What are your challenges bringing you?

Challenges often bring us down but today I want to offer you a new way of looking at them.  What if every challenge in your life came with a gift?  A gift because they encourage you to ask new questions, to really explore and get insights that otherwise may have been left undiscovered. With this in mind, I am going to try to fully accept and even welcome my challenge (of not being able to fall asleep quickly) so I can shift from frustration to curiosity and start to uncover its meaning or purpose in my life.

To explore the gift in my challenge I am going to start by asking what my challenge is giving me permission to do as well as not to do?
It is giving me permission to:

• Do my daily meditations.  I am often reminded and make sure I find time for them when I feel fatigued.
• Do extra meditations. Sometimes I sneak in an extra meditation when I feel I did not sleep enough. I would not normally ‘treat’ myself to an extra meditation unless I felt I could somehow justify it. 
• Sleep in.  Sometimes I will sleep in a little later if I feel I have not slept enough (again ‘treating’ myself to a few extra minutes of sleep).
• Be lazy! I might watch TV because I don’t feel up for doing something more productive.

Permission not to do:

• Not be as proactive and productive as I could be. I have to admit that I would probably be more productive in my business if I had an extra hour of sleep per night.
• Put off projects.  In the same vein, I tend to put off doing projects at home if I am feeling tired.

So I invite you to fully accept and start to be curious as to what gift your challenge may be bringing you.  Permission to work less? To put your needs first? Permission to not attend or not get involved in certain activities? Next time we will explore the notion of giving ourselves permission to do some of the things we listed.

Sometimes our struggles give us temporary permission to do things (like take time off work, or not see certain people) and this can be very helpful but if you continue to benefit in some way, a subconscious part of you will want to hold to the challenge and that is one reason that patterns start to develop in our lives, because they actually serve us in some way.  For those of you starting my small group coaching on Tuesday we will be taking an even deeper dive and will learn another somewhat shocking truth about challenges and why they appear in our lives. 
Enjoy exploring!
Jackie
 
PS: Monday Jan.19th. is your last chance to sign up for my small group coaching sessions.