No One Likes to Lose

 No one likes to lose.

I’m a competitive person and I like to win. If you make whatever we are doing a game (I love games!) or a competition, then I become laser focused on winning and competition can make even a mundane task fun. I’m not a sore loser, but I don’t like to lose. For games and competitions that don’t matter, I can high five the winner, laugh, and shake off the loss instantly.

Today while I was driving home, I was processing some emotionally heavy things and I thought about how much loss I’ve had in this season of my life…especially the summer and fall have been tough. I know that no one likes loss but lately I feel like I’ve been taking loss incredibly hard. The word “loss” made me associate the word with “loser”and I hate losing. I know losing in a competition is not the same as feeling loss on an emotional level, but for some reason I began to wonder if the pain of losing people, relationships, opportunities, whatever it may be, has any connection to the feeling of losing in a competitive sense. I just don’t want to feel bad, whether on a very shallow level or deep level. lol My personality type is the type that has a major fear of being stuck or trapped in emotional pain. Again, I know that no one likes emotional pain, but avoiding it is not everyone’s driving factor. As I’ve been delving more into personality and how it relates to fears and motivations, I was surprised to realize that avoiding emotional pain is a major motivation in my life. I don’t like loss and I don’t like being a loser. 

From losing people to death to losing relationships/people that I thought would be in my life and close to me forever, to losing the day to day interactions with people due to them moving, or moving on, these losses have me in a grieving season which in turn has had me (at times) lose hope, motivation, happiness, and energy. I’m not always there but it’s taking an incredible amount of energy to not stay there in that place. When you lose people that you had envisioned being on your journey with you, you lose plans/visions for the future that they were included in, you sometimes lose your day to day normal routine, and sometimes even parts of your identity.

Why write this? Well, another huge part of my personality type is authenticity. So here I am, being authentic because social media isn't a place for me to go deep. Also when I hear other peoples stories and struggles, and how they are overcoming them, it gives me hope and motivation. So maybe, sharing my story will encourage someone else to keep going. Loss is a part of the human experience. It will continue to happen and have to be dealt with. So we can't just ignore it.

So what is my plan during this season? Try to process and try not to avoid the negative emotions, but truly feel them and experience them even though I want to run and just ignore the pain by being positive. I plan on blogging, writing songs, praying, reading, getting more physically active, and reminding myself that seasons are only seasons. They aren’t forevers. I will focus on truth rather than feelings. I remind myself that if I truly believe in my faith, that the God of the mountain is still the God of the valley, then I need to walk that out and trust it. 

Right now I have more questions in life than answers. I feel so disappointed in the outcome of so many things. And even now I’m fighting the urge to write “but I’m so blessed in so many ways” and list out all the fantastic things going on in my life currently because there are SO many blessings and positive things. As a coping mechanism, I tend to always spin the negative and ignore the pain by focusing on only positive things. That may sound healthy and optimistic, but you have to acknowledge and work through the bad stuff too. So this is me saying, “life sucks in some ways. So I’m gonna acknowledge these icky feelings, face my fear of being trapped in emotional pain, and try to dig myself out of this feeling as QUICKLY as possible!” lol I'm gonna trust that Psalm 34:18 is true: "The lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."

I will be ok. So will you.

It’s Ok to Not Be Ok.

Those that know me know that I love personality tests and learning about myself and others. It has really helped me in self discovery, working in my strengths, working on my weaknesses, and knowing how to better communicate with other types and learn their needs, motivations, etc. Myers Briggs (ENFP here), the Enneagram (I’m 7 wing 6) and Strengths Finder (mine are: 1. Positivity 2. Woo 3. Strategic 4. Futuristic 5. Communication) have been the ones I’ve really delved into. 

As an ENFP/Enneagram 7, one of my greatest strengths is my optimism. I can find the silver lining in any situation. When I saw the image above, it really struck a chord in me. I don’t really remember a time when I couldn’t turn lemons into lemonade or a time when I felt really beat up by the lemons being thrown my way…until recently. Since optimism and lemonade making are kind of my thing, this sort of caused an identity crisis. All of these personality assessments say that I can easily turn lemons into lemonade, and really, I’m such a skilled lemonade maker that I could most likely turn a lemonade stand into a successful business! So what does it mean when I can’t? Big questions I’ve been pondering. 

