Discover Your Power

Challenges are a part of life and come in different forms. Whether hardship is inherited, environmental, at the hands of someone else, or a reflection of our own choices, our responsibility is to grow through challenges instead of allowing challenges to stunt our growth.

In any challenge, we choose how to cope. We don't always exercise our choice intentionally, but the choice remains ours. We can either:

• dismiss the negative impact of adversity,
• allow our heartbreak to break us, or
• do the work and discover our power.

Some hurt is so intense that the only feasible reaction is to halt. Losing a loved one, receiving a life-threatening diagnosis, or experiencing any other emotional trauma can send you into a mental freeze. Often, this is a part of the process. However, there is a massive difference between an immobile phase and an immobile life. As long as you dismiss or ignore how you've been affected by your hurt, you will continue to make decisions influenced by a past that you haven't reconciled.

In order to treat a medical diagnosis, the diagnosis has to be acknowledged to determine a course of action. Similarly, issues that have an emotional impact like neglect, betrayal, abuse, or abandonment must be acknowledged. Acknowledgement does not mean you make room for your hurt to sit at the table of your life so that you can feed it. Acknowledgement means that you recognize the source of your pain, not that you surrender to it.

Maybe you have acknowledged your pain, but you can't get out of that stage. Maybe your heartbreak is breaking you. It's possible that you clutch your history and keep your painful narrative in your face and in the faces of everyone who cares for you. If this is the case, your hurt has become the root of every choice you make and the one thing you want, change, is impossible because you make decisions with your hurt instead of working through it.

The key to not remaining stuck in your pain or the acknowledgement stage is to assess. Determining how hurt has impacted your life

• through the decisions you make,
• the people you allow into your life, 
• and the messages you tell yourself 

leads you to the process of correction and progress. As you work through the assessment phase you practice making good choices and exercising wisdom. It is here that you use adversity to build up your strength instead of tear it down. By doing the work you discover your power and it exists in the same situation that has made you feel powerless.

Is it scary? Absolutely! Will it require a process that may not always feel great? Yes. Is that enough to keep you from doing it? Absolutely not. Consider the alternative. Would you rather make decisions through the lens of fear and avoidance or the lens of clarity and purpose? Would you rather live clutching pain or releasing it? You are absolutely worth the work it takes to reconcile your past and intentionally direct your future. If you are willing to do the work you will discover your power.

The Process

We are obsessed with outcomes. We look for muscle tone immediately following workout one. We weigh ourselves after eating our first healthy meal. We expect to feel better after an initial physical therapy or counseling session. Focusing all of our attention on outcomes causes us to miss what develops along the way and what we gain in the process is often more beneficial than the outcome we desire.

I recently had to initiate a difficult conversation. Its difficulty was multifaceted. It was over a sensitive, emotionally charged matter with someone I love. It was one of those conversations that had the potential to forever change the relationship. I dreaded making this call. Dreaded! The trepidation was attached to the sensitivity of the discussion, but mostly to the outcome. What if made this difficult call and it didn't end with the action—outcome—that I felt was fair?

Prior to making the call, I thought out my points. I tried to anticipate reactions and build arguments based on those anticipated reactions. After imagining every possible scenario I realized that no matter how intellectual, emotional, or persuasive I could be, the possibility existed that nothing would change. My words, well thought out, clever, and emotionally charged, might not change a single thing. That acknowledgment changed my focus. I shifted from a place of persuasion to a place of reconciling from within. I was no longer trying to deliver a pitch. I was trying to release what I felt so that I could be at peace. During the process I learned to release myself from the outcome.

I have no reason to believe that the conversation will change the circumstance. In fact, I have every reason to believe that all will be just as it was prior to our talk. Still, in the process of preparing for it, I relinquished my need to convince for a need to be at peace. The moment I freed myself from the outcome I grew and growth should always be the ultimate goal.

Maybe you recently started working out. Not seeing a hint of muscle tone or definition should not deter you from continuing to workout. Similarly, if you have engaged in better eating habits, a lack of shed pounds is not reason to give up. In your quest for physical or emotional healing you may not recover as quickly as you prefer, but during your therapy sessions you will become stronger. It is during the pursuit of an outcome—muscle tone, weight loss, healing—that you develop a new lifestyle. In your pursuit is where you experience movement, develop strength, build character, establish emotional intelligence, and make progress. In the process is where you become whole.

Read last week's post, Life Storms.