🔁Repeating The Same Life Lessons Over and Over🔁

We all have difficult times–with jobs and careers, relationships, and our emotional lives–and often, we repeat the same mistakes. When we do, it’s easy to obsess about the details, kick ourselves, and vow not to do this again. But mistakes are lessons to be learned, and if we step back and look for the bigger patterns that make up our lives, we can discover what our lives are trying to teach us.

Time to take stock. Here are some of the major life areas and questions to help you discover those lessons:

Relationships

When you look at past relationships that have gone sour, how do they end? Are you the one left? Why? Are you the one who quits? Why? Do you cut and run, ghost the other, or can you end on good terms? If you had to do these relationships over, what would you do differently: be less accommodating and more assertive, less critical and more tolerant and appreciative–what? What is the moral of the story of your relationships?

Emotions

Where do you struggle emotionally–too angry, too anxious, too depressed, too jealous, too controlling, too critical? What are you most sensitive to? What triggers these reactions? What keeps you from changing them–you blame others for your reactions; you blame yourself; you feel ashamed; you’ve accepted that this is just you; you’re afraid to ask for help.

Goals and Dreams

Do you have goals and dreams? Are you able to move towards them? If not, why not? Perhaps you struggle with procrastination or perseverance, feel trapped in your life, are depressed, and tell yourself, why bother? Or after so many tries, you’ve given up and believe you can’t succeed, that you don’t deserve what you want, that you’re being irrational. Or maybe you just don’t have enough support.

Health

Are you plagued with health issues? Have you developed bad habits that contribute to your problems? What do you need to make your lifestyle healthier?

Happiness

What’s missing from your life? What do you need to be happy? Often it is not things–the bigger house, the fancy car, or even the higher paying job–but something linked to the areas above. You’re lonely and need a close relationship with someone, or you feel trapped in a bad relationship and can’t get out. You are struggling with a health issue, an addiction, or your emotions, and you haven’t found or given up on finding a way to resolve it.

What’s the one thing you need to stop doing that would make the biggest difference in the quality of your life? What’s the one thing you need to start doing that would make the biggest difference?

How can you start today?