How Do We Know We Haven’t Moved On?

I learned something about myself today: I still have mountains to conquer, one in particular.  I still haven’t gotten over how I was treated by a specific supervisor from my past.  How do I know?  I saw that person today in a coffee shop and quickly left the store to avoid confrontation.  Inevitably, she saw me and I had to do the right thing by assuming the social graces of asking how she had been and answering her questions of how I had been.  I had not taken the time to prepare myself for this meeting.  I didn’t have the energy to do it correctly.  It felt so fake.

Immediately after this brief reconnect, I felt awful about myself.  To me, it was like admitting defeat.  I have accomplished so much in recent years.  I am making a career out of sharing with others how to learn from their life adventures for goodness sake.  How could I still be unable to face the scars left from that particular adventure that seems so much smaller by far than many other larger mountains I feel I have conquered?

What I Saw in Me

I noticed 3 things specifically that made me see I had not truly moved on from this life adventure:

• My natural instinct for “flight” was controlling my behavior versus the tools of wisdom I have learned and applied in other areas of my life
• When I try and see value from this experience, it is there but it does not come easily
• There is still an unpleasant physical response when I think about or talk about this person

Reality Check

WOW!  There is still pain and resentment existing in my life coming from this experience that occurred years ago.  It is now clear that I am still choosing to be controlled by that situation and that I still need to work through what happened there that brought me to such a difficult point in how I viewed myself.  This squeaky wheel needs active attention to be useful again!  Because of this meeting today, I will be taking time to go through why my brain still can’t get over this molehill and what I need to do so that it can.

What about you?

It is easy to say that we have moved on or risen above certain life situations but that may not always be true.  Next time you are wondering if you need to work on freedom from the pain of a difficult life adventure, ask yourself these three questions:

• Instinct or Wisdom – Is my response to this situation based on instinct or wisdom?
• Value – Can I honestly look back and see value gained from this experience that I feel confident sharing?
• Physical Response – Does the thought of this experience still cause a negative physical response?

It has been said that if we had already achieved all we could on this earth, we would no longer have any need to be here.  I go back to that theory as I reflect on my reality-experience today.  The truth is, we will always have things that we need to work on and learn to grow from as we go through this life.  It is very important that we take what we learn during each of those times when we choose to move on.  This will help us to still see value from the difficulty that we went through during that time.  It does no good to simply try to forget.  Still, our learning is not complete if we can’t move forward with confidence.