Life’s Toughest Moments

I seem to be getting my inspiration for my blogs from things people say on TV recently! Last time it was about Candice who won the Great British Bake Off and then said about that now maybe she was good enough. That sparked a great satsang conversation about how we know we are good enough and what we can do to know that we are. If you want to listen to that satsang you can listen on my resources page.

A couple of days ago I was watching Strictly Come Dancing – my guilty pleasure – and Danny, one of the best dancers on the programme came out with:

“The toughest moments have always created the most amazing ones”.

What a wonderful uplifting point of view.

So often when we are in the midst of our challenges we push against them and wish them gone. But really it is these challenges that make us who we are. I remember when I lived in the ashram one of the Swamis talking about challenges and how they shaped us and made us grow personally and spiritually. It is our challenges that teach us the most about ourselves and strengthened us.

That strengthening is key to our personal evolution. Each we time ‘go through the wringer’ we come out stronger, with a clearer sense of self and a confidence in our ability to manage our world. As the Swami told us we need our challenges so that we build this inner strength so that we can tackle whatever comes our way. We are never given a challenge that is too big for us – it may feel like it, it may stretch us to the nth degree, but it never is too big. Equally we are never given a challenge that is too small either – that would just be a waste of effort!

I know a lot of people who are going through personal challenges right now. These challenges range from relationship breakups, to financial challenges to health challenges and many other things in between. When you are in them they feel so unfair, ‘why me?’ springs to mind a lot. However if you can manage to step back and witness them for a moment you can sometimes begin to see why they are in your life.

There is always a gift in every challenge – you just need to find it.

Maybe you need to move on and this breakup is forcing you in a new direction. Maybe you need to address a fear around money or learn to handle your finances differently or maybe your body is trying to give you a message – slow down, look at your world differently. Whatever gift our challenges have for us it is up to us to embrace it whole-heartedly and learn.

Not only learn but look for that amazing moment that the toughest moment is creating. When I first moved to Spain I had very little money and the job I thought I had that would keep us afloat while we settled into our new life disappeared after two weeks. We’d burnt all the bridges and there was no way to go back – we had to make it work. It was very challenging to say the least. Beatrice went up to Switzerland to see if she could get some freelance work to tide us over and I stayed in Spain doing some garden maintained for €7 an hour. I just about made the rent and I was very generously fed out of a friend’s vegetable garden. It was a tough moment – I had never not had money before and it brought up a lot of fears. But as I surrendered into it there was an incredible freedom in this experience for me. It really did turn into an amazing moment. I learn that abundance comes in many forms – like my friends veggie patch – and that when you let them people do the most amazing things for you.

And I learnt the key to managing challenges – that ‘This too shall pass’.

When we are in one of those toughest moments it is all too easy to believe that this will never end, we never get over this but that is not true. Life always flows and it always passes. Our job is to ensure we learn the gift of the challenge so we can experience the amazing moment it has in store for us.

Join me for a Satsang on handling our toughest moments.

To deepen the topics of these blogs and hear what you have to say you are invited to join me for a Satsang, a coming together of like minds to explore the ideas in this blog. The Zoom video Satsang which will be around the theme of our toughest moments and our experience of it and it will be held on Monday 5^th December at 7.00pm UK time. You can go to this link to register and you will be sent the link for you to join on the day.

I do hope you will join us for this conversation and share your experiences as well as bringing any questions you may have. A Satsang is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘to keep the company of the Truth’. I like to think of it as a conversation created to unite and inspire global voices, both yours and mine by creating a scared space for exploring truth. And remember there is not one Truth but our own Truth and what that means for us. So this isn’t a lecture from me but a conversation between us all.

So come ready with your questions, your thoughts, your insights and ideas. And if you think that what was written is a load of bunkum come with that too and bring your thoughts to the conversation!

This Satsang is for us all – a conversation of discovery so it not just me talking – I want to hear what you have to say too. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Photo courtesy of https://unsplash.com/@patrickian4