Dear Jessica Brennan,
Nobody goes looking for stress, heartbreak or failure. Let’s face it, that sucks. But what I have found personally is that these are the things that are unavoidable – no life is immune to troubles, and without them there is little chance of having great experiences and learning big lessons.
One thing I have noticed is that if I’m interviewing someone for a job and ask them what their greatest accomplishment has been, they almost always start by telling me about their biggest messy failure, and then how they turned that into the best thing in their life.
Without the mess, there is no growth. Fear of the mess, keeps you stagnant. Being safe all the time to avoid the messes is futile. To every life, a little mess will come. Sometimes a lot of mess will come.
To get out of a mess you have to be creative. You have to decide what stays and what goes. What matters and what doesn’t. What do you really love? How great is the loss? What will you never negotiate again?
The more often you make a mess, the more you will master the art of managing tough times, and the faster you will get at reacting wisely and moving on. You will learn that emotion is often the enemy of recovery. The part of you that functions with a cool head in the middle of uncertainty has to be called upon and implemented.
A calculated mess is fantastic because you can look at what the risks are in advance. You know what you might lose, but you take the chance anyway. No risk, no growth is the theory.
However most messes come in a more sneaky way, so here are a few signs to look for. If you’re in a situation where you’re holding on for dear life, contorting your own spirit, trying to make it fit where it really doesn’t, and thinking, even for a moment, that this might become a mess. It will.
If you’ve had the faintest, fleeting thought that you may look back at this part of your life and shake your head in disbelief at what you’ve allowed yourself to put up with; you will look back and shake your head. No question.
Brace yourself, the mess is coming. You might as well beat it out of the bushes now, rather than wait for a surprise attack, because the mess is on its way.
The mess drops on us all. Sometimes you just marry the wrong guy, start the wrong job, invest in the wrong project, get taken by the wrong person, sell short your worth, give away too much of yourself. Usually you don’t even see what you’ve done until you’ve had to clean up the mess. Sometimes you haven’t done anything, and the mess finds you anyway. In any case, cleaning up the mess is always hard and smelly and exhausting. In the clean-up you learn the most about the strength of your spirit; the resilience of your brave face.
The truth is, we all need to practice getting messy, because we cannot hide – the mess IS coming for you. It may come in a series of relentless small messes, or it may come in one big shame-inducing, shocking hot-mess, but it is coming. It just is. Loss, death, breakups, failures, rejection, sabotage, eye opening hind-sight moments of “Wow, what was I thinking?” – they happen to us all.
However, messes are catalysts to deep and profound growth. I should know, I’ve made enough of them.
Love,
Mum xo
