What If You Looked Upon Everything That Happens As a Gift?
You’ve heard the cliche; this moment is a gift, because it’s called ‘the present’.
If it really is a gift; I used to never like my particular style of ‘present’ and I mentally handed it back to the owner.
For years, I used to sit for hours at my office desk, silently fuming that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. It would build up for months, and then I would quit the job.
On to the next ‘moment’.
It was fun for a while, but guess what? I soon got bored of the ‘gift’ there too. It contained some element that I didn’t like.
It took me over 30 office jobs to realise that I was just not cut out for the 9–5. Whilst I was internally struggling, and mentally wrestling with myself, and trying to make myself get inspired about some company I really didn’t care about, guess what?
I didn’t realise that the gift was hiding in plain sight.
The struggle was the gift. Sure, I may not have liked it, but it was telling me something very important — I just didn’t believe it at the time.
What didn’t I believe? That it was possible to have what I desired.
That I was good enough to write for a living, to have my own business.
Still, at the time, I went on in my pursuit, striving for ‘more’.
Making Peace With The Present
That’s not bad in itself, but if you don’t enjoy where you are now, it’s detrimental to your wellbeing.
I couldn’t make peace with the present. It felt like I was climbing a mountain — and I still had a long way to get where I wanted to be.
I was determined to create ‘my dream life’.
Yet it seemed that in not accepting my ‘gift’, the universe had some pretty important lessons for me.
After a lorry went into the back of my car, writing it off, and nearly writing me off, I was dazed and shaken.
Just six months later, I went away on my own to Bali, and three days later, I awoke with numb arms. Tingles down my body. My body got progressively paralysed, and I went to hospital. I was in a wheelchair for four weeks, and able to fully walk again in two months. A terrifying experience.
I thought I was going to die, and guess what my thoughts were when I was handed my ‘present’ then?
‘I’ve hardly allowed myself to enjoy it!’
Guess what? Now, I accept that life itself is a gift.
I don’t struggle or strive to excess anymore. Sure, I am ambitious and still want to grow and have new experiences, but I am also perfectly ok with being here now — because the now is all we have.
Acceptance Leads To Peace
I’ve realised that life gives you what you need, not what you want, and by fully accepting wherever you are now, you can move past it.
For me, those dark experiences humbled me beyond belief. Once I realised what life was teaching me, I began to finally ‘get it’.
In every situation we’re in, there is positive and negative. Light and dark. Good stuff, and bad stuff. That goes for environments, work situations, relationships, and even our connection with ourselves.
If we embrace every moment as a gift, even when we don’t ‘like’ it, we become free.
We are freed from labelling it. The experience just exists — it just is, and we can instead turn our attention to growing from whatever we’re going through right now.
What if you saw everything that happened to you as a gift?
What if, whenever you recognised negative emotion in your present experience, that you said to yourself ‘there’s something I need to learn here’?
With the gift of hindsight, you’ll usually see that most difficult things are valuable, and you do learn hugely from them.
There are diamond stars in every dark sky.
So if you’re struggling with something right now, why not try a different emotional response to your present moment— trust that you’ll learn something really beautiful.
And even if it’s the most shocking, awful thing to happen to anyone — give yourself the gift of a soothing emotional response. Tell yourself that something good will come out of it, even if you can’t see that right now.
When you accept the gift of the present moment no matter what, you’ll develop the peace to weather almost any storm.
