Over the past week, I hope that you have started to see situations throughout your daily routine where you are able to flip the script and take a new approach to the way things have been done…building on that comes our second habit – Kiss the Wave.
Our past can be incredibly painful. I’m sure that each of you can recall a moment where life seemed to get the best of you. If you can’t, perhaps you can look at the present situation that we all find ourselves in. There is no shortage of moments where you feel down on yourself and the weight of the world is mounting on your shoulders.
“You’ve got to own the past, or the past will own you. How? You have to accurately inventory your past, hiding from nothing. THen you have to own all of it – the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is what it is. Or maybe I should say, it is what it was. You may not be responsible for what happened, but you are response-able.”
So how do two people experience the same (or similar) obstacle and come through with two very different outcomes? One person owned the pain while the other was owned by it.
How we respond to a situation is just as important, if not more important, than the situation itself. Stay the course, triumph above what you are going through and see the victory on the other side.
You see, kissing the wave doesn’t mean we don’t experience hardships. Those are inevitable. Before you wish your storm away, you need to accept it for what it is. You can’t move past the pain if you bury deep down, ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.
Sometimes you can ask the simple question “What have you come to teach me?”
When we are going through those hardships, we are often so focused on getting our of it that we fail to get anything out of them. We need to take those moments and learn from them. It’s not our successes that we learn most from, but our failures and hardships. The times when we were able to overcome an obstacle larger than ourselves.
So what have you been holding onto that needs to be released? What obstacle is in your way? What are you learning from it and how will you respond?
And remember…Kiss the Wave starts with a brave question: “What have you come to teach me?”
If you’d like to check out the book that I’m working through, here is the link! Win The Day
Batterson, Mark. Win the Day: Seven Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less and Accomplish More. Multnomah, 2020.
