Daily Gratitude: “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through.”

Not only that but we also judge, often harshly, their existence as a caterpillar. I can liken that to the development of many humans. They are less than desirable beings at a younger age and then through intense self work and much time and effort, they become totally transformed- they become butterflies in a sense.

Those are people I respect and admire. They are able to see they have faults and problems and they take action to improve. They are willing to work to pass through another stage.

Can you look back over your life and see the metamorphosis in you? Think about where you’ve come from. And see if there’s more you’d like to change. Self reflection and examination of your life and behaviors and beliefs is essential for continued growth.

Daily Gratitude: “True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the
rediscovery of the unbroken.”

I could write pages on this. Don’t worry. I am not going to do that to you. I just want you to know how important this concept is.

We can start easy. Let’s say there’s a broken (fractured) femur. This bone is massive compared to the others in the body so you might think that all that matters is healing the bone. That will happen in 6 weeks, give or take.

So is that true healing? Nope. Why not?

Because true healing refers to functioning. The femur will be in one piece after it heals. But do you think you can climb stairs, walk without a limp, stand for long or run after 6 weeks of “healing”? No way. The bone is just one component of the functional unit. You need to strengthen and retrain muscles, nerves and the other bones that connect with the femur. Those things weren’t broken but you have to “rediscover” those unbroken components

We need to look at true healing as proper functioning of the unit.

The same idea applies to the psyche. If you have certain fears, you might work hard to face the fear…but often you have to repeat the same process over and over again. That’s because the courageous person you were when you were born has been buried and suppressed because of your repeated exposure to things that scare you. That courage is still there, it’s just been “stuffed in the closet” and out of the way.

In order to heal you have to work (therapy) through those broken feelings (repeated traumatic experiences caused the break) in order to find the courage that’s in there.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put the effort into fixing what’s broken. You need to do that AND discover the unbroken.

Daily Gratitude: “Discriminate between events themselves and your interpretations of them.”

We’ve talked about this before but it’s so important. I think it’s the primary cause of conflict between people. Each person has their own interpretation of what happens even if they are all standing watching the same thing.

Why is that? Because how we interpret things is determined by our experiences. Remember that your brain is a gigantic super computer. From the time you’re born (and probably even before that), your brain is collecting data – on everything. Then it associates that data with how you respond/react. It will interpret your response and then categorize events and situations that are similar as dangerous or safe. Of course there are variations of this but your brain is pretty black and white when it comes to preservation.

People who felt safe all the while they were growing up and didn’t really have a lot of trauma in their life will not “freak out” at the same thing a person who had a difficult and traumatic childhood will. All because the first person’s brain didn’t experience much that it considered dangerous whereas the other person had plenty of experiences that their brain raised the alarm on.

Cars zooming by one person can set them into an anxiety attack whereas another person doesn’t even notice. What’s the difference? Maybe the first person grew up in a crime ridden location where robberies and assaults took place constantly and all were accompanied by loud noisy getaway cars.

If you want to learn about yourself, next time you have some sort of reaction to an event, take some time to see if you can track down a prior experience that bothered you. Get into the habit of seeing if you can associate reactions with past events. That way you can identify them and then teach your brain that they are no longer “dangerous” events. It takes time but it’s worth the effort.