Today’s challenge of Dara’s Life Liberated Challenge is dispelling the ‘happily ever after’ myth.
I think that it is safe to say that most of us grew up watching fairy tales where the fair maiden (us) get rescued by the brave knight, we marry and then everything after that is fabulous.
The problem with this expectation is that it is false, untrue, and wrong. So we go into marriage (or another event) expecting that everything is going to work out and we don’t have anything to worry about.
So when something does go wrong, we believe that we aren’t good or that we made a mistake or that life is not fair. Can you relate?
We live in a world of opposition. In order to have light we must have dark. In order to feel joy we must be able to feel pain. Otherwise, we would live a life of beige!
So 50% of life is ‘negative’ and 50% ‘positive’. What do you take from this?
This concept is so liberating to me because when ‘negative’ things go wrong, I do not have the thought- ‘something has gone wrong’. Which as we know can spin and spiral into all sorts of other negative thoughts, doubts and questions.
Another liberating concept from the 50/50 rule is that it helps me manage my own expectations. I want you to think about an experience where you spent a lot of time planning something (like a dinner party) and then someone cancels, your buns don’t rise as high as they usually do and then your husband comes home late so you don’t have as much time as you thought with out the kids.
What do you do? Do you let the negative thoughts spin and spiral (I like to compare it to a tornado that picks up more things as it moves and grows)? Or do you recognize that the 50% negative is in force than the 50 % positive?
There is a natural balance. It will work out. You get to decide how you react.
Check out today’s video where I share some personal stories of how the 50/50 concept has really changed my life.
https://zoom.us/rec/share/-eBsK6Hb339IHrfH5WDYS_U4R4fMaaa81iJN8vcOmUaXD5MOq1m0G7xKn3slapIk
After you watch my video I want to challenge you to turn to your journal (or write down however you like best) and write down a really negative experience and then within that experience, write the positive. You many need to search. It is worth doing.
Second writing challenge: write down one of your most positive experiences and think about the negative that happened there.
Third writing challenge: write down what you make the negative and positive experiences mean. What meaning do you give them? Do you make something going wrong mean something negative about you? Why? I want to challenge you to see if that thought is true.
