If there is one thing that I have come to learn, accept, and expect throughout my life, it’s that, whether in a personal or professional capacity, people will experience what I call, “life’s resets”. In fact, people will experience many of them and in some cases cause them. Basically – this is something that throws your whole world upside down – a S.E.E. (significant emotional experience), if you will. Often, these are things that you cannot prepare for. As one of my favorite song lyrics go, “The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”
Maybe this is when someone you love passes on… when you lose your job… the birth of your child… when a soldier is required to go to war for the first time. While there are general buckets, each person’s S.E.E. moments, many times, are unique to them and as a result, traditional counsel may not apply. Further, many resets are so traumatic that people are no longer the same as a result. In order for them to get back to a state of “normal” – it requires them to rebuild themselves (emotionally, physically, etc) before they can re-introduce themselves to the world, as they know it.
Despite how difficult a reset can be, there is, when you make time for reflection, a great amount learning that can be extracted. The only factor obstructing the learning process is the agony of time. This means that you may not be ready to absorb the lessons until you are ready – but know, that the lessons will be there waiting for you when you are ready to receive them.
For me, while there are direct lessons to learn as a result of the reset itself, the most valuable lesson that I’ve discovered is how I choose to respond to the reset. You see, things happen all the time and what separates “the men from the boys” is how you handle things going forward.
Some lessons from the battlefield:
Don’t live in, what I like to call, a “false sense of reality”. Basically – this when you are lying to yourself in some form or another because it’s the easiest thing to do to help you cope.
Come to terms with the reset because there is probably nothing you can do about it. You may, however, be able to stop its impact going forward, but you can’t reset the reset. As the saying goes, “it is, what it is…”
Decide how you want, and maybe need to, react. If possible – don’t just react. This is where “intent” comes in. If you don’t feel like you are in a position to decide, consider outsourcing your decision-making to a trusted source to help guide you through the process.
Act. Now this could be to do nothing. It could be to doing everything in the world to make something happen – whatever. This again, is where “intent” comes in and you making a conscious decision towards what to do (or not do).
Trust the process and more importantly, trust yourself to know that you will be okay and that everything will work out the way it needs to.
As I close out this post, I would like to reference once again the song that I made mention to above in the first paragraph. It’s titled, “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” and oddly enough, it’s probably the best song I’ve ever heard that speaks to life’s resets and general advice. Listen to it… often.
To your continued success…
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