Finding The Good In Challenging Times

Life is 50-50, always. There is no good without bad. Even in the most challenging times and years, when we go within, we can find the gifts, lessons, and the positive. Reflecting back on 2020, I share some insights I hope may help you find hope.

Transcript

Finding the positive in challenging times.

Life is 50-50.

Always.

There is no good without some bad,

And no happy without some sad.

The key is to know how to pivot and find the lesson and the silver lining in every challenge.

I'm Jackie Aumer and I'm honored to spend this time sharing with you.

I'm not sure when it is that you're hearing this or what is going on in the world,

In your life,

Or in your experience.

It's my knowing,

However,

That you're here for a reason.

There are no coincidences.

Relax,

Listen,

And see what lessons you might glean from it.

We experienced a year quite like no other in 2020,

And it's been a thing,

Hasn't it?

And not just one thing,

But many,

Many things.

The pandemic.

Social injustices.

Gripping fear.

Loss.

And seemingly,

Life as we know it changed,

Literally,

Overnight.

In a flash.

Plenty of good,

Bad,

And ugly.

And while most of us were ready for the clock to strike midnight on 12-31-20,

We know that instant change doesn't really happen like that.

How do we reframe our experiences,

Our thoughts,

Our feelings?

How do we look back,

Look forward,

And how do we seek to find the good,

The positive?

Each person will take his or her own path to do this.

What I'd like to do is share what I've come away with so far,

And my hope is that you might also pause,

Reflect,

And if you've not already done so,

Seek to find the good,

The lessons,

The growth,

And the positive in any negative experience,

And certainly from the last year.

Choosing to find meaningful gifts in the great pause.

I'd like to say I've resolved to feel the happy side of things in each moment,

But alas,

It remains ever evolving.

As with anything,

And I've stated,

There is 50-50 in all of life.

Almost every day.

We can wake up feeling fabulous,

And then quickly,

That can be disrupted,

And we feel frustrated,

Anxiety,

Upset over something.

Then life settles down again,

And all is groovy.

Like so many others,

The great pause caused me to stop,

Reflect,

Re-evaluate,

Re-prioritize,

Take stock,

And take notice.

As the year came to a close,

I found myself becoming very intentional about planning,

Goal setting,

And being intentional for the year ahead.

Now we can do this at any time of life.

It doesn't have to be the close of a year,

Or after a rough patch in life.

And as I reflected on what I've gained from my experiences over that year and those events,

I reminded myself that with every loss there is also gain,

Growth,

A lesson,

Or many lessons.

Not to be cliché,

But every day life gives us lemons.

Big,

Rich,

Bountiful lemons.

Sometimes the juiciness of the lemon is hidden beneath a skin that is dull,

Weathered,

And seemingly not fit for consumption.

Yet when we peel back that skin,

Often we find that the juice inside is exactly what we need for our perfect recipe.

Life right now has offered us a basket full of lemons,

And there is great opportunity here.

It's all in how we choose to see and use those lemons.

Finding the right recipe,

Finding the right utensils.

I remind myself of this often.

Life is 50-50.

It's almost a mantra.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of that several times throughout a day.

Joy.

Love.

Peace.

Happiness.

Pain.

Grief.

Disappointment.

Frustration.

We can't know the bountiful fall harvest without the scorching suns of summer.

We can't know the blooms of spring without the frozen ice of winter.

When we get lemons out of life,

We get to decide what to do with them.

With the pandemic,

We're living through something that has never before occurred,

Certainly not on a global basis,

And certainly not with technology to connect us all.

Think about it.

Except for possibly remote civilizations in Africa,

Australia,

And elsewhere,

We all wake up with one common thought daily.

What's new with COVID?

What's going on in the world?

And what does it mean for me?

So I'd like to share a little of my experience over the year and see if any of it strikes a chord with you and the lessons that I've taken from it.

For the most part,

My day-to-day life and business have been unaffected.

I like to laugh and say I've been preparing for this since 1999 when I took my direct sales business online.

A few years later,

I quit the gym and transitioned to working out and doing all of my fitness at home.

I love to cook,

So even though I'm a foodie and love eating out,

Being a homebody is easy and cooking at home is easy for me.

But,

And this is a big but,

I'm also a control freak.

And I love to travel.

I'm a future-focused person who likes things to run on a schedule and to run predictably.

I'm a 3 on the Enneagram.

An action,

Type A,

Performer,

Achiever,

Futuristic,

Strategic,

Positivity in strength finders.

If you do any of the personality tests,

You'll know what I'm talking about.

So the uncertainty and the unknowing was unsettling.

You likely felt the same way.

I know most people did.

Once I was able to settle into the unknowing and uncertainty,

To begin to make peace with it,

Then I was able to calm my mind,

My nerves,

My anxiety,

And my body.

The tools I used to do this were silence and meditation.

Lots of deep breathing.

Many walks in nature.

A lot of stretching.

And plenty of time on my yoga mat and moving my body.

Writing became a huge outlet for me.

I've been a journaler for years.

Sometimes skipping months and even years at a time,

But I've always come back to the practice of journaling.

