Opportunities To Grow

Life Lessons

While we may not recognize it at the time, every challenge we face is ultimately an opportunity to bring more love and higher consciousness into our lives. The obstacles we encounter every day - whether great trials or minor bumps in the road - provide us an opportunity to learn and to grow. By placing obstacles in our path, the universe focuses our attention on life lessons that, on a deeper level, we wish to comprehend more fully. If we choose to, we can view any disharmony in our daily lives as an invitation to shed an old belief or behavior patternin favor of a more enlightened one.

The challenge is to recognize the lesson being offered by a given situation. Often we learn about a positive quality by experiencing its opposite. An impulse toward anger may teach us about love or acceptance. A sense of constraint may teach us about freedom. A situation that appears beyond our control may prompt us to discover our own role in its creation. The lessons presented to us may encourage us to develop soul qualities such as humility, patience, or forgiveness.

Sometimes we are too involved in our present difficulty to find that higher perspective is more easily recognized in hindsight. Yet this doesn't mean we are without the tools to deal with it. Regardless of the size and nature of your difficulty, an attitude of love and gratitude will move you through it more easily and bring resolution more quickly. When difficulties arise, hold a loving thought for yourself and for whoever else is involved. Challenge yourself to find something in the situation to be grateful for, no matter how small, and thank the universe for it. This shift in attitude will shift the situation and your perspective, and it will bring you closer to that deeper understanding your soul is seeking on your behalf. Life lessons don't always come packaged the way we expect them to, and it is sometimes these lessons that ultimately bring us the greatest joy.