Empowerment Tip # 2: An Empowered Person "gets" that this too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
It might pass
like a kidney stone,
but it will pass.
When I was young, little and lithe in the mid-seventies, I did an interpretive creative dance routine for churches and other religious organizations. I did it in leotards, and sometimes, if I was feeling really rebellious, I would do it braless. One Sunday morning, I was performing at an early morning service at a Lutheran Church. While waiting for my cue to go on, I sat behind a wall that was behind the pulpit. It had not been a good weekend, a good week, or even a good month. I sat there brooding about my plight, listening to the congregation singing wonderful, uplifting music, accompanied by piano and guitar. Suddenly, I noticed that in front of me was the outside wall of the church. It was constructed of different colors of stone set in concrete in no particular pattern. It was beautiful the way the sun was shining at that particular moment. I was led to get up from my chair, move to the wall, close my eyes, and start running my fingers over the stone and cement. The sensations that I felt were smooth patches and rough spots. It came to me that this wall was a symbol of my life. My life consisted of brightly colored smooth spots, and dreary rough patches. As my fingers continued on their path, it further occurred to me that the smooth spots were much larger than the rough ones and the key to getting through the rough patches was to simply keep moving---there is always a smooth patch either north, south, east, or west. And, the last awareness I had was that as a whole my life was beautiful…just like the wall. This last awareness is really hard to remember when one is in the middle of a rough patch. I call this being in a dead zone.
Many of us tend to get into this dead zone when those rough patches creep up on us. We tend to bury our heads in the sand; we wallow in our pain; we wait for someone to come to rescue us; we wait for the other person to change; we wait until someone sees our greatness and offers us another job, etc. Sometimes it’s just a state of mind—“This is my life. This problem will never end, so I will grin and bear it.” To stay in this dead zone greatly prolongs the rough patch. The more proactive you are, the sooner you will be skimming onto smooth surfaces again. The important thing to do is to KEEP MOVING and DO SOMETHING. That something might be talking with a friend, searching the web, taking a vacation, finding a therapist, hiring a coach, or simply making a decision. You will feel much, much better about yourself if you are proactive about the problems of your rough patches. YOU can do this!