We all face challenges in our lifetime. Some people ignore them or only look outside for help. Others take them as an opportunity and tap inner resources to help themselves. How can a difficult challenge serve you? You need to tap new inner resources to deal with it. We too often rely on the old habits in our mind and find comfort in them. When your old habits don’t meet your challenge, you are forced to explore inner resources you seldom use.
The challenge, for instance, is a chronic illness you are dealing with, like multiple sclerosis. Before that illness, you had not been taught how to deal with MS, so you had to learn how your inner resources could deal with it. An illness is a challenge that almost everyone will have to deal with at some time in their life. Every challenge has the same benefit; you just have to be open to use it as a valuable learning experience. Here is an example of a lesson learned while dealing with a struggle:
The art of conscious goal-setting requires you to use your powerful inner resources without the limitations created by your mind. This article will teach you simple techniques to use when you face a health crisis. You will be forced to use powerful inner resources to save your life. Why can’t you use these resources to accomplish your goals?
For instance, MS is an illness that even the most prestigious doctors do not know how to cure. A patient would find that if they looked outside for answers, they could become a victim. Deep inside everyone is the Wisdom of the Body. It is beyond one’s thinking mind in silence where concepts cannot capture this wisdom. If they stayed on the level of thinking, they would ignore this inner wisdom. Almost everybody has experienced a beyond-thought moment. Call it a peak experience, the zone or anything that represents a super-human endeavor. It happens to mothers in childbirth and to athletes in sports, but it is more common than most people think.
When a person enters the moment with a strong will to live, they unlock the door to this inner wisdom. Ignoring the moment, where random thoughts take you away from “what is”, inner wisdom is but an idea. We would never consciously trade a random thought for this depth, but that is what we do when we follow thoughts instead of our breath. Consciously breathing anchors you in the moment. When you are in the moment, you naturally have a strong will to live and every challenge becomes a test to see where your focus is. This may sound difficult, but that test is really a gift. It strengthens your will to live and makes you appreciate every breath you have.
Exploring this inner wisdom is like looking into a mirror, where you can see the roots of your being. The phenomenon of human life, even on a most subtle level, is a miracle. What does it take to swallow? To blink your eyes? To digest your food? This happens beyond a thinking mind on the level of the autonomic nervous system. This is a level of wisdom we all have, but seldom appreciate. When we face a challenge we cannot control, we are forced beyond our everyday thinking. We dig deep and things bubble up from a depth we seldom anticipate. This is where real creativity comes from. When you are comfortable exploring this depth, you would be surprised by your potential.
Without a challenge that forces us to this depth, we would seldom be open to it. This is how difficult challenges serve us. We can either avoid dealing with these challenges, like most people do, or we can be open to explore this beyond-thought reality. It is really up to you to have a focus not limited to thinking, so appreciate the challenges you are forced to deal with.
© 2015 Marc Lerner
Marc Lerner has been a life skills coach for 25 years and has been working to empower patient participation, to improve the quality of life and to improve attitudes when facing challenges. Marc has had multiple sclerosis since 1981, which is an incurable disease. He had to tap inner resources to cope with his illness because he could not rely completely on help from medical professionals. Now, Marc teaches life skills, including ways to develop a positive self-image, confidence and self-trust. In 1982, Marc founded Life Skills Institute and served as its president to 2013. Through the Institute, he worked for 25 years at the VA with veterans with PTSD, cancer and AIDS patients and the mentally ill homeless. In 2002, Marc was named Outstanding American with Disabilities Business Person in Los Angeles.
He is the author of A Healthy Way to be Sick, The Positive Self, Change Your Self-Image and You Change Your Life The End A Creative Way to Approach Death and A Poetic View of Hospice all available on Amazon Kindle. In these books and in his work, he helps people to interpret their struggle in a conscious way. His writing and tele-seminars teach these skills adapted for any struggle. Marc was the host of a radio show on WorldTalkRadio, called A Healthy Way to be Sick. You can find copies of his shows on marclerner.com.