Personal Growth Can Be Painful

I needed my Big Girl Pants!

I spend a lot of time and energy, probably just like you, working on myself. My spiritual focus and beliefs determine the tone and flow of my day.  

Some days, that tone is calm, sweet and pure.  

Other days, not so much. And these are the days where my personal growth is in action. Painfully. 

Recently that pain has been around Judgement.  

Judgement: being in it, or seeing it in others, is like poking me with a very large stick. It’s a wound that almost heals and then bit by bit gets picked apart to need healing all over again.  

I’ve had situations in my life where I’ve been judged. Badly. Unfairly. And it hurt. I didn’t like being judged. So I’ve worked hard, and I mean really, really hard, to not judge others.  

To be able to see a situation from a different perspective, from distance, from an uninvested position, allows me to breathe, and let the other person be. Be where they are. Be who they are.  

I’m not responsible for their choices, and I don’t need them to be either. Eckhart Tolle calls this ‘present but not engaged’. I can be the observer; concerned but not involved. I don’t need to make their choice/situation/drama/problem, mine.  

And I don’t need to fix it for them.  

I believe a gift we can give everyone in our lives, is the gift of figuring things out themselves. It doesn’t mean I abandon those I care for, it simply means I’m present for them, but not telling them HOW to fix things. Because that would be telling them how I would fix it. Which may not be how THEY would fix it. And who’s to say my way is the best way? Only my ego. And my ego has no voice in this.

And my personal growth this week? That I was being poked. By a VERY large stick. Painfully. Again!

Recognising it and stepping back. 

Allowing others to be where they are, wherever that is. 

And that it’s ok if its a different place to me.  

All lessons, all reminders, that took me a while to get. In fact, it took a couple of phone calls to my heart sisters, talking with my Guides, a salt scrub, meditation, an episode of Game of Thrones, and a lot of tea, to ‘get it’. 

It was hard. It took me back to places I didn’t want to be. But I didn’t stay in the past for long and that in itself was personal growth.

Being able to state my position, my boundaries, draw my line in the sand, with loving intent, was a ‘big girl pants on’ moment for me. 

And maybe, the more I wear my ‘big girl pants’, the less painful personal growth might get. 

But I’ll always need tea.  

And probably Game of Thrones.

Just saying…