3 Important Life Lessons to Learn Now
Blog post by Heidi Gustafson
Mindset & Transformation Coach
Mastering Midlife with Heidi is dedicated to helping middle-aged women live their lives with confidence and joy, instead of merely surviving.
The last four months have been challenging for me, but as always with challenges comes growth. I’ve always said I’m up for growth and development, but this time the challenges really pushed me to the edge of the cliff.
A little brief history to catch you up from Nov 2021 to Feb 2022.
I am lucky enough to have a mother that I am close to and who’s been graced with good health for most of her life. In fact, prior to all of this, she took absolutely no medication and the last time she had been hospitalized was in 1963 when I was born!!
In mid November, I got a call I had been dreading. My 90-year-old mom was diagnosed with “that thing that’s going around” and it was serious. She was in and out of the hospital four times, initially for the C, and then 3 more times with complications that resulted from her first hospitalization.
She’s great now, doing well, back in her own home, thriving, and living her independent life again. But for the four months, it was ROUGH!
I was her caregiver when she wasn’t in the hospital, her advocate when she was, and her daughter who wanted the very best for her and to see her thrive again 24/7. My time, energy, and focus were all on her.
Three lessons came out of this recent growth “spurt” and how I navigated my way through what happened during that time.
✨ Lesson 1 : Learn to let go —
None of this was in my control. The day I realized that was the week after she had tested positive. I had brought her to live with me so that I could care for her, feed her, and help her heal and get her strength back. The goal was to not go to the hospital because Mom didn’t want that. At her age, I think she had seen too many friends go to the hospital and not come home so the goal was to keep her at home.
The first time I saw that this was all out of my control was the day I took her to the ER one week after being with me. Up until this moment, I had controlled almost everything about the situation for the last week… what and when she ate, what supplements she took, her comfort level, her temperature and oxygen levels, etc. I thought I could control the outcome by trying to control the circumstances.
But her oxygen levels had dipped way too low and I feared that keeping her at home could possibly be doing irreversible damage to her body, so I had to have the hard conversation with her about getting medical help. She finally agreed to go, but because of the pandemic, when she was taken into the ER, I wasn’t allowed to go in with her and I didn’t know when I would see her again.
And if I’m honest, the real thought was: IF I would see her alive again.
But her words to me as they wheeled her away were, “I’ll be okay. I’m going to be fine.” It gave me the reassurance that faith is all we have to go on and there was nothing I could do to control this situation, so just let go.
✨ Lesson 2: Ask for help and accept it —
It’s so easy when we can’t control a situation to try to lessen its impact on others. Of course, that means fully putting the weight of the situation on our shoulders and trying to hide our pain from others. Spoiler: that never works.
We tell ourselves:
It’s a sign of weakness when we ask for help
We’re going to bother someone just by asking
It’s our problem, so it’s better if we handle it
Someone is going to judge us
Yet what we forget in our fear is that needing help is normal AND people want to help. They truly want to help. No one goes through life without it getting messy or hard. No one thinks friendship means only getting happy hour margaritas and talking about positive things (and if they do… oh well!).
When someone asks me for help, I’m not frustrated or judgmental of them asking. True friends or family members want to help. Partially because they want you to feel happy, whole, and supported but also because it makes them feel GOOD. They get to give back. They get to have more meaning to their day. They get to be there for someone they care about.
Pride. Exhaustion. Fear. Shame. Bad habits.
But that’s why we have relationships! It comes with the understanding of support and letting someone care for you is letting them be in that relationship with you. Once we put down the burden and look at it objectively, we know we can’t carry it alone. We need others to shoulder some of it. To help us look past our worry and tell us what we need to hear.
How do we do that? It’s simple.
Ask for what you need and then to allow them to help.
And just like that, everything gets easier. You aren’t alone, so don’t face your problems as if you are.
Don’t forget: you are worthy of receiving help. You do not need to earn it.
✨ Lesson 3: Adopt the thought: “Everyone is doing the best they can.” —
That’s right, now we’re trusting in others.
There were a few times that it was frustrating to me because I didn’t feel like mom was getting the care she needed at that moment, or the attention she needed. And it was difficult at times to not allow that frustration to take over me. But when I realized and started putting into action “Everyone is doing the best they can,” things changed in a huge way for me.
When you have this thought and keep it at the center of everything that’s happening in whatever kind of situation (family, work, dating, friends), then it gives you freedom. And maybe more importantly, it gives the other person freedom too.
When we attach to the energy of “they could be doing something better” “they should be doing this” “they should be doing that” - then we shackle other people with our “shoulds.”
When we remember and think and say, “everyone is doing the best they can,” that moves all of us to a higher energy level. Not only will you feel it, but others will feel it as well, and then EVERYTHING SHIFTS in an amazing way!
So these are the three lessons of my recent life:
Learn to let go. Stop being attached to the outcome and stop trying to control things.
Ask for and accept help from people.
Adopt the mantra: “Everyone is doing the best they can.”
Do these resonate with you? Have you gone through a hard time where you did one of these? Or where you wish you had but you took all the responsibility on yourself? Let me know in the comments! 👇
Are you looking to live a more empowered, joyous life?
Let’s get you on that path with accountability and actionable steps! Claim your free call with Coach Heidi to learn more.
This is for you if:
→ You’re ready to stop stalling or sabotaging your own progress
→ You want support and accountability to help you create change
→ You’re ready to go from maintaining to living a life of abundance
→ You want to be proud of and love the woman you see in the mirror
→ You’re ready to take action and make shifts in your life