Let Go of Your Failings and Fears

What you are is more powerful than what you are not.

I learned a powerful lesson from a little kindergarten boy struggling over a spelling word.  As the spelling test began, the children wrote their names on their papers.  As a volunteer in the class, I was to go around and make sure the children were hearing the words and keeping up.  The first spelling word was given, you.  Most of the children wrote the letters y-o-u or y-o-o or some other attempt at the word on their paper, and their bright eyes returned to the teacher to listen for the next word. 

One dear little boy wrote y, and then he was stuck.  His eyes filled with angst as he could not remember the rest.  He looked miserable in his chair.  He searched his brain, but could not come up with the other two letters.  He was agonizing over this.  The teacher gave the next word, but this little boy would not move on.  He was upset.  He knew he should know it, and he could not think of it.  Elbows on the table, and hands holding up his frustrated head, he sat.  The teacher gave the next word, but he wasn't even hearing it.  He was stuck, deafened by his frustration, not even hearing the next words to write down.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofoddy/179936072/

I can only imagine what was going through his mind and heart...anxiety, discomfort, thoughts of "I'm behind. Everyone else is getting it. I'm the only one who doesn't know. This is not OK. I am supposed to know this. I'm going to get one wrong! No one else is getting one wrong." These negative thoughts going over and over in his mind froze him. They stopped his progress. They shut him off to the next words that were coming...  He sat in a state of stupor, unwilling to move beyond it.  He was so concerned about what he did not know.

The teacher, in an attempt to help him, went back to the beginning of the list and reviewed the words she had given.  She started, "Does everyone have you..."  As all of the children nodded or said, "yes," he worriedly looked around.  "NO!" he exclaimed in almost a whine.  "I don't."  He was beside himself upset.  There was desperation in his voice, and a yearning...almost as if to say, "Doesn't anybody care?" 

I leaned down and told him it was OK.  "Move to the next word and then you can come back to this one."  He refused to move on.  He folded his arms and lowered his head, upset and in despair.  The teacher and other students were now on the seventh word of the test.  In another attempt to help him catch up, she went back over the list again.  She walked over to him and lovingly said, "Do you want to have to practice all of these words tonight?"  "No!" he replied.  "Well, then write them down please." 

Finally, he started writing the eighth word.  He was still upset, though now he was listening to the next words coming.  He had opened his ears to hear.  He still had all of those blanks, because of his locked focus on what he could not do, did not know. 

Now that he was writing, I told him the words to fill in the blank spots in his test.  I was shocked to see that he knew every one of them!!  He wrote them easily on his paper.  That is when the lesson really sank into me.  Wow, I thought.  He knows these words.  He was about to miss them all, because he was stuck on what he did not know.  He was so focused on what he did not know that he would have missed everything he did know!

The lesson to me:  negative thoughts and feelings about my failings stop me from the progress I could be making.  The more I dwell on the disappointments, or on how I do not know what to do, the more I rehearse self-critical thoughts, the more stuck I will become.  These thoughts and feelings of not being enough, not being as good as others, not having value, being alone will keep us from giving the value that we do have to give!  They will shut us down.

What do you want in your life?  What are you looking for?  Will you let one spelling word become larger than life and keep you from getting the rest of the words right??  Or, will you be willing to let go of the negative thoughts and feelings, and be open to the next things coming?



Don't get stuck here!  There is so much beauty ahead.

No one is perfect!  Everyone makes mistakes.  Everyone gets stumped on words... everyone, sooner or later falls short somewhere.  The secret is to not let that overpower what you do know, what you can do, what the next opportunity and blessing in your life will be... You are amazing.  You are capable. You were put on this earth with an important mission to fulfill, and you can do it...even as imperfect as you are....because you ARE perfect just the way you are. 

What you are is more powerful than what you are not.