If you haven’t figured it out yet, yesterday was April Fool’s Day. This reoccurring day always lands on the first day of April and is a super fun day! People play practical jokes on each other all day long. After the people fall for the joke, you tell them, “April Fools!”
I love April Fool’s Day and have played some funny jokes on my family and friends in the past.
This year I decided that I would play a practical joke on all my lovely readers. Knowing that most people look at the photos, read a few lines and then run, I decided that I would give us all a good laugh. I thought of something that would be really dramatic and then I created the photo.
I did an excellent job on April Fool’s because I even fooled my mother! How I did that I will never understand because she was with me until 9:00 p.m. the night before when I wrote the post! This morning she said, “I wasn’t sure what you had done!” I’ve gotta tell you, I laughed my head off. Sorry Mom!!!
Mom wasn’t the only person fooled. As I suspected, many people didn’t make it to the end of the post! I know, I’m a bad girl! However, if Mom had read ALL THE WAY to the end, she wouldn’t have felt so panicky about me cutting my hair all the way off.
Imagine reading a book and having THE END appear long before the book should have ended. You wouldn’t ever know what happened! Well, it is the same as reading my post to the end, watching the end of a movie, or enduring to the end of your hardships. In order to get the most out of the experiences, you have to make it all the way to the end.
Enduring
Running a marathon requires the desire to endure the hardship and pain throughout the run so that you make it to the end of the race. Enduring is more than just a physical condition. Endurance is also a state of mind.
Definition: ENDURANCE –
: the ability to withstand hardship or adversity;
: the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity;
: the act or an instance of enduring or suffering
When a marathon runner endures to the end of the race, there are several rewards for reaching the finish line. Whether he wins a prize or not, he will feel a huge sense of accomplishment knowing that all the training prior to the race prepared his body to endure. Taking the time to practice also prepared his mind to remain determined to the very end.
If the marathon runner doesn’t win a prize, is the race really worth all that effort?
Most people would say that is a personal decision, but in my opinion, the runner wins even if he doesn’t make it to the end of the race.
Why do I think the run isn’t a waste if the person doesn’t win first place?
Nothing you do is ever a waste.
Maybe your mind just shot back to a time when you loafed or totally screwed something up. Those were NOT wasted experiences.
Every person we meet and everything we experience teaches us SOMETHING. It may not be what you want to learn or how you want to learn it, but you have the ability to learn it at that moment. Of course, you can also ignore the lesson and plow forward without learning anything. Not only will that rob you of the knowledge you could have acquired, but most likely you will have to experience the same lesson again in another form or unpleasantness.
Why not just learn it the first time?
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
~ C.S. Lewis ~
When you’re going through an experience that depresses you, rips out your heart, smooshes you in the ground, tries to rob your peace, and ruins your happiness, there is only one thing to do.
Keep moving.
You know what you ultimately want and that’s exactly where you start – with the knowing and wanting. It is not necessary to know all the answers before you begin again. As long as you’re breathing, you have another moment to move further into happiness, love and accomplishment.
4 Easy Steps
There are four easy steps to get you through a lost opportunity, a failure, or an unpleasant experience.
- Learn whatever you can glean from the experience.
- Refocus on what you need and want.
- Set your goal.
- Move forward with renewed vigor, happiness and love.
Yes, it really is that easy and that difficult.
I think often we skip number one, lament over the loss, forget to look up at the new goal, and waste our energy scurrying here and there without happiness.
Painful or regretful experiences are not fun, pleasant or exciting. They are painful and regretful!!! They are meant to test your will and spirit while teaching you some important tidbit of information that will make the next mountain you climb a bit easier.
Have you ever played a video game? If you are playing a video game, you must first complete level one before you can move to level two. In level one you usually earn something like to a key that will unlock something important in level two. Without first obtaining the key in level one, the video game will not let you advance to level two.
You can’t skip level two either. The point of the video game is not to go from level one to level 25. The video game is very orderly. Finish each level completely and then you will reach the end of the video game. Sometimes you finish with left over “keys” and other times you barely make it to the end. Either way, you DO get to the end of the video game IF you keep moving and gathering keys.
“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace ~
You can also choose to stagnate or wallow without learning the lesson, but while you’re in perpetual pause, the world is continuing to move on.
No one likes to experience unhappiness or pain in any form. “Liking” the experience is not a prerequisite to learning from the experience or making it to the end of the hardship.
That brings me back to taking it one step, one minute, one day, and one experience at a time.
“Strength shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald ~
All painful and joy filled experiences end eventually.
Thunderstorms eventually end and the sun comes out again.
The darkness of night may surround you so thick that you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, but eventually it becomes day.
That great movie, fun ride at the amusement park, happy family reunion, sad funeral, depressing money problems, terrifying earthquake, or confusing traffic jam…everything eventually ends.
As long as you keep moving, learn as you go, you WILL reach the end as a winner. How can you see it any other way than winning? You MADE it to THE END! That’s a HUGE accomplishment!
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