In Others’ Words: Choosing Which Moments Define Us
@bethvogt
At some point in our lives, we’ve all been cautioned not to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Some well-meaning person thinks we’re overreacting to a situation – or maybe thinks we’re overreacting to them – and wants us to calm down. Maybe they’re right . Maybe we need to step back and take a deep breath. Or maybe the situation, whatever it is, warrants a little emotion.
Today, I’d like to put a little spin on the whole mountain-molehill cliché and share how my friend Wise Guy taught me not to make a “milestone out of a moment.”
I met Wise Guy at a time when I’d established quite a number of milestones in my life. They were emotional markers I’d set up through the years so I could look back over my shoulder and say, “And then this happened” over and over again.
In doing so, I could explain myself.
My behavior.
My woundedness.
My heart-limp, if you would.
There were the mini-milestones – life events that impacted me. Breaking off an engagement at 20, for example – and how just about everyone told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. These well-meaning friends, of course, didn’t know the whole story.
Yes, that story is another blog post.
And then there was “the” milestone. The experience that loomed largest, that always seemed to ensnare me, as if to say, “Who you are starts and ends here.” Childhood abuse has a way of rooting itself deep in your soul. Of obscuring all other milestones.
Wise Guy challenged me with two questions: “Is the abuse going to be a defining moment in your life? Or just a moment?”
Up until he asked the questions, I hadn’t realized that choosing was an option.
For so long, what had happened to me had been so big, so bad, it was the all-powerful Defining Moment in my life. And I assumed it always would be so.
Wise Guy’s questions – and his counsel – helped me see how I believed the lie that someone else’s actions defined me. Over time, I also realized I could confront the biggest emotional milestone in my life and choose to change it – to downsize it – into just a moment.
Did this happen overnight? No. You don’t define yourself one way for years and years – how you act and react to people and situations – and then magically transform your thinking because someone says, “Hey, you’ve been looking at this the wrong way. Think moment, not milestone.”
But my understanding the truth that “what happened to you doesn’t define you” was the first step to toppling that monumental emotional marker in my life.
Life is both milestones and moments. But we need to carefully choose which moments we commemorate with milestone markers.
And we can choose.
That’s the truth.
In Your Words: Milestones or moments or both: what is your life made of?
In Others' Words: Choosing Which Moments Define Us http://bit.ly/2C8Avpl #choices #perspective
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'Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of #moments.' #Quote by Rose Kennedy http://bit.ly/2C8Avpl
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