The Universe Will Test You. Here Are Some Study Tips to Ace it.

A few years ago my counselor gave me the homework to spend some time by myself expressing the big anger I was feeling about something in my personal life. I was ready….except the fact that the space I was living in at the time was an apartment that shared a wall with my landlord’s home.

Nonetheless, I got off the phone with my counselor and I waited for the lovely sixty-something single woman who lived next door to leave. After about an hour when I saw her drive off in her car, I got off the couch and I went for it.

There was screaming. 

There was pillow hitting. 

There was hitting things with pillows. 

There were sentences comprised almost entirely of different forms (some exceptionally creative) of the f-bomb. 

There was even some roaring. Yep, straight-up roaring. 

It went on for nearly 20 minutes, and most of the stuff that came out of my mouth during that time was truly horrible. And so very, very healing.

I sat down on the couch afterward, alive and clear. I immediately began writing reflections in my journal. And then I heard footsteps in the house next door. 

Hmmm, I thought. She must have just gotten home. Good timing.

But 5 minutes later I heard her car pull up in the driveway.

My body froze with terror. Then burned with shame.

Someone else was home the entire time.

Mind you, I could hear her sigh heavily when she was sitting at her desk in the office/extra bedroom that my place shared a wall with. I had been a skosh louder than a sigh.

I laughed hysterically out of defensiveness. I could feel myself wanting to hide. I remember briefly plotting how I could possibly move out without ever again having to see her or her adult son (who I later learned was the one privy to my explosion).

But then it hit me. It was perfect. A huge part of what I was yelling about that day was no longer trying to make other people comfortable by not expressing myself.

Bingo.

All that to say this: the universe will test you.

You claim that you’re ready to move forward and 19 people from your past reach out to you to reconnect in one month.

You claim that you just want to sit at your desk and focus on that big project you’ve been putting off for way too long and you get a compelling invitation to go off somewhere wonderfully distracting.

You claim that if your co-worker says that thing again you’re going to stand up for yourself, and the next day he says that thing.

You claim that you really are going to stop eating sugar and then your friend serves the yummiest looking homemade chocolate cake at her dinner party.

Big or small, that’s how it works. You make a proclamation to the universe, “I AM!”

And it throws back, “ARE YOU?”

And you know what, sometimes you aren’t quite yet. You had what it took to make the claim, but you’re not quite ready to stand in it. You’re still steeping in your new claim. 

Give yourself a break.

The good news is that once you make that first vow to yourself and the universe that you’re not going to do what you’ve been doing because it wasn’t working for you, you begin building up intolerance.  

You’re building up that feeling in the pit of your stomach and the back of your throat that kind of makes you want to throw up and that lets you know maybe next time, or maybe the time after that, you really will do it differently. 

And you will. Because you know it’s time.

So here’s my invitation: take out a pen and a paper and finish the line “I am done with…” 

Keep writing for as long as you want, writing down as many things as come to you. I recommend ALL CAPS on this one. It feels extra good to write I’M DONE WITH…

Try it out. And then put your list somewhere where you’ll remind yourself what you’re done with. Really feel it when you read it. 

This is how you prep for the big “REALLY?” that the universe will send you.

Want some help clarifying the odds that are stacked against you really standing as you in the world? Check out my signature online program, Yours Truly.