There are moments in life, in which you go like "WTF!?" or, if you are fancier than that, you could ask yourself "Holy moly, how did I manage to get here?".
(And if you should be a Radiohead fan, you will for sure go for "What the hell I am doing here?", but I digress)
Basically, you are questioning yourself and the situation and experiencing some kind of emotional short circuit.
We experience pain, or disappointment or frustration, or we just recognize that we are not where we are supposed to be, that the circumstances are unhealthy for us or don't meet our needs and expectations. That, in the end, we don't want to be there at all.
[Frozen, heartbroken and defeated because of
one of those moments? Everyone has been there, at least once.
Image credit: ISO Republic]
More often than not, we tend to despise those moments.
And we would love to forget as soon as possible that they ever happened to us. Because they make us feel stupid, or ugly, or disconnected, or not worthy. We could feel like we would not belong, either to someone or to something, to an idea, to a place, to a situation.
What we should do instead?
We should cherish those moments, even if we don't like them. They usually are the ones where we learn the most, even if in an unpleasant and often disheartening way.
Those moments are not our enemy. They are neither that bad nor the end of the world as we know it.
They are just feedback, any kind of information, and a very important indicator of our level of well-being, a reminder of which emotions can get triggered in us, a red flag related to specific thoughts (and fears) that can pop up.
[In those moments, we don't fit in,
like the wrong puzzle pieces.
It is usually a very important piece of information,
one that we should not ignore or demonize]
Those moments suck, and yet what we learn in those moments, more often than not, will stay with us for the rest of our lives and provide us with a "before" and "after" that will have an impact on our lives.
A couple of years ago, while I was telling someone about a terrible situation I somehow found myself in a few days earlier and that caused me a lot of stress, I was literally seeing red. Saying that I was very mad at me would be a huge understatement.
I was furious. And sad and angry and overwhelmed, all at once, since it was not the first time that I found myself in such a situation, and I was complaining about my incapacity to stay away from things like that and to learn the lesson. I will always remember their answer:
"That's how we have to learn, sometimes. The fact that you are in pain right now will make this lesson very long-lasting for you and, from now on, remembering the pain will help you to do things differently next time, under similar circumstances". I was skeptical and felt a little bit patronized, back then, and yet my interlocutor was right.
Even years after the fact, I still remember the pain, the humiliation, the sense of emptiness, the absence of hope I've experienced because of that situation. And, sure enough, I managed to never find myself in such a situation again.
["If you make a mistake and do not correct it,
this is called a mistake". Amen, Confucius!
The rest is no mistake, just life experience]
The moments where you realize that you made a mistake, are in the wrong place or with the wrong person or that you are doing something for the wrong reasons, are precious, even if they hurt.
Instead of feeling ashamed, you should cherish them. It may be that they are breaking you, in the short run, but, in the long run, they are actually making you.
They are part of your life experience and they are providing you with useful information. It is then up to you to make the most out of it for yourself.
Being thankful for them and for the insight you can gain through them will help you to go beyond the pain and to discover what's actually going on, what you really want and which path you should pick for yourself, in order to get where you want to be.
And I am sure you don't want to be where you keep thinking "WTF?!", while badly wishing you could be somewhere else instead.
Tags: WTF moments, Mindset for bad moments, Feedback, Quotes, Self-care
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