I wrote these words/lyrics in my notebook a few days ago:

When you give up the dream
Of the way life should have been
You can start living
You can start living.

You wanted roses
You were given weeds
What’s the matter
Don’t you believe in alchemy?

When you give up the dream
Of the way life should have been
You can start living
You can start living.

There’s the fairytale
And reality
The fantasy
And the actuality.

When you give up the dream
Of the way life should have been
You can start living
You can start living.

I’d been thinking about a situation in my life that up until recently I’d been waiting and wishing and hoping would be different to what it was – sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.

I realised that I’d been putting a lot of energy into hoping something would change that didn’t seem to want to change. Not on my timeline, at least. And perhaps not ever.

It got me thinking about the coaching conversations I’ve had over the years with others who expressed similar feelings. Feelings like:

• My life wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
• This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.
• I never imagined my life/relationship(s)/work/family/health/finances would look like this.

Maybe it’s comforting to know that many people expressed this thought and feeling to me over the years. It seems that if we live long enough we all have things happen to us that don’t fit the original plan or the vision of the way our lives were ‘supposed’ to go. Life gets messy for all of us. It takes twists and turns that we could never have predicted. We find ourselves in situations that our ten year old selves might have been horrified about.

It can sound pessimistic to talk about giving up the dream of the way life should have been. It can sound like a dismal kind of giving up on life. Negative resignation.

But when these words came to me and I wrote them down, that wasn’t the energy of them at all. The energy was positive, hopeful, uplifiting, energising. The words don’t say ‘life hasn’t gone as you imagined so what’s the point?’ They say that when you accept reality as it is today, you can really start living again.

When I accept the reality of my particular situation as it is, I free up the energy that had been tied up in trying to manufacture change that wasn’t forthcoming. I free up energy that was spent trying to control. I free up energy that was stuck in the past, wishing that even that could have been different. I free up energy that was spent in disappointment and denial. I free myself up to see fresh possibilities and make new decisions.

With all that energy that is being freed up I feel lighter, more content without anything needing to change and able to make clearer, healthier decisions for myself going forward. I can see beauty in the way things are and find gratitude for the growth I’m experiencing through the situation. That growth, to me, is the so called ‘weeds’ being transformed into roses. And that transformation is what I feel to be the purpose of life. So really, I’ve got everything I actually wanted 🙂

I hope these thoughts and words are helpful to you, however they might apply to your own life and the situations you find yourself in.

Love and courage always,

Leah