Learn & Grow: A Hard Row to Hoe
Learn & Grow—A Hard Row to Hoe
(1st Buttercup of the 2025 Season!)
Most everyone I know at present is feeling challenged and wondering what they can do about it. Outside of the usual doing, like getting involved in one’s community to make a positive change in the world, the question that arises for me is, “how do we learn and grow through hardship?” I don’t know the answer for you, and I’m always working on answering that for me.
So here’s this months inquiry…
Let’s start with the obvious. We’ve had some recent shared human experience in this realm. Remember Covid-19 and that first year we had to make some hard decisions, adjust our day to day and perhaps decide where to prioritize our energy or allegiance. Asking ourselves: How do I stay healthy? Should I isolate or not? Mask or not? Which immunity theory do I stand with? How much media do I consume? Who’s in my pod and who isn’t?
Before we rush into being consumed by the next “disaster of the moment” can we pause to look back and allow the continuum of growth and learning to awaken within us. We can begin by asking ourselves, “what did I learn from the pandemic experience?” If it was a hardship for me, “how did I meet it?”
Our learning is much like any gestation process. It takes time. Life experiences need to percolate, distill, and be tended. One thing that emerges into a new thing. Some people say hardship can turn into a growth experience, a personal truth or a pearl of wisdom.
Journal Prompt Time!
Some key questions for us all are, “how do we notice our own change and growth?”
What is your process like?
What nurtures it and what derails it?
Is there anything you usually have to unlearn or let go of in the process?
Even though we are all wired towards negativity, we often don’t reflect back on our own negative or stressful events, to ask, “how did I survive, cope, react, respond?” “What was the physical, emotional or spiritual impact?” “Then and now?” “What do I know now about my stress habits?” “Where is there room to grow, shift, or change?” (more juicy Journal Prompts if desired!)
Listen to the guided practice here, click on “Pandemic Reflection for Growth & Learning.”
The ways in which you learn are unique. The habits around stress and reactivity are hard nuts to crack—and yes we all have them.
But if we look closely at our relationship to stress and our reactive or responsive habits to hard things (stress), we may learn a great deal. We may learn about who we are, and what we want to grow more of and less of in this life.
So I teach Mindfulness (hopefully you knew that already)! What I love THE MOST about teaching, is watching people discover their own path to truth and wisdom when they turn toward hardship and stress.
We all have a backlog of hardship. We all have stress. Be they things, emotions, internal narratives, or circumstances we are inside of or in proximity to, we all share this human experience.
But what is unique to us as individuals is how we make one simple decision. Turn toward or turn away. Use the fodder of our lives to learn through or dig a deeper hole to hide in.
Sadly, the most short-sighted thing about turning away, denying or distracting ourselves when we’re hurting is this. We also lose the chance to learn and grow. To make meaning.
This only happens when we turn toward the “uglies” of our lives and get curious. When we take the compost heap in our bodies, minds and hearts, and consciously begin to turn it. Again and again. Here we can glean our necessary nutrients for learning and growth. We can cultivate wisdom.
Join me, for this not so clean and tidy process, this Spring! We can learn and grow together! You can call it anything you like, I call it my purpose.
Here’s the details: MBSR is Online, for 15 lucky individuals, Wednesday evenings: April 30th to June 18th, 6 pm - 8:30 pm. Includes a Day of Mindfulness Retreat (also online) on Sunday June 8th, 9 am - 3:30 pm.