Be Refined, Not Defined

After being faced with disappointment, or a negative outcome have you ever just sat there thinking to yourself why me?  It may feel like a lonely spot at the time, but we have all been in that position before, so you’re definitively not alone.  This pivotal moment is where people are either made or broken.  The proverbial fork in the road where we decide to keep on trying or to let this moment be our demise.  People sometimes refer to it as a defining moment in their life.  I challenge that way of thinking and assert that one experience should not define an entire dynamic life because a person should not forever be defined by one experience.  Sure it might be a remarkable turning point, but instead it should be a refining moment.  The moment that helps create a better, stronger more successful person.

If you’ve ever watched a sculptor sculpt anything with a clay medium, you’re aware of what it takes to make a beautiful work of art.  It starts out as a rough art medium with no specific structure, looking like absolutely nothing at all.  Sometimes throughout the process the sculptor will add smaller globs of clay to the sculpture and mold and shape it incorporating it into the entire object.  Then over time, with sweat, effort, and refining movements using their hands and tools, it begins to take shape until the sculpture eventually emerges as a beautiful work of art.

This is how we need to attack those moments of misery, failed attempts, broken dreams and despair.  It starts out as something that is completely ugly and undesirable, much like a boring glob of clay.  It’s difficult to see what the end result will be and what can come from something so unattractive.

Just like sculpting a work of art we must take time, concentration and care to refine ourselves through these moments.  Each obstacle and challenge we face is like adding on another ball of clay to the sculpture that we must incorporate into our beautiful and successful self.  These adversities are added to our lives in the midst of our pursuit of our goals and dreams.  We must take them in stride and like the artist scrape away the unwanted bits that are not helpful to keep and let them go.  Then we mold and shape the lessons and experiences left from these moments using them to refine us into a better person. 

Therefore we can’t let our situations and these moments define who we are.  Sure these situations will influence our lives, but we cannot let them control our lives, we need to be in control of our lives. That is the difference between being defined and refined.  If we choose to be defined by our circumstances we are never controlling our destiny.  Instead we become bystanders in our own lives instead of active participants.  Who wants to be the audience of their own life?  We should be the director, producer and also play the lead role.  It’s our life!

We should constantly be looking for what we can learn from these experiences and how those lessons can make us into a better person.  Tomorrow is coming and we can’t dwell on the negative for too long.  It’s alright to feel the frustration and the pain for a little bit, that’s a natural part of the process.  An artist takes time to look at what they will sculpt from to decide on a plan of action to start working.  In a similar way, we too can take some time to create our own plan of action to sculpt our situation into a way to make us a more successful person.

With each refining moment, we are constantly improving, much like the sculptor improves their sculpture with each carving gesture to become increasingly accurate to their vision.  With each challenge we are faced with we are gaining preparation for something greater in our future and getting that much closer to becoming who we want to be.

This won’t be the first time we will meet a challenge, and it certainly won’t be the last.  But what we do with it will determine whether we are refined or defined.

Never Stay Down

Imagine that you’re walking on a city sidewalk on your way to run an errand.  You’re walking with a purposeful stride, the sun is out, life is good, and you’re on a mission to get things done.  As your head is on a swivel taking in your surroundings at eye level, there is chip in the sidewalk ahead of you.  It’s sitting there with impending misfortune for your next few steps and you’re completely unaware of the foreshadowing that is about to become reality.  The toe of your shoe catches the jagged sidewalk and you stumble and fall to the ground.  After gathering yourself, you stare back at the chip that led to your demise with severe disdain as you check your hands, elbows and knees.  With no physical damage done, your cheeks are a bit flushed with embarrassment.  Then without a second thought, you get up and continue on your way to reach your destination.  I take you through this scenario because we’ve all experienced something similar, and in each situation we always get up and continue on our way after we stumble or fall. 

Life is full of unexpected chipped sidewalks laying in our paths as we pursue our goals.  Sometimes it’s the loss of a job, failing a class, a break up/divorce, financial struggles or anything else that we don’t anticipate that makes us stumble and fall on our path through life.  But similar to the above scenario as if it was an actual chip in the sidewalk that we stumbled on, we need to get back up and continue on our way.

When life’s unforeseen obstacles make us fall, our pride might take a hit and quite often there is some pain that comes with it.  Sure it may hurt for a while or we might be lucky and it’s a short lived pain.  Ultimately however, it will not hurt forever, and we can heal from those heartaches and pains that make us feel like a failure, or that we aren’t good enough.  What matters most is that we don’t give up moving forward and just sit there stationary in our lives because of one misstep.  Imagine if you were still sitting in the spot where you last tripped and fell on the ground.  There’s no way that you would sit on that sidewalk for days, months or years without getting up.  So if you wouldn’t let that happen, then let’s not get stuck in the rut we’ve fallen in after getting knocked down in life.

Sure it seems easy for me to say to you from outside the box as I sit behind my laptop writing this, because I don’t know your story or what you’re going through.  But I do know that you’re a strong person and so am I, and we’ve all survived difficult times in our lives before.  Quite often it is very tough when we’re in a situation to see a way out of it, but we’ve survived hardships before, so we can do it again!  This isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last time we stumble and fall, so let’s get back up and keep on pursuing that dream, chasing that goal, and making a difference before we stumbled and fell.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through experience it’s that life doesn’t always go the way we’ve planned it.  It’s filled with those cracked sidewalks to make us trip, and fall, and it’s filled with plenty of detours as well.  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but there’s always a detour when it comes to life and it certainly isn’t always linear. 

That’s when we need to dig deep within ourselves to find that intrinsic motivation and refocus on our goals.  Figure out what our true motivation was at the beginning of our journey before we fell.  This is the first step to help picking ourselves back up.  Sometimes there is some pain in getting back up, and we need others to help us out.  It feels dependent, when all we want is independence, but there’s nothing wrong with that.  That’s the time when we look to family and friends, people in our community, or our social/professional network that can help get us back on our feet after getting knocked down.  Other times we need to pay a little more attention to the details and maybe retry something with a little more effort but just slightly change it.  Then the next time that chip in the sidewalk gets closer, we can step right over it, and keep on walking.

It’s important to remember that no matter what, we should not stay down.  We need to take some time to make sure we’re ok and ready to get back up.  Then make it happen, and stand stronger than ever while moving forward with the purpose and determination headed in the direction of success that we were moving towards before we fell.