On Hitting Walls

Been doing a lot of thinking about the idea of “hitting a wall.” In some cases, hitting a wall can be a good thing…like when it makes you re-evaluate what is going on and maybe slow down a bit.

I have been hitting a few walls however, that I was convinced were caused solely because of “unresolved issues” in my life. So I have been on a path of trying to resolve these issues. If I could only get to the root cause, then I could “fix” the issues and voila…the wall would be gone. Sometimes this worked well…usually with smaller walls…the ones which only need a different viewpoint in order to come up with a better workable solution.

But this did not seem to be working on my bigger walls…the ones related to issues that seemed more at my core. So I tried focusing on “letting go” of these issues, hoping that by “accepting” them, the wall would disappear and I could go forward.

But it was not working. Oh sure, again some smaller issues dropped away, but my bigger issues were still there, no matter how much I tried to accept them…that danged wall kept getting in my way, stopping me from moving forward, making my life so danged difficult. (Of course, writing it like that makes it seem more of an annoyance rather than the true struggle is was/is.)

So I was talking with my therapist, trying to get at the bottom of this once and for all—needing to get to the bottom of this—she, asking thoughtful questions, me, struggling to figure out what on earth was wrong with me. And then a realization…what if the wall was not meant to go away? What if the wall was not a hurdle to be overcome or broken down or gotten through, but instead something that was protecting me from continuing down the wrong path? Rather than being a hurdle to be overcome, what if it was a message saying, turn back, you don’t need to go there, it is not your truth?

By trying to “get past” my wall, I was in essence buying into the “truth” that I have been measuring myself against for a very long time. A truth that comes from outside me and one that often goes counter to my own personal truth. One into which I have been simultaneously trying to fit myself unsuccessfully into and fighting to break out of for a long time now. Rather than questioning the mold, I learned to question myself…to see strengths as weaknesses because they did not fit or were not understood by others.

What I have found was that despite my trying to “accept” myself as I am, I was still, in a way, trying to perfect myself according to these outside perspectives. The motivation behind the “acceptance” was so that I can get rid of my flaws, which is not truly acceptance, now is it?

So I have been pondering this idea this weekend. It feels right. A good and positive shift. Towards true acceptance and figuring out my truth. Struggles can be a good thing I am finding.