By If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that my immediate family and I have been dealing with difficulties and challenges for a while now. We still are and will be for the foreseeable future. There are days where my life seems completely upside down from what it used to be. I am not sure what normal looks like now. Life is a new normal. What I did not anticipate was the lessons that my new normal would teach me. Having no idea, I would learn lessons seems naive, at this point, but for me I was just trying to do my best to get from one day to the next in the best way that I knew how at the time.
Being more comfortable with the change and uncertainty the new normal brings with it allows me to discern the lessons I am being taught. The first lesson is adjustment. Personally, I had a difficult time adjusting to change as a child. Schedule and knowing what was coming up was a comfort to me. I have gotten miles better at dealing with change from a teenager onward, but I really have had to better those skills in the last year plus. Yes, it feels uncomfortable some days to have so much change take place in my life, but I have decided to let having to adjust to that change make me better in every way it can instead of bitter. That is not to say that I do not get frustrated at what is going on. I do absolutely. However, doing my best to frame that frustration in a lesson to be learned mindset is a priority for me.
The other lesson I am learning daily is to be patient with myself and those around me. Full disclaimer that my type A personality does not always make it easy to be patient with myself as I am learning and growing. I can also be impatient with those around me sometimes. This time allows me to cultivate those skills that before this time I was lacking. Patience is a good lesson for all of us to be reminded of because we live in a world where instant gratification is what we all seek, and instant gratification is praised. However, nothing is instantaneous. Everything takes time, work, consistency, and patience.
Sharing these lessons helps me be transparent with you all about my journey to thrive in life and in doing my best to let my condition be a part of my life but not run my life. I hope my transparency helps you all to deal with your own adjustments in your life and makes you think about the benefits of being patient with yourself and others. Not just Because cultivating patients decreases stress but helps us all thrive more readily if we can be more patient. If we can be calmer when people around us are frazzled and stressed, we can help them problem solve and by so doing take some of their stress away.