Write
Jan 14 2013 in Weekly Comforts by Denise
We write off financial losses, medical expenses. What if we could simply write off life’s bad times? Cross them off the paper on our yellow legal pad entitled My List of Bad Experiences. Eliminate them with a deft and quick movement of our blue pen.
With the flick of some ink, they’re gone. Over. Written off.
What a relief, it seems, to get rid of the bad experiences that remind us that we didn’t do right and highlight in bright yellow our wrong.
Except… When we write off bad times, we also apply whiteout to our lessons learned from our bad experience. And, when we erase our wisdom gained from those tough times, we’ve just doomed ourselves to repeat those same bad experiences over and over.
We can keep the bad experiences, realizing that, as Maya Angelou says, when we know better, we’ll do better.
It’s alright to have experiences that seem full of mis-communications or mistakes or mis-steps. Write about them so you can process what happened and what you now understand and know. Write about your gratitude for what you’ve gained because of the bad experience: compassion, perspective, patience, a coping strategy, a voice.
Write about what seemed so wrong. The bad experiences become the story that shows you how you’re better today and give you the chance to be even better tomorrow.
Read More Comforts
–Fade
–Force
–Color
–Trusted
Resources
- Looking for more comfort? Buy our books, Take Comfort and Take Comfort, Too, and their MP3s here.
Related Articles
- Next: Test, Upset, Halo (caregiving.com)
- Help! I Just Realized My Mom Needs Help! (caregiving.com)
- Setting Your Financial Goals (caregiving.com)
- Finding Your Fit with a Career and Caregiving (caregiving.com)
- In Six Words, How Do You Define Caregiving? (caregiving.com)
- A Community Caregiving Journal… (caregiving.com)
Sunshine=Sometimes said on January 14, 2013
“Write”
Maya Angelou, “When we know better, we’ll do better.”
Denise’s post about learning from our mistakes, our mis-communications, and our mis-steps is very important to me. I write in my journal daily. I write my blog on which I’ve come to love doing to release my feelings of overwhelming emotions daily. I write poetry as a form of self-therapy. Essays which describe my opinions and express them.
All of these forms of writing help me learn how to live my life sanely. I “let go” of the lies in my life through phrases, and sentences, and words so I can find my “truth” – in this case written on the paper with ink.
It gives me peace of mind. It helps me tolerate the untolerable. It shows me the way. Thank God I can do it….
ejourneys said on January 14, 2013
Writing is a tremendous release and teacher for me as well. My journal travels everywhere with me.