No matter what you’ve been through, you can turn it to your advantage. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to overcome and emerge stronger.
We've all been through challenging situations that, at the time felt unbearable but with hindsight turned out to be hidden blessings. Time and hindsight are great healers but what if I told you, you can access the benefits of hindsight right away?
Of course there is a time and place to just feel the feelings - the anger, hurt, resentment - they all serve a purpose. And we can even harness those feelings for the process of turning shit to gold.
One afternoon in September 2012, I lay crying on my bathroom floor. I'd left osteopathy school a month before, broken - grieving my dead sister, recovering from a breakup, resenting osteopathy but clueless about what to do instead, and having to put myself back together from an illness that shattered who I thought I was.
I had no idea what to do or how to help myself, and frankly, not wanting to do the hard work to rebuild myself. So I went to sleep and secretly wished not wake up.
Osteopathy school had been a convenient yet traumatic plaster (more on that in another post) to cover the wounds of grief, breakup and illness. So when I left, there I finally had to face it all and I was a mess.
For months I wallowed in blissful misery until financial pressure gave me a handy kick up the arse so I got myself a yoga qualification and started teaching people to move.
For the first couple of years I wasn't busy, which made me anxious but also gave me much needed time to reflect, dig deep, do a shit load of personal development and get my ducks in a row. Through that, I came to see the higher order of all those challenges, why I needed them and how they shaped me.
I started by dissolving the grief - in one 4 hour session. BAM! It just disappeared.
That gave me space to realise that the relationship I'd once revered had been keeping me dependent, believing I was incompetent and holding me back from standing on my own two feet.
Resenting and not feeling confident in osteopathy pushed me towards teaching yoga - frustrations from which led me to free myself to create FlowMotion.
My illness ironically led me to experience more loving relationships than ever before - despite having believed it was an impossibility.
These were all huge blessings in disguise and now I can see the hidden order in everything that happened I’m grateful for them. I wouldn't change a thing.
And this is what turning shit to gold is all about - seeing that every "bad" situation, no matter how awful it seems at the time, brings blessings, silver linings, valuable lessons and benefit of some obscure kind. It can seem impossible at first (I had total disbelief that there could be any blessings from my illness and vehemently resisted shifting my perspective because it was more familiar, comfortable and gratifying to perceive myself as a victim).
The shift in perspective is what sets us free and is essential if we want to move on, heal, and let go of the shit that's weighing us down. But when we see the challenges for the opportunities they are, suddenly a whole new world of possibility opens up to us.
That's not to say it's easy - it isn't. It's a mental muscle that requires regular training and practice. Mastering a handstand doesn't happen immediately, (and neither should it - where would the fun be in that?!) and neither does building the mental muscle to balance perceptions and find the blessings.
Plus, some situations are complex, multifactorial and require peeling back layers before we get to the core of the issue. But that's the fun part of the process - we can learn so much about ourselves along the way and the many "aha" moments make it so worth it.
So whatever you’ve been through, or are going through, there’s a time to bitch about it and there’s a time to pick yourself up and start turning that shit to gold.
There's a podcast episode you can listen to about this HERE.
And remember that it’s all on the way to something wonderful...
If you want help extracting the blessings from your situation, get in touch and book in.