Even though I no longer (gulp) need to attend therapy, I rely heavily on my sticky notes. It's kind of my own form of personal therapy, if you will.
My therapist would write sayings and thoughts on sticky notes, things she wanted me to work on and remember. I keep them in my bathroom on the mirror, in my truck, and around me in various places so that I can see them and remind myself of various and important (to me) concepts and thoughts. A lot of people think it's silly and stupid. Some people make fun of me for doing it, but I don't care, because these constant, tiny reminders have helped me in many ways and on many days.
I am very grateful for sticky notes of inspiration, I guess one might say.
Once, in a session, I was muttering and complaining, as is always my habit, and I said something along the lines of, Why, oh why do I always have a lesson to learn? And I was asked to turn my thinking around - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, good, juicy stuff - and, instead, ponder this thought
what if, instead of being taught a lesson,
what if I was put into a situation to help someone else learn something? What if I was the teacher?
Impossible, I said. There's nothing that I can teach people. I can barely manage to get myself dressed most days.
Maybe not right this minute, or during this really horrible phase in your life, she replied. But soon. Soon the time is coming.
Before the job that I am currently in, I worked at a different job, one that I thought would be a really good fit for me. Instead, it was a horrible fit, and I cried every day. Now, granted, some of that was my mental status, but some of that was the outright cruelty I experienced on a daily basis. I wondered at the time why I had to experience it - what lesson was this job teaching me?
Maybe I was teaching someone at that terrible job something.
Maybe when I went to the grocery tonight, and I wiped up the soap that had been spilled on the floor instead of walking around it - even though I didn’t spill it and it wasn’t my responsibility - my actions set off a thought in someone else.
Potentially, my interactions with other people have made positive ripples and not negative, as I’ve so often feared.
I really like my current job, and I work with people who are mostly younger than I am. When one of them left tonight, she called out, "Bye, Mom!" and it struck me, for just a second. I'm not her mom, or anyone else's mom there - of course not. But I bring food and give advice on vitamins and skin care and dating and boyfriends and such and maybe
I'm meant to be where I am because someone needs me. I will probably never know, but instead of being upset that I'm almost 50 and just now in college and working at a job with people half my age who are just starting out - maybe everything I'm doing in my life isn't all a mistake, and it all leads me to where I'm supposed to be.
Just like my sticky note says.
You are exactly where you need to be at all times.
Change your thinking.