Well, I’ve discovered that sometimes making lemonade is exhausting…and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean that I’m not grateful for all of the wonderful blessings in my life…there are really too many to count! Because really, I’m living out a lot of dreams I’ve had for a long time. For a little bit, I struggled with that notion…how can I complain about or be tired of the lemons when there are so many wonderful things? I’ve given myself room to feel/experience both. Man, that’s hard for me though.

I’m not here to judge the size of your lemons, but I’ve been known to judge mine. I kept thinking, “my problems aren’t big enough to warrant these feelings/frustrations when there are people dealing with way bigger problems.” I’m typically concerned with others problems and discount or diminish my own. Because I’m so positive, why would I want to dwell on the negative anyway? No matter how big or small the lemons are that are being thrown your way, they are still lemons and it’s not fun. I’ve learned you can’t live in denial and ignore them. You have to deal with it. If you know anything about Enneagram type 7’s, our biggest motivator in life is to escape emotional pain. So this is sort of like my worst nightmare! Lol 

What were/are my lemons? Well, I’m shocked you would ask such a personal question. 😉 Some I won’t go into on here because this isn’t the place, but I will say that having several loved ones in the hospital with covid, fighting for their lives was truckloads of lemons. You feel so helpless. Add to that that, Covid had me extremely sick for weeks. I’m definitly not back to normal yet (I had some crazy symptoms) but I’m doing much better and on the mend. My whole family got sick the second day of our vacation that we had been waiting so long to go on. Then we were quarantined the whole time. So fun. We were out of state to attend the funeral of a dear friend that passed suddenly and were going to just love on the family and support as best we could, along with vacationing a bit. We couldn’t be of any help or attend the funeral. I was devastated and felt such guilt and I’m still processing the loss of that extraordinary life and the spouse and kids left behind to learn a new normal (I wrote a blog years ago if you want to know how I feel about “New Normal”). 

Also, during that quarantine process, while I was sick and out of state, I had some big emergency type issues with my business that needed attending to. I’m thankful for friends who stepped in to handle the situations that arose. My business is thriving and having a record breaking year and I’m so grateful that I can be gone, or get sick, and my team will keep things going smoothly. 

Some other dear friends are fighting for their lives with some health diagnosis’s that weigh on my heart and mind. Another family member has a diagnosis that needs a miracle and I’ve prayed and believed for it but like Proverbs says “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. Even though I haven’t seen the miracle I’m believing for, I will continue to pray and believe. I won’t give up. But sometimes it can get you down and despair tries to creep in. 

All of that, in a short amount of time, piled on with some other issues had me like the person in this cartoon…ducking and wondering how much I could take and when it would all stop. Every day I would wake up to what seemed like more catastrophic news. How much more could I take? I have gone through many tough things in life and consider myself to be emotionally and spiritually strong, but I read an article recently that said “it’s ok to not be ok”. That goes against my nature but I’m learning that it IS ok to not be ok. I give others so much grace with this but hold myself to a high, unattainable standard. I need to give myself the same grace, the same space to process and feel and regroup.

I’m pretty private about struggles, things I’m going through, emotional things, etc. so why share this? Well, I had a gut feeling that I needed to. Not sure why. I could speculate that it’s because someone else might need to hear it because they need to hear that it’s “ok to not be ok”. It could be because someone needs to be reminded that no matter how perfect someone’s life looks we all have issues (another huge value of my personality type is authenticity…I’ve aways gotta be real. I can’t fake or put on a show...but I will give everything a positive spin because that’s my nature).  It also may just be because I needed to get it off my chest, process it a little, and have it be a form of therapy. Who knows? But sit tight, I will be back to my lemonade stand business soon. 😉And if you are going through anything that you need to get off your chest, and you don’t feel like blogging for the world to know your business, I’m a safe, listening ear.