The Myth of Overcoming

Understand this one thing and face your emotions with grace

I’m beginning to understand, more and more, that life is a process that flows when you understand and trust it.

I was a project manager for years. I remember explaining to one hiring manager during a job interview, “I like to create new things and improve upon existing ones.” I went on to say, “I think what I like most about project management is the satisfaction of completing a project. I really like the idea of tying something up with a bow and delivering it.”

For years I treated my life like a project–earning college degrees, landing jobs and promotions, getting into romantic relations. My life was a perpetual chase for that satisfaction of finishing. With everything I undertook, I was looking for the end that would quash negative feelings of inadequacy and loneliness, and signal success. But the “success” never lasted long. It was on to the next thing to make me feel whole and happy.

But life is not a project and its lessons are not final, even when we have completed them and have moved on to the next one. I came to this understanding quite recently while coaching a client.

Indeed, there is a beginning and an end to our existence in this form. And there are beginnings and endings to the things we choose to pursue. Nothing is permanent. But the more profound meaning and purpose of our time here on earth, our evolution and personal growth, don’t end once we seemingly master a lesson.

Marcus Aurelius said, “Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?” The challenges we experience in our lives are precisely what we need most in order to develop and grow. Because these lessons are often painful and filled will unpleasant emotions, we can attempt to avoid dealing with them. We can try to circumnavigate an experience that seems hard and that we think we see an “easier” way around. Or, sometimes, our awareness might not be keen enough for us to see or understand what is required of us to move through the challenge and avoid further difficulties.

In these instances, we might receive a lesson more than once, before it sticks. Even when we have a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world (because of what we learned), we can erroneously believe that that challenge and the associated emotions we dealt with are behind us. We can have a false sense of completion. Our satisfaction with ourselves and what we believe we know can create disappointment, self-doubt, or even despair at a later point.

Often, new challenges that are sent our way include quizzes that check how thoroughly we’ve assimilated a previous lesson. An emotion we thought we’d dealt with and were through with comes back, out of the blue. Believing that we had passed the test and tucked away the related emotions forever, can result in a return to an earlier state of being. We can backslide to a previous lesson, and feel frustration or anger at the world and with ourselves. We did the work, so why didn’t it stick?

This, too, is a lesson.

When I published my first book, which was ironically about overcoming fear, I experienced a return to an earlier lesson. After much pushing, I received the final revisions of my manuscript. This meant it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was and make it available to the public, personal stories and all. But I was paralyzed by fear. I wasn’t so sure I would go through with it even though I’d just written a book about overcoming fear. Why was I still feeling afraid?

This was my quiz!

The concepts and strategies that I wrote about to deal with fear in my book are all valid and effective. They helped me to overcome some genuine fears and doubts. But fear, like other emotions, is not something you overcome once. Instead, emotions are something you become aware of and work through the best you can when they arise.

I managed to move through that fear rather quickly and publish my book . I turned to my values and revisited my reason for writing the book in the first place. That compelled me to publish, despite my worries about being judged. It was naïve for me to believe that because I’d moved through other apprehensions that all of my fears would go away. The same is true of other emotions that life’s lessons bring up in us.

We can’t check off lessons entirely, because there are always deeper layers to explore in them. Not understanding this, not embracing the excitement and beauty of this design, can set you up for disappointment, self-doubt, unhappiness, and struggle in life.

The key is to know and believe that life is a process and that moving to a new stage in that process doesn’t preclude old lessons from popping up from time to time. Life and its lessons are not a project that you can check off tidily. You can’t cram for the test and expect it to stick. And, there is often maintenance involved in applying the things that allowed you to move past the lesson in the first place.

Once you know this, you will begin to learn lessons more quickly and comprehensively and incorporate practices that allow you to build emotional muscle. Then when previous teachings reappear, you don’t see this as a failure and are armed with ways to move through them less reactively. You don’t beat yourself up about it, and you go with the flow.

There will always be lessons to learn, including some with reminders from previous classes. Recognizing this will diminish the expectations that you have rid yourself of the emotions associated with the experiences. When draining emotions like irritation, fear, anger, or hopelessness arise in you, and you have embraced the fact that life is a process, you’ll revisit the lessons differently. You will be able to forgive yourself more readily and move through the emotions more gracefully. You’ll experience life with less drama and more ease.

Life is a process. Trust it and allow it to flow!