Life Lessons: the Spiral Up Effect

Life lessons are such a blessing and such a challenge. Sometimes the lesson is simple and sometimes it takes us years to master it. The one thing about life lessons we keep learning more and more until we have them mastered. I love the concept that I call spiraling up.  Spiraling up means we might come back to the lesson and it might FEEL like we are re-learning the same lesson but really we are experiencing it at a new level with a new insight, a new situation, a new challenge.  And then when we have that mastered, we will spiral up to another place.

A client of mine came into see me after her divorce.  She was run down and depleted. In her marriage, she had completely lost herself and had no sense of self and now post marriage she wanted to makes some changes.  We worked together on figuring out what mattered to her, setting boundaries, saying no and developing a strong sense of who she was. She in essence started learning the life lesson: In order to take care of yourself you need to set firm boundaries.   Then she entered a new relationship, and this was a new test.  She had figured out how to set boundaries with friends/acquaintances but this was the next level: a significant relationship.  A few months in to the relationship she came back to see me.  She was very frustrated with herself because she was really struggling with telling him no, not losing herself, keeping her own life, setting boundaries etc.  She said "I thought I had this lesson and now I am re-learning EVERYTHING" and then I reminded her no you are just spiraling up--hitting the lesson at the next level.  Now you have all that you learned before and you are learning how to implement it at THIS level it is a whole new place.  You aren't re-learning you are learning more.  With this new perspective she was able to relax a bit and remember that she knew how to set boundaries, she knew who she was and she wasn't the same woman who had married her first husband.  She just needed to apply that knowledge to this new relationship.  With a little work I am pleased to report it worked!

When you think about life lessons as spiraling up it gives a new perspective.  While we do repeat  lessons, we don't unlearn all we have implemented before.  We repeat the lesson one step up with new perspective, new challenges and new information that we didn't have the last time the lesson came into our lives.  So the next time you have a sense of deja vu when it comes to a life lesson remind yourself you are just spiraling up.