Try This! Do the Life Cha-Cha

I decided to clean out my closet recently. So I grabbed everything inside and threw it on my bed. Four hours later, my room still looked like a tyhpoon had hit and I was so over it. I’m sure you know the feeling. But that’s when I realized my closet cleaning project was just like life: Sometimes things get worse before they can get better. And, really, a messy closet is the least of it all.

Life can be a party if you see it that way. Your mis-steps are part of the dance. (Image by Amy Spencer, Playa Ocotal, Costa Rica, 2011)

• In work, maybe you struggle with a job before realizing you’d be better off doing it differently—or going down a different career path altogether.

• In money, maybe you have to eat some costs to get yourself to the place you want to be.

• In relationships, maybe you get in argument that’s so big, you wonder if you’ll ever preserve the relationship, but maybe the backward breakdown was necessarily to build your relationship back up on a better foundation.

Whatever your struggle is, sometimes touching our toes on the dark bottom is the wake-up call we need to push ourselves with all our might back up to the top.

Going backward blows, there’s no doubt about it. But it’s not a total disaster. It’s also an opportunity. It’s a chance to see what’s not working, how we want to feel and what can be changed for the better. We don’t learn what we’re capable of from the steady move forward. We learn it from the mis-steps backward—and I’m sure the current contestants on Dancing with the Stars would agree. It takes some sweat, pulled muscles, mistakes and tears to learn the dance. That’s life.

Try this: Look at the difficult moment you’re experiencing for the cha-cha that it is. Know that at the end of this tough stuff is a performance you’ll be proud of. So if you’re in the sweat-filled, swear-filled, mis-step stage right now, remember: this is part of the dance. We don’t move forward without a few steps backward. That’s how the cha-cha goes.

What’s your most recent step backward that you can learn from? How is it an opportunity for you to learn from it, grow from it and come back stronger with your next step?

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