The Inconveniences Of Life

Life is full of inconveniences, that goes without saying. And sometimes, we wish that they were not our inconveniences. 

Sometimes, people in our lives who are supposed to cooperate with us, to lighten each other's load, make life even more inconvenient for us, and we have to clean up their mess or deal with their mess because they have simply shirked responsibilities and do not care. 

It is frustrating if you're always on the receiving end, and you are always the one wanting to do the right thing. 

All these sound too familiar?

Welcome to the club of human experiences. 

It is a false belief to think that we are all equal and the same. We are not. Yes, on the base level we are, red blood, muscular system, skeletal system. We each have digestive systems, we each have got brains, and so on. 

But what goes on internally is as different as day and night. You will never find another person on this planet who thinks exactly like you. Because we are all shaped by our experiences. Heck, even if two people experience the same thing, their perspective of the same experience will also be different because of how they view the world through their past experiences. 

All of us have a filtering process in our world views, this is why we are such complex beings. And this is why we inconvenient each other. And sometimes without even realising it. 

When we view the world and people as inconveniences to us, we have already lost ourselves in that moment, because we believe that other people are responsible for us. We forget that we do have a part to play in that situation too. Yesterday I posted this quote by Louise Hay on one of my social media feeds, and it says: "I do not fix my problems. I fix my thinking. Then the problems fix themselves."Isn't this just true, all of our problems are due to how we think!

I like to also qualify here that it is our thinking that needs to change, does not mean that you go to the other extreme and think that there is no problem. This is the mistake that many on the path of personal development have made, they move from one extreme to another. They go from being a victim to a pollyanna and eventually crash from the illusion that all is well. 

So let me cite an example that just happened to me yesterday, that could help you to understand this better. 

As you may know, I have a 14-year-old, the struggle I have is that her father and I (we are divorced) have different parenting styles, he is too allowing in my perspective. And I tend to set proper boundaries and clear guidelines for my teen. So when decisions are made for my teen, especially disciplinary ones, he tends to undermine them and disregards them. Which becomes a great INCONVENIENCE to me. This means that my teen will not follow the guidelines and boundaries I lay down in future. This has happened multiple times. 

Since this has become a great inconvenience to me, I have become a victim of this situation, right? So how do I change the way I think? I decided that since there was no way to get him to understand my point of view of what is age-appropriate for my teen, I decided not to be a victim of the situation. I decided to change the way I think and to think of other ways to deal with this. Now, I did not start to change my thinking by thinking there is no problem. The problem is still very much there, at the moment. I only changed the way I thought of it. 

Because of my desire to change the way I think, it gave me an idea to use whatever resources I can find to help me. And so I reached out to my ex's mother. I emailed her for help, I explained the situation, with the hope that she will speak to him because I know he listens to her. 

Yes, this problem is not going to be resolved immediately, but the key thing was I changed the way I handled it so that it can in time get easier. 

So life will always be full of inconveniences, every single day we will meet with them. But if change the way we think, and use our resources effectively, we can overcome them.

One day at a time. 

©2019 Shamala Tan

Let me know how I can assist you if you have any questions [email protected]

Shamala Tan is an author, spiritual entrepreneur and healer. Her work focuses on transforming the lives of others on the spiritual, emotional, mental and earthly level.

One of her success stories as an author is to being featured alongside New York’s bestsellers Sonia Choquette, Robert Allen, Arielle Ford, Marci Shimoff as well as Christine Kloser in the book Pebbles In The Pond.

Shamala’s clients include small business owners, holistic practitioners as well as those seeking to find more significant meaning and value in life. Shamala offers laser coaching to her clients on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, offline as well as online.