I was with my daughter today at a restaurant that offers pizzas on the spot, no waiting and you are out the door with a quick and easy meal. Only they didn’t have a cheese pizza ready and we had to wait. As a place that we frequent semi-often and to my four year old who has never had to wait for her pizza, it was a new experience. She asked a million questions as to why we didn’t have our pizza and were on our way. I explained we had to wait…not an easy task for a four year old.
But hold on a minute; is waiting and patience an easy task for anyone living in this world right now? I think that my daughter may have had a little more patience than I did. We have virtually everything at our finger tips. We can check our e-mail, get the latest news, phone calls, get directions, text messages, etc at any time of the day or night, no matter where we are. Long gone are the days when we actually have to go to library to look up some information to get the answers we need. Sadly, this need to have everything quickly resolved and taken care of does not easily translate into other areas of our life.
Have you ever met someone who has gotten over a divorce in a day? What about when a loved one dies, not so easy to move forward in a week. Get fired from your job? That certainly isn’t something you can recover from in an hour. My point is that when you are talking about the things that matter most in life, the things that are still here when all of our gadgets ultimately break, are the hardest to get through when times get tough. It’s such a tough change in mindset as we are programmed to have things done quickly and when that doesn’t happen, the anxiety and depression can increase significantly. We then feel that something is wrong with us, that we will always feel bad and things will never get better. Looking into the future can be difficult and overwhelming.
Learning to adapt to major change in life takes time, self reflection, patience and learning how to live with that loss in addition to learning from it and growing from that knowledge. It’s first about identifying the positive things about you that are going to be your best asset in getting through the situation. They might not be very apparent to you at the time, but they are there and learning to build on those strengths is going to be a large part of the success in recovering from the changing event. Leaning on friends and family is extremely important as well. You might feel like a burden, but these are the people who are most important to you and they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t want to be. Taking time for you is key and realizing that setbacks are probably going to happen. Change does not happen immediately. We don’t learn to walk in one day. Have you ever noticed that a one year old who tries to walk for the first time doesn’t give up when they fall down? They keep trying, as they know it will happen and their life will get a lot better when their legs and brains start working together. As adults we surely forget about this very basic part of life and learning.
All of the above is not an easy mind set to change overnight. But it never hurts to remember to slow down and allow yourself the time you need to get through the most important parts of life.
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