The last three years,

I have been devoted to my journaling practice.

Perhaps I was being prepared.

I became very close friends with my journal.

Writing sometimes three to five times a day,

Venting,

Expressing,

And getting the negative feelings out of myself.

Often,

I would look back on the words I had written and just be present with them.

Just be aware of the thoughts and feelings.

To be curious about them.

I learned to evaluate,

Analyze,

And pivot.

I learned to do this with self-compassion and no judgment.

All of us are doing the best we can with what we have to work with today,

Including me.

That's kind of a favorite mantra of mine.

So I learned to offer grace to myself and others.

In doing this,

My list of gratitudes and lessons came to light.

Here's that list in no particular order.

First,

Relax the grip.

I've come to realize that I don't have control now,

For sure,

And much to my dismay,

I have found that I never did.

What I had was a belief in how things were going to be,

What the day would hold,

What I would do,

What you might do,

What those around me would do,

And how the world would run.

Now,

Here's what I know for certain.

I wake up with no idea what might be going on in the external world,

But I have the ability to control my actions and my reactions.

So I'm focused there on relaxing the grip.

Number two,

Be present.

Slow down.

What's the hurry?

Be fully present in the moment and the experience.

Now I've given this a lot of lip service in the past,

Be present,

But until I was truly in lockdown with nowhere to go and nowhere to be and nothing but time stretching out before me,

That's when I truly began to get the phrase,

Be present.

When we are fully in the now,

We are no longer stuck in any story.

We can't be because stories only exist in the past and in the future.

We must learn to find the pot of gold within whatever we experience because it's there.

We just sometimes need to dig for it.

We're often looking outside of ourselves with what we're experiencing,

But now is where we find the gold,

Being right here and just stilling the mind and breathing.

So being present means I'm no longer frivolous with time.

It's short and it's precious.

The universe has delivered a big message to me about the importance of slowing down.

Just like being now focused,

Practicing the art of more non-doing.

I learned to take time for the little things like curling up with my husband to mindlessly watch some TV,

Something I have been resistant to for years because I don't enjoy TV,

But I do enjoy time with him.

For years,

I relentlessly worked on my business,

Often passing on opportunities to just stop and simply enjoy my life,

To enjoy the people in it and the here and the now.

And over this past year,

I started thinking,

For what?

Why did I do that?

I'm not suggesting that my business is not important,

But better boundaries and honoring my time better,

Those are important.

The next gift I came to realize was prioritizing.

As I already said,

Time is short.

We have no guarantees.

So it's important that we know what matters,

What is top priority in each area of our lives.

This may shift and change a little each day and with what we have going on,

But each morning I learned to look at my day,

Where I was and know what must be done and focus there.

And I'm still doing that today.

Everything truly does start with asking and answering,

Why?

Why am I doing this?

Why am I choosing this?

Why am I pursuing this?

Why am I letting go of this?

And so on.

Then,

After I know why,

I move to understanding what's required of me to fulfill this why.

This does allow me to be more fully present in each day,

Knowing what my priorities are.

And learning to say yes a whole lot more to what truly matters and no to what does not.

That has been a true gift.

Next,

Choose healthy.

I'm very fitness and workout oriented.

Health,

Wellness,

And peak performance physically are important to me.

It's also important to me mentally.

The last two years,

I've continually injured areas of my body,

Disrupting my typical workout flow,

Daily plan,

Walking routine.

And it's been so frustrating.

Then one day,

While I was sitting on my yoga mat,

Feeling frustrated,

I simply asked my body,

Why?

Why is this happening?

And I got calm and still.

I listened and my body answered.

It told me,

Release negative buried emotions and resentments from the past.

Slow down.

Stop powering through your workouts.

And stop powering through life.

You don't have to set or break any records.

There is nothing to prove to anyone,

Including myself.

So I began to do body scan meditations.

Thanks a lot to Insight Timer.

When I started paying attention intentionally to areas of my body,

I was able to more clearly experience the aches and pains.

To pause,

To ask questions,

To go deep into what the pain was trying to tell me.

What stories from the past I was still mulling over and living out in my body,

Projecting into the future.

What emotions have I never taken the time to fully feel and process?

And through this,

I've been able to release a lot of physical joint pain,

Dull aches,

Mindless pain that seriously made no sense to me as I did not have an injury.

I personally believe that much illness,

Physical pain and suffering is rooted in buried emotions.

I now feel much more in control of pain management and whole healing.

This kind of delivered my next gift,

Which is be intentional.

Be intentional with thoughts and actions.

As I mentioned,

My journal is my best friend.

It's where all of my best thoughts,

Ideas and energies get recorded.

Some of the negative too.

Truly the good,

The bad and the ugly.

It's a powerful tool to help me sort through what matters and begin to do that real priority work.

Becoming mindful.

Another word I have given lip service to over the years and now I am deeply engaged with it.

It's the practice of welcoming all thoughts and experiences with acceptance and curiosity.

It's truly feeling the feels and not running from them,

Not avoiding them and not trying to immediately change them.

When we are mindful,

We can open up a space before we act to stop the resistance and embrace the present moment and look for the gift or lesson it contains.

