I heard a comment on Monday from Robbin Roberts of Good Morning America who said that we are now in the 14th month of 2020. It feels like 2020 has just continued on, and I know many people are still feeling this way as well. The fatigue from this situation is weighing heavily on so many people right now. People are truly struggling with their Mental Health right now as they question if and when this situation is ever going to pass. As each day ticks by I hear people more and more afraid that whatever sense of normalcy they felt could be returned is slipping away.
Robbin Roberts also made another comment though that seemed to really resonate with me. It's a phrase that I have heard many times throughout my life, and I'm sure you have as well. The phrase stated that "This Too Shall Pass". As I let that comment sit with me for a few minutes, I realized that this mantra holds so much more meaning right now than just Covid-19.
How many of us are going through seasons of our lives right now that are a struggle? How many of us are enduring situations that we feel are never-ending? How many of us feel like we are on a hamster wheel or stuck in our own bad rendition of the movie Ground Hog Day? It is difficult during the days, and weeks, and months and sometimes years of struggle to feel like there is the hope of any end in sight. The unfortunate fact is that many of us were struggling with these same feelings long before the arrival of the pandemic. For some people, this has been a pattern for most of their lives.
We can easily become so absorbed with the daily trials of life that we lose sight of the fact that everything in life has a beginning and an end, including our struggles. Understanding the concept that 'this too shall pass' means that we acknowledge that life is a constant cycle. We experience good times and they pass, and we experience bad times and they also pass. Sometimes we just spend too much time focusing on the bad that we are unable to see that the good was just there and that we didn't spend any time in appreciation of it because we were already in a state of anticipation for the re-arrival of the bad.
If we can learn one thing in life, it is that what we focus on is what our mind brings to us. So if you are focused on the struggles and difficulties in life, then your mind is going to keep finding situations that you are going to struggle through. This is all part of the wonderful part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System. Whatever you focus on you will find. This is because the mind is designed to focus on and filter out information that isn't important or meaningful to you and to retain the things that are important to you. What this means is that if you are constantly thinking about something bad, your mind thinks that it is important, and it will look for more opportunities to find it.
If you doubt that, think of some of the people that you know that are constantly repeating the same mistakes over and over. Think of your dating history. Have you found yourself dating someone with the same qualities that you had in the last boyfriend and said you wouldn't date again. Why is this? It's because you focus on the qualities that you didn't want and that's what your mind focused on finding. So for all you single girls out there don't focus on the qualities you don't want in a man, focus on the qualities you do want and your mind will find them.
Many of the world's most brilliant minds and successful entrepreneurs understood the sheer power of the mind and what you think about.
- "As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes." - Gandhi
- "Whether you think you can or can't, you're right" - Henry Ford
- "The mind is everything. What you think you become." - Buddha
I know you are probably thinking that I am full of....well you know, but it is true, and just by understanding that you have the power to change situations in your life, by how you think about them, can be liberating. The simple shift in your mind from powerless to powerful can create a lasting impact. Yes, we are not in control of everything that happens in our life. We can't control natural disasters, the death of those we love, the ebb, and flow of the seas, or the reactions of a toddler in the grocery store when your cart is full and they see the candy aisle, but we can control our reactions in those moments and we can gain strength from the knowledge that this too shall pass, it may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass!
