Do you ever feel like you’re living out the same story over and over? Like the same issues and problems keep cropping up in your life, even though you’re self-aware, even though you’re trying so hard to grow and evolve and improve and leave your old troubles behind?
You’re not alone.
Repeatedly confronting the same kinds of issues doesn’t mean you’re broken, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed at life, and it doesn’t mean you’re not growing.
Life happens for you, not to you. When the same issue comes up for you again and again, you have an opportunity to reexamine how you confront and resolve that issue. Maybe you know something now that you didn’t know the last time this thing came up, maybe you have a different perspective, different resources, different values or priorities.
Most of our unhappiness and distress around these repeating concerns is because we typically think of life as a linear journey. And if life is a linear journey, as time passes we progress along a path that only has two possible directions: forward and backward. So when a problem that we thought we had previously moved past comes up for us again we feel like we are going back in time. We think this cannot possibly be forward motion, so it must be backward motion, therefore we’re regressing and OMG we haven’t actually made any progress so really what is the point?! Are we destined to keep reliving the same shit over and over and over until we die?!
The answer to that question is both yes and no, and here’s why:
Life is more like a spiral staircase than a straight line. As you ascend the spiral staircase of life you may see the same scenery again and again. Your vantage point will of course change as you climb higher up the staircase, but oh, hey, you’re seeing that same thing again, no big deal because that’s just part of the process of climbing the staircase. When you look at life this way you realize that coming across the same problems or issues, even when you thought you had been there done that, is completely normal and totally okay. It’s part of life. You’re not regressing or going back in time or failing. You’re always moving forward, learning, growing, ascending.
Things come up for us when we’re prepared for and capable of dealing with them, regardless of how much our limited minds may think that’s not true. Trust that the right things resurface at the right time for you to address them.
Simply having the realization that you’ve done this thing before is incredibly powerful. That realization allows you to step outside of habitual responses. That awareness creates a little separation between you and your ego so you can stop judging your experience and simply experience it in whatever way aligns most deeply with who you are in that moment.
So when you realize, hey, I’ve done this before, pause before you let that sinking feeling drag you down. Remember that life is offering you the opportunity to reframe, reexamine, and react differently to this problem. Give yourself the space to expand outside the boundaries of your ego, and the freedom to act from a place of alignment. Suddenly old problems become new opportunities, and you have the power to solve them.
