Healing doesn\u2019t happen in a\u00a0straight line. You get the flu, you fall into a downward spiral and you feel\u00a0awful. A few days later, you start to feel better, you go on an upswing and\u00a0you\u2019re relieved that it\u2019s over. But the next day, you feel badly again and you\u2019re\u00a0back down in the dumps. You feel defeated. Disappointment and depression set\u00a0in\u00a0\u00a0 . . . until the next morning when you wake up and you feel better again. The spiral can be dizzying but we\u2019re stuck with it.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0word \u201cspiral\u201d is an age-old symbol for spiritual development. In some circles\u00a0it represents life\u2019s journey, the way we move outward and inward, learning, expanding,\u00a0returning and transforming. Buddhism teaches us that if we can stay aware and\u00a0avoid taking the first step into a negative way of being, we are on our way to
freedom as each stage on the journey unfolds naturally round and round from the\u00a0previous one. This means there are no warnings as the spiral goes up and down. Ultimately\u00a0it doesn\u2019t mean anything.You can spiral downwards into despair or you can spiral
upwards into clarity. And you can count on the fact that you\u2019ll do both.<\/p>\n
Anais\u00a0Nin said, \u201cWe do not go in circles. We advance in spirals.\u201d<\/p>\n
So many things in life happen in a\u00a0spiral. Good days and bad days. And more often than not, there\u2019s nothing we can\u00a0do about it. Calvin and Hobbs cartoonist Sam Watterson said, \u201cYou know, Hobbs,\u00a0some days, even my lucky rocket ship underpants don\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have a private trainer who puts\u00a0me through my paces for an hour twice a week. Weight training. Stretching.\u00a0Balancing. Last week, I felt my feet solidly underneath me. My balance was\u00a0dependable. I felt strong and the weights felt like extensions of my arms. I\u00a0was up for anything she threw at me and I ended the session feeling uplifted. This\u00a0week, it was a different story. My balance was shaky and I felt groundless. I\u00a0couldn\u2019t feel my feet beneath me, the weights felt heavy and I was hoping shewouldn\u2019t ask me to do anything too challenging. When the session was over, I\u00a0was far from feeling uplifted. I couldn\u2019t stop focusing on what had gone wrong.<\/p>\n
I had to come up with a way to feel\u00a0okay about having a bad day. I reminded myself that it probably wasn\u2019t as terrible bas it seemed and even if it was, tomorrow there would be a different outcome. I\u00a0just needed to ride the spiral, notice whether I was up or down and stop trying\u00a0to fix it. Life just happens that way. And as\u00a0usual, acceptance is key. If we can find just a little bit of mindfulness to remember that nothing stays the same and neither do we, we can ride it out and hitch a ride back on the upward track.<\/p>\n
When I was in the ballet, I worked\u00a0hard to find out where balance started in my body and I placed my attention\u00a0there. Still, I had good days and bad days. All the other dancers had them, too.\u00a0We felt vulnerable and when we lost our balance, we found a graceful way to\u00a0catch it again. We performed a particular ballet in which I was required to\u00a0step out onto the stage on the toes of one foot, balance for a moment and move\u00a0on. I was successful most of the time but sometimes I wasn\u2019t. Instead off\u00a0getting freaked out, my task was to carry on as if nothing bad had happened. I\u00a0needed to clear my mind of the stumble and focus on the beauty of what I was\u00a0doing. I didn\u2019t want that mistake to take over. Mistakes are not failures.\u00a0They\u2019re opportunities to grow and become courageous.<\/p>\n
I love to watch gymnastics. When the\u00a0girls get on the balance beam and do astounding things, it seems impossible. But\u00a0sometimes they fall off. They get back on and their challenge is not to get thrown
into self-doubt. They have to pull it back together in few seconds without chastising\u00a0themselves as they head back upwards.<\/p>\n
Olympic gold medal winner, Simone Biles\u00a0says, \u201cAbsolutely take pride in your output on your best days, but make sure\u00a0you take pride in your output on your bad days. You have to fight through some bad
days to earn the best days of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Human beings make mistakes. We also\u00a0create beauty. One day Vincent Van Gogh was cutting off his ear. Another day,\u00a0he was painting \u201cStarry Night.\u201d This is an extreme example but the point is the\u00a0same. You can have misery one day. You can have glory the next. Neither of them\u00a0are stagnant. They are both dynamic, they will change and our job is to\u00a0surrender to what\u2019s happening, stop judging and trying to figure out what\u00a0caused it and leave ourselves alone.<\/p>\n
Whatever the difficulty, acceptance\u00a0is always the answer. Sometimes it\u2019s an annoying thing to embrace but it\u2019s the\u00a0only way to go that won\u2019t bring us suffering. Instead of labeling it, we could\u00a0ask ourselves, How did I face that challenge? Do I feel good about it? No one\u00a0can guarantee a good or a bad day, but we can guarantee that it will change. When\u00a0someone asks, \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d on a bad day, and you say, \u201cFine,\u201d that doesn\u2019t\u00a0mean you\u2019re lying. You\u2019re not talking about what\u2019s happening to you. You\u2019re talking
about how you\u2019re facing a day with a lot of challenges.<\/p>\n
Robert F. Kennedy said, \u201cChange is\u00a0a motivator. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Healing doesn\u2019t happen in a\u00a0straight line. You get the flu, you fall into a downward spiral and you feel\u00a0awful. A few days later, you start to feel better, you go on an upswing and\u00a0you\u2019re relieved that it\u2019s over. But the next day, you feel badly again and you\u2019re\u00a0back down in the dumps. You feel defeated. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2755,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions\/2755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}