Herrington: Return to Sender

When we revisit an idea that we may have abandoned previously, we can come at it with fresh eyes, but we may also drag back to it all of the misgivings we left with. Having apprehensions can get in the way of getting things done in the present if we are overwhelmed by things that have happened in the past. It is up to us to make sure that from the moment we leave something behind until the moment we pick it back up that we take the steps we need to meet the challenge of finally coming to grips with what it was that had us so off put in the first place. Learning how to make our former problems into resolved moments in the future is what most of the problem solving in life is all about, and most of the time this requires that we work on ourselves emotionally.
It may be that we have had a traumatic event, something say that has injured us, and we will need to take the time needed to make a full recovery. Of course, this will take time, but there is way more to it than simply stopping the bleeding and stopping the pain. An emotional imbalancing occurs when we come to the point where we have to come to dealing with the loss of confidence we feel when we fall or have a crash. How can we get back into the saddle? Who do we get back behind the wheel again? What if we also injured someone else? What if we have lost our faith and confidence in doing a certain activity that we really enjoyed: trampoline, bicycle, motorcycle, car, hunting, martial arts, walking in the woods, flying a plane, skiing, or hang gliding? Once we have lost that zest and sense of adventure, it may feel like it will never come back; the risk is just too high of having another traumatic event.
Being in a relationship may seem like the most wonderful thing in the world, the feeling of being so intimate and needed and adored. Our lives can be turned upside down, and our emotions can become a roller coaster of activity. If in the event of human activity anything traumatic happens that destroys this relationship, we may feel abandoned, lost, disrespected, lied to, and worst of all, unlovable. What can we do to recover from a broken heart?
When we go back to work after being gone for a while, the technology can have changed, the personnel, the circumstances, the rules, and the pay may have all changed. If we have stayed the same, then we may be in for a rude awakening. If we have been out of the flow or out of the loop, we may return to things with apprehensions and misunderstandings, looking for things that no longer exist. The major thing we can do to prepare in each of these circumstances is to transform ourselves by updating our skills, learn new pathways for dealing with upcoming technologies and strategies, and above all, keep ourselves emotionally in the game so that we are not absolutely surprised by what it is that we might face in any new situation.
It is for sure that we will never be able to anticipate every new turn of every situation. What can we expect with a world of 7 billion people, 5,000 languages, and over 200 countries? The permutations and interrelationships are countless, but we do not need to simply throw ourselves against the wall and see what sticks. There are definite things we can do that will assist us in our returning to anything, which for some reason tends to happen a lot more often than we might think it might.
One idea that seems to meet this need is to stay connected and aware of things. Think of this as a constant collecting of things revolving around the thing that you left. If you were in a sport, keep track of team news and gear inventions, changes of the rules, or news about individual players. Anything that might keep us mindful of this thing we left behind will assist us in working through it. We may have had an injury and we are down for the count; we are off of the field but not out of the game. We need to have a steady dose of what it is that keeps us mindful of who we are and what the game means to us. Recovery is slow and getting over an injury can take a year or more, but this does not mean that we are out of things altogether. We are just stepping back momentarily.
If we have been emotionally taken down, in a relationship or on the job, in school or in a wreck, the emotional disability we need to fight may be fairly similar. We are hurt, angry, less confident, and even may lose our sense of hope that we can ever re-achieve what we had previously been capable of. Many soldiers, star athletes, high performers, and elite thinkers and artists have been caught up in a loss of what to do next when they succeed, and losing or falling can be very much the same in terms of the emotional content. Once e we have accomplished something so highly acclaimed, how will we beat that? How will we meet the challenge of doing anything as good? How do we meet the standard we ourselves have set? How do we out do ourselves? What if it was a fluke? What if that was as good as it gets? If we are number one, the let down is that being at the top is as high as it gets, and we have to live with that.
No matter what we need, what we do, what we have, there is always more, and what we need above all is real satisfaction. With age comes the realization that we are going to come to a point where we will have had our best day. We will have done it all and that will be all there is. Coming to this point over and over in life is the series of test cases we need to adopt this moment. One day we will have done our best and that is all that we could have asked of ourselves. In that moment, when we have done all we can, we will have returned to the idea of being our very best over and over and over. Getting that right is a life long journey. That last step is the one that will be the final one. What is it that we will return to then? Back to what? This is a topic we will have revisited a million times. Once the apprehensions are over, we will be ready and the next step will be the final answer. Letting go is being ready for that.

runningturtle87