Have you hit a pothole lately? This could be in the top 10 of most common experiences. It is Pothole Season!
In New England it may be one of our worse. Enough money to fill them wouldn’t be enough to keep up with what Nature dished out this winter. Sometimes we can see the hole up ahead but hit it anyway, or we once in awhile miss it and just don’t know how that happened.
I find worse than the damage to my vehicle is the damage to my Ego when I manage to forget where the biggest ones are on my well travelled routes. And BAM!@#$%. Hit one.
Those potholes we may all agree warrant the curse words they also catch and defining them as a ‘just a disruption in the surface, formed by fatigue and frequently invisible’ does nothing to make them pleasant.
And you can find Potholes everywhere. They are in the road of our Life too. Life Potholes!
That is what I call the times my emotions have sunk, I am low. There has been a disruption in my Life, it has worn me out and I am fatigued. Frequently I don’t see it coming. But there is that feeling of hitting bottom, feeling low, stuck in a rut, what is the damage going to be this time. Sound familiar? Potholes…
I discovered the image of a pothole, a VERY BIG POTHOLE when I named a particular time when I wondered what the heck just happened. Yesterday all is good and then suddenly I am stuck. I took the vision of the potholes outside in the road to potholes inside, in my Life. It happens, we hit them. 
While there is no good reason for potholes in the streets there are things about the ones in our Life that we can work with.
Start with knowing we all hit potholes. We don’t need a license and car to hit them. We don’t even need to be the driver though if you are frequently hitting potholes you might first look to see who is really driving. It should always be you.
So I get this image of being in a Pothole. Once I know I am at the bottom it actually feels better, sucks dreadfully, but feels better because I know where I am and how bad it is. I look around, what did I bring with me? Do I have anything for entertainment while I sit waiting for a tow truck? A good book, a walk outside, conversation with a friend….. a front porch, pen and paper.
Unlike with the traffic out in the streets we can sit in our Pothole for as long as we want. Only sitting there though is wasting Life, just gotta say that. How long you sit at the bottom of your Pothole is how long you are not sort of out there living. We need to spend some time there though, the biggest reason you might be hitting lots of Potholes in your Life is you aren’t staying in it long enough to know why you are there.
That is why we have these Potholes. Always, always, you will find treasures waiting for you in the pit of your Pothole. Little gold nuggets, slices of silver and sparkling diamonds with names like self-love, forgiveness, strength, spirit, trust, more love and the best, the biggest nuggets are answers to your questions. They are waiting for you to retrieve them and bring them to the surface. Put them in your pocket and climb out.
We don’t always find those gifts, we don’t have our eyes open, and we don’t even know they could be there. That is why we fall into the same Pothole time and time again. And again. Until we find the gift.
This is how I took on my Potholes. First, I recognized these bumps in my road were not making me happy and they were not working for me. I saw how I would fall helplessly downwards then crash to the bottom. Hmmm, looks like a pothole in the road. So I saw myself getting back out. Okay, hope that doesn’t happen again. But of course… here comes another. As I was falling in there were billboards with words like judgment, saboteur, poor-me. What? So I imagined the Potholes getting smaller and smaller until I could step over them. I realized they are part of Life and there was no magical patch to fill them all in with.
That is when I saw they held gifts. At the bottom of every Pothole was my personal treasure chest. I was feeling better about something for a reason. What is it? Ahhh, where did that answer come from? How did I change my feeling, my perspective, and my path? The signs on the way up were positive, happy and felt great.
So these Potholes aren’t all bad? Now not only do I need to accept them I need to see how they can work for me. I can make them smaller but if I want to get the gifts out I need to be able to step into them.
I don’t always find my treasures. What knocked me into my Pothole might have me blinded temporarily. Then once I feel the slightest motion of upward movement I recognize that I am feeling better. It comes usually when I open my eyes; I can see lightness and a way out with my gift in hand.
I am not advocating to go looking for Potholes but know you do fall in them and there is a valuable reason for it. You can always look back at the last Pothole without going down it again. Just take a peak and see if you can discover what that gift was. So keep your shovel handy and when you fall into the next one start digging, find your treasures. Bring them to the surface with you. You will find they are what forms your road map of Life. Get on that road, potholes and all. Enjoy!
Dedicted to Trish who coached me towards reaching my top goal this week with her wisdom and energy.
