Some would say your greatest gifts come to you through your tragedies - and I agree. Throughout my own life, I've been given so many opportunities to experience pain - whether physical, emotional, mental, financial, or otherwise.
At times I've felt sorry for myself and lost myself in a cloud of despair. At others, I couldn't see why I was going through the difficulties and kept hoping someone else would come into my life, wave a magic wand and make whatever was bothering me at that moment all better. That almost never happened.
Thankfully, as I got older, I began to see a pattern of learning that came after every difficulty. It wasn't always deliberate or conscious, yet it happened again and again. So I started looking for the lessons within the pain and got much better at dealing with problems/pain on my own.
Recently, I decided to publicly stand up against racism and express my support for my clients, staff, neighbors, and friends who are black or of color. I sent out an email to 10,000 or so clients of my business letting them know that we love and appreciate all of them - and were taking this time to stand up for Black Lives Matter (& in honor and support of our black/of color clients, staff, friends and neighbors.)
The feedback I received was all positive - or so I thought -until this week when a staff member forwarded several negative emails she'd intercepted. I was accused of preaching, of not caring about our white clients, and of supporting a terrorist organization. A few people just asked me to remove them from our mailing list and another, missing the entire point of the email, replied with "ALL LIVES MATTER!"
In that moment, I was angry, hurt, and saddened. I wanted to respond cavalierly, throwing negative words back at everyone who sent them my way. Instead, after taking time to clear my head and remember who I am in my heart, I removed them from our email list and let them go. With the one I chose to respond back to, I decided to reply with love, compassion, gratitude, and appreciation for their letter and past business and to wish them well.
I also decided to share this whole experience on Facebook - and it was the most-liked post I've had all year. 74 people replied to me and only one of them was the least bit negative. The rest responded with love, compassion, gratitude, and appreciation.
Did I hear back from the negative client? No - at least not yet. But the amount of positive energy and emotions I got back (so far) was almost 75 times what I sent out. Amazing!❤️
My aha from this is that when you get clear in your heart about who you are, what you choose to embody, and how to act, it will come back to you many times over - and from many more sources than you could have imagined. Use the pain as a tool to refine your clarity rather than a haze to cloud your vision.
My personal call to action is to embody this philosophy in the areas of my life where I want to see change. If my results are to be multiplied in ways I like and want, I need to be a clear and perfect channel putting out energy that matches the results I want. In short, by mastering myself, I can be my own genie and make my dreams come true.
And so can you!🌟