Things I learnt from my recent setbacks

Things I learnt from my recent setbacks

How I wish life were filled with glory and love, tales of how we succeed in every aspect of our life, emerging victorious in battles filled with animosity and sadness. Every mortal being experiences seasons of rise and fall, of light and dark, of pain and purpose, and defeat and victory.

If everything we yearned for to come true would fall into our lap with ease and no gruelling work, the true value of pure joy would go unnoticed. The beauty and the bane of life is that every moment that we breathe in passes whether it is a celebration of unscathed pleasure or the lament of melancholy, every circumstance has a purpose in the Book of Life, to teach us lessons, to forge us to embrace change and let go of something that we would have otherwise not embosomed into our soul’s psyche.

It is infuriating at times to be not more than a pauper who is controlled by the external strings of fate when the internality of his world seemingly belies to be falling apart. Sometimes life is exhausting, the bane of mortal beings seems so excruciating that you want to feel like escaping the reality you live in. The exquisiteness of someone else’s picture-perfect world seems daunting as we think our vision of a mere surviving land is drowning in the darkness of clouded sadness and fatigue.

We are told to hold onto hope and not fall into the wallowing of self-pity and doubt, but how wonderful it would have been if emotions truly came with a functional switch and we had the power to turn our emotions off or much rather throw the switch of emotions piled up out of the window! As scary as it appears to be, we do not have any external source or device that can help us regulate our emotions, every turmoil we face comes with it set of emotions that need to be felt, to be acknowledged in its brevity and to accept ourselves as we are and not what we should have been or could have become.

If you relate to this, I understand how hard it must have been for you. Here are some lessons that my recent setbacks taught me and I hope they can act as reminders for you whenever you face a difficult circumstance.

1. This is not your entire life but a chapter in the novel of your amazing existence.
2. Every situation comes into your life to teach you a lesson, every lesson we learn makes us into the person who we are meant to become.
3. Failure is not final and rejection is not a reflection of your worth or competence. Your worth has nothing to do with your external stance and everything to do with how you perceive yourself as.
4. Feel your emotions, allow yourself to rest, to cry, to rant about it to yourself or anyone until you feel you have the power to let it go completely.
5. Be kind to yourself. You are doing the best you can in the present state of energy and awareness you have about yourself and the world around you.
6. Take it one step at a time. I know how daunting it can be to lose something really important to you and how scary is the thought of the future. Give yourself time and space, you will figure it out.
7. Remind yourself that you did the best you could- In any circumstance, know that you did the best you could and even if the current rejection, delay, discrepancy or dejection stings every ounce of your core, have the assurance that everything will be okay.
8. Every person or circumstance comes into your life for a season. In every stage of life, you will meet different people or come across situations that enter your life for a season to metamorphose you into a better version of yourself.
9. Whether it is for a few months or a lifetime, whatever is meant for you will never lose its way to you. You can never mess up something that is meant to be in your life if you do know that something better is meant for you.
10. Rejections, failures and setbacks are proof that you are growing as a person. There is no successful human who has not gone through with their share of unsuccessful outcomes or defeats to be where they are today. Have pride in the fact that you are trying to become a better version of yourself with every step you take to try something new.
11. While it is difficult to be grateful during painful times, remember that your worst stance would be someone’s best circumstance they would be dreaming about
12. Reflect on what went wrong and try to learn insights for how you can better yourself as a person.
13. If it is something that you cannot control, you deserve to liberate yourself from the worry of what will forge to be.
14. Indulge yourself in your favourite activity that you would do as a child. Pamper yourself a little extra when you are doing your best to survive the tough times surmounting you.
15. Find your truth within yourself. When the air around you feels filled with doubt and limiting beliefs, harbor your sense of trust within yourself.

In the desolated hour, where your reflection haunts you with what could be,

I hope you look at the mirror and see yourself with pride in knowing that you hold the light that your younger self yearned to see.

_Hridya Sharma