Turning our struggles into opportunities

My continuing education in health and wholeness

Everyone’s life is full of challenges. The way I like to think of it is, we choose what we wanna work on before we’re born into this lifetime. Perhaps we don’t choose the specific challenges we experience, but none the less our challenges, and whether we overcome them or learn to work with them, serve to guide us in our pursuit of figuring out who we are and why we’re here.

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

So why would anyone want to choose disease, for example? Indeed why… and why not? If your soul chooses to incarnate on earth to experience what it is to be human, are we talking about all kinds of human experiences or only certain experiences? And how do you determine what is a “good” experience and what isn’t?

I’ve been struggling with fatigue, feeling like I have absolutely no energy, for many years now. Causes of fatigue can really run the gamut between health concerns and lifestyle choices, and it’s difficult to pin-point any one cause for any one individual. So despite my inner knowing there’s been a very physical-body component to my problems (it’s not all in my head!), my doctors have always swept it under the rug. Until recently.

I heard about a recent scientific report linking Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) with the same virus that causes, among other things, Infectious Mononucleosis (Mono) and Chickenpox, both of which I’ve had. Bringing this to my doctor’s attention she agreed to run the labs, and my test results came back affirming I have “an active reinfection”, i.e. I have EBV.

Like all viruses, it can be really taxing on the immune system and cause fatigue! There is no vaccine or cure, and once this virus is contracted, it stays in the bloodstream. I need to continue supporting my immune system, and I need to get plenty of rest in order to let my body fend off the virus, returning it to a dormant state. Yes it’s contagious, but you don’t need to worry because most all of you already have it (The CDC estimates something like 95% of American adults have it). And you may never be affected by it or get sick from it. For most people it lays dormant in their system.

Perspective is everything

What makes an experience “good” or “bad” comes from our perspective. We all thrive or shut down under different circumstances. Just as one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, one person’s misery is another person’s happiness. It’s all about perspective! It’s how we choose to see ourselves and how we choose to see our circumstances. We may not have control over anything that happens to us in this world, but we do have control over how we perceive and deal with whatever may come our way.

Intellectually I knew there was nothing particularly different the day I received the diagnosis from the day before. And yet it hit me like a ton of bricks and I went back to bed (in the middle of the afternoon). I didn’t want my diagnosis to become my identity. All the “what ifs”, the questions, the frustrations, and confusion over what this all meant for me came rushing in. Do I have to stop dancing? I can’t stop dancing! I got very upset at the idea that this will affect my dancing, even though quite frankly, it already has.

I decided it was fine to let myself have a few “bad” days in bed, and then I would work on shifting my perspective. I am human, after all! I’ve had my share of bad days with this, and there will probably be more because I don’t look at any process as linear, things tend to ebb and flow. And our emotions aren’t the enemy, they just are. The sooner we let them move through us fully and completely, the sooner we can move on.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”

If we want to be happy and live a happy life, then we need to be able to turn our “struggles” into “challenges”, and our “challenges” into “opportunities”. And right now you’re thinking, that’s easier said than done. And you’re right! But what choice is there? Would you rather your glass be half-empty or half-full?

With this new diagnosis I now have a name for my mysterious problems and symptoms. Being able to identify something takes out a lot of the mystery, and it’s no longer “all in my head.” Now I have some direction, a path to take towards healing.

How do we begin to shift our thoughts?

I think the biggest challenge is learning to accept change. Change is the way of things. Everything must evolve. When something in our life changes, we tend to get ourselves into trouble by comparing it with the past. “Well it was never that way before!” Change isn’t the enemy, it’s a fact of life. Accepting our circumstances, accepting where we are at and moving forward from here, is the best medicine.

“Change is the only constant in life”

I start with literally re-writing my story into a more positive one, changing “I have to…” into “I get to…”. We all have our stories that we tell ourselves and others. Our story carries us through life and informs who we are, where we have come from, and who we will become. I get to learn how to take care of myself and really learn how to feed my body and nurture my soul! I get to experience making my health a priority. And that’s exciting!

When we feel stuck or mired in our circumstances, sometimes the best thing to do is take action. There is always a path, an option, a choice. Sometimes the right path to take is the one we’re not even looking at. When I feel like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, I know it’s because there’s an option that I’m not seeing. Or perhaps there’s an option that I’m writing off because I think it’s impossible (in which case I already know I’m the one that’s making it impossible, so it deserves another look).

“I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face… I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along… We must do the things that we think we cannot do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

For me, the right action right now is, rest, rest, and more rest! And “rest” can mean something different for everyone, so I have the opportunity to explore and discover what it means for me, without comparing myself to anyone else. I get to learn my nuances of balancing activity with rest, and be more mindful of my self-care. Without our health, we really don’t have anything, we are of service to no one. It is only through meeting our own needs first that we can then meet the needs of others. How many of us don’t need to get sick to recognize the full value of self-care and balancing how we spend our time and energy?

Moving forward

I believe we are meant to teach our challenges. Who better to help others with a problem, than someone who has experienced, or is working through the same problem? No one else can solve our problems for us, the solution must come from within, from somewhere inside. But knowing we’re not alone, being able to share our experiences with those that really understand, finding acceptance and support, means everything to us on life’s journey.

I’m having to learn how to slow down. Really slow down. And that’s not a bad thing! We’ve grown so accustomed to our instant-graification, now-now-now-go-go-go pace of life, we easily forget there’s nothing wrong with intentionally slowing down. Every now and again it’s important to re-evaluate how I spend my time and energy, identifying energy drains, and cutting them out. I’m learning to listen to my body and my spirit as things change rather than relearning between major changes—this demands listening on a deeper level than ever before.

Just about every success story reads something like, had it not been for [my traumatic experience], I’d never have [moved beyond my comfort zone] and gone on to [achieve my dreams]. Had it not been for my health struggles and my negative experiences with Western medicine, I might not have felt compelled to explore and learn so much about alternative medicine and energy healing. One of my joys in life is teaching energy healing to others, showing them how easy it is, empowering them with the tools to navigate their own health struggles and turn them into opportunities. And so I choose to see this new diagnosis as my continuing education.

Tagged as: change, happiness, health, opportunity, perspective, Struggle, wholeness