Things I Wish I Learned Sooner – Part 1

I would like to start out by clarifying the title of this article.  I have learned an abundance of lessons in the last six months and these are the ones that if I could have understood them a little sooner, it would have made my life a whole lot easier.  I am a firm believer that everything happens exactly when it needs to, so the lessons I learned came through exactly when I needed them to.  However! If I can pass them along to you, maybe it will help in your journey.  This is a two-part series so stay tuned for the second article!

The first lesson I wished I learned sooner was around the purpose of negative emotion.  In the book Remembering Wholeness by Carol Tuttle, negative emotion is divided into two types. The first is around the things we tell ourselves that are not true.  ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I could never do that’ etc. If these statements were true, they would feel good and natural.  Instead, they bring depression, anxiety, hopelessness. They do not serve us and allow us to downplay ourselves and our lives.  The lesson of this side of negative emotion is to start recognizing when you tell yourself one of these statements and then replace it with something positive or true.

The other side of negative emotion are the times we are not lying to ourselves and things still feel off.  This is our intuition telling us that we are not on the right path. If I could have learned this sooner, it would have helped me pivot and move much faster than I did.  I was slow to listen and then slow to accept.  If you learn to trust your instincts better than I did, you’ll be in a much better position.

The next lesson is that even when you are following the path that you want, there will still be many obstacles.  I thought that once you started making choices to put you on the best path for yourself, that things would be easy and everything would click into place.  I was wrong.  There are challenges and effort required at all stages.  Even when you love what you do, it will still be difficult at times.

Please don’t confuse negative emotion with challenge/discomfort.  Discomfort can be a great thing – it means you’re growing beyond what you once were.  The lesson is learning when something is in your way and you must push through and when the feelings you’re having are telling you that you’re on the wrong path.   

The final lesson I learned is that there isn’t a rich quick scheme.  When I first left my job and didn’t know where it would take me, I looked up a lot of ways to make money.  There are MANY claims online about how you can do this or that for money.  I looked into many of them and even tried a few.  The lesson I came away with was that many of the ways people claim you can make money, you can.  You can support a family from a blog- it’s true!  But that doesn’t mean it’s EASY.  Simple and easy are very different words.  There are times when following you dreams leads you to take simple steps but the steps are insanely difficult.  I would encourage you when faced with these moments, to have the courage to decide that you can do it.  You can be better than you once were.

That’s it for today!  Check out this second part of this series, found HERE!