemingly appear suddenly.
Think about our journey through life. So certain in what we want to do and what we believe many times without validation. Too lazy to keep testing, learning, and adjusting along the way. Too busy to notice who we are and how we influence and interact with the world around us.
The stories, both good and bad, never revolve around only us. Yes, many times, lots of other things contribute to where we find ourselves today. We have a hard time distinguishing what “they” did to contribute to our current circumstances and what we did to put ourselves in a situation. Sadly, most times we contribute much more to the mess we find ourselves in. Without us ever realizing it.
Silence and loneliness fill the walls around us when saying here I am. No stage, no audience. Only our thoughts and emotions for us to see. The strength of our solitude hits us boldly trying to get us to see that it never is always about others but squeezes us to look more closely at who we are and what we did to contribute. Full of frustration & remorse we struggle to figure out what we could do differently the next time.
Tomorrow is always uncertain. The good thing is that we are the ones that we know the most about (as well as the least). Developing our ability to reflect in order to improve can become our superpower if we commit to developing it through practice.
Giving us a path toward impactful personal change that begins first with ourselves based on developing a habit of honest self-assessment. While understanding that life demands time for any significant outcomes to be seen.