No is a habit in the form of resistance.

Pay attention to those gentle nudges from the universe that you may be resisting.

Every morning begins now with a morning practice of doing a thought download,

Which is five to 20 minutes of just free flow writing to get everything that's floating through my mind out of me and onto paper where I can look at it,

Assess it,

Question it,

Rewrite it,

Move forward with it and pivot when needed and when possible.

This process taps into the creative side of me and what I want to do with the rest of my time here on earth.

It has also helped me understand people better starting with myself.

That kind of led me to my next gift,

Which is seek to understand and respect the perception of others.

This is part of understanding people.

There has been more divide and hatred in the world that I have ever been aware of in the past and yet I know in my heart that ultimately we are all more alike than we are different.

My goal is to listen more,

Judge less,

Including myself.

Right?

Wrong?

Good?

Bad?

These are just thoughts.

Who gets to decide what is any of those things?

So I'm open to allowing other people to have their opinions,

To express their opinions and not have myself embrace the need to jump into the conversation,

To tell them why they're wrong or to even be involved.

I've learned to scroll on social media.

Through this,

I am much happier.

Another gift is to gather your tribe.

This has been an interesting year of holding people close and also letting some go.

I'm not even going to go too far into that because it can get really messy.

I mentioned already that I have a mantra that serves me well.

Everyone is doing the best that they can with what they have to work with right now,

Including me.

And then there's the gift of acceptance and releasing.

The word that keeps coming up for me and one of my beautiful lessons from the universe is impermanence.

The state or fact of lasting for only a limited period of time.

We must allow room in our lives for not knowing.

We have no choice really.

We can struggle against reality and what is and we will lose every time.

The only thing in life that is certain is change and impermanence.

So have the courage to accept this and the self-compassion to sit with it and allow it to settle in.

Don't wish for your life to be perfect.

Release that thought,

That expectation.

And then examine other areas of expectation in your life,

Especially the ones that are letting you down.

Release anything around you that doesn't serve you,

Both mental,

Emotional and physical.

Where are you holding on to past experiences that do not serve you?

Release them.

Where are you too future focused on things you do not control?

Release them.

Where is there clutter in your physical space that is holding you back,

Keeping you stuck?

Release it.

Look around you and find the beauty and perfection in what you have and what you want to keep already in your life.

Most of us have a distorted sense of the perfect life anyway.

We think that that perfect life is the reality that we seek.

That is the human experience.

What if we were to seek peace instead,

A peaceful life?

Character and leadership showed up for me as a gift too.

This was a year that tried and tested every fiber of our being on so many levels.

At least it did for me.

I set an intention to stay in leadership and keep my business thriving throughout the year.

Because of and in spite of all that was going on.

To show up and serve those in my tribe who most wanted it,

Not the ones necessarily who needed it.

I've worked hard this year to weigh in on my character and measure my thoughts and reactions against who I choose to be and who I am becoming to achieve all that I want in life and business.

And then finally,

I learned the gift,

Or have accepted the gift,

Of being grateful.

Always.

This is another area where it's easy to pay lip service,

To say the words,

To be grateful for the easy stuff.

This year I dug down deep to find gratitude for things I feel didn't serve me,

But did serve the greater good.

My first grandchild was born in March.

My son decided to make the U.

S.

Marine Corps a career,

Which makes me both proud and nervous.

Yet right now,

Both are perfect for his family.

And the quarantine allowed him to be home for the largest chunks for each day of my granddaughter's first 11 months and still going.

That is a great gift to me and to her and to their entire family.

While stuck at home,

I looked around and practiced gratitude for all of the great things about my home and the person who I share it with,

My neighbors who keep their homes neat and make our neighborhood fun,

My family for their health,

All of them so far so good.

I've chosen to look at the gifts offered to me by this great pause and explore the limitless possibilities.

I hope you've done the same or will do the same.

I would love to hear what's been fabulous for you and the gifts that you found in spite of everything else.

Life gives us lemons and we have a choice.

We learn to make lemonade or we go thirsty.

Nothing stays the same.

Nothing is guaranteed.

We can't predict the future or bad things that happen or know when good things are going to happen.

Here's what we do know.

Bad things are going to happen.

It's part of life.

It's a part of life that we can't avoid,

That we can't plan for.

These things often lead us to feel pain and all pain is a form of resistance to what is.

Now,

There's nothing wrong with feeling pain.

It's normal and expected when bad things happen.

The key is not to stay stuck in it and to begin to reframe what we see and perceive as bad.

This pandemic?

Is it bad?

Totally?

Well,

Yes,

There's plenty of bad in it.

Is it good?

Yes,

There's some good in the great pause it has offered to all of us and the ability to see and unveil those limitless possibilities in our lives and to find the positive in challenging times now and in those times to come and all that life serves us.

Thank you for spending this time with me.

Don't hesitate to reach out and connect.

May peace,

Joy and abundance find you today and may you also find peace,

Joy and abundance.

I'm Jackie Almer.

You can find more of my work here on Insight Timer in my profile.

Thanks so much for listening.