I have been reading some folks' blogs today about slipping, falling, failing somehow at the task that they have set out for themselves. I'm not entirely sure why, but we all seem to think that we are the only ones who do this. And, yet, there are so many of us who do. It is rare, in my experience, that the road of anyone's journey is straight and free of detours. The assumption that we are alone in our misery and frailty seems to feed the guilt we feel when we indulge in our secret shame - in my case either food or wine.
But I have come to understand through my repeated failures, and yet repeated + 1 recoveries, that there are at least 2 great and wonderful lessons available to us in this process.
The first, most obvious, lesson is to find our triggers. Whatever it is - situation, environment, sugar or a combination or all of them - we are given the challenge of discovering how our Selves respond to these things. And then we get to figure out a way around them, through them or instead of them. We get to see what works in our lives and what doesn't. Sort of like "closet tossing" - we can try on different solutions and see what fits. We will keep those and toss the ones that don't.
The second, equally important but less obvious, lesson here is to understand that we have the tools, the power and the choice to recover our footing. We can get back up again, no matter what knocks us down. No matter how far down we fall, we have the power within us to get back up. We may do it a little bit at a time, or we may do it all at once. But we can do it.
And really, in all honesty and humility, what more important thing do we have to do?
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