The Story we tell ourselves about what left matters

Steven Furtick says, "get your eyes off who left and focus on what was left."

Furtick's message was about relationships. And I can relate. But the message also goes well beyond that. Just as easily as we can be thrown for a loop by relationships that end, we can be toppled by situations that end.

Jobs.

Experiences.

Where we live.

When things end, disappointment usually follows. Often because we start focusing on what's gone and not on what was left. And in that disappointment, we can begin to feel more alone instead of more put together.

Because everything that leaves, if we look hard enough, in EVERYTHING we can find something valuable that was left behind. In the pain of ending, if we look hard enough, we can always find a new beginning.

This past week I led a 3-day training. I always say if we bond in the training the way I hope we will, it will feel more like an experience than a training.

That was definitely the case this week; we bonded.

Then I also say, in the aftermath of those experiences, when they end, I struggle with an emotional hangover. I get so moved by our shared experience, I get so settled into and completed by the power that comes with human connection, that when the connection is gone, I feel alone.

That is the challenge. When people are gone. Or jobs are gone. Or we move to a strange town. Or when we've trained six months for a race and now it's over. When all of these things that one way or another serve to complete us, when they leave, we can immediately begin to feel incomplete.

We can begin to feel alone.

We are not, though, we are simply focusing on what left and not on what was left behind.

In everything that is gone in my life, if I think long and hard enough about it, I can think of something that was left.

In everything gone in my life that feels like a hole, if I think long and hard enough about it, I can find a building block. My problems start when I focus on the hole and not the building.

Most of our problems start there, with the way we tell ourselves the stories of our lives. And one of the biggest stories we tell ourselves an unhealthy version of is the story about things that are gone.

The story is never about gone, it's always about what's been left.

Because what is gone is gone, but we are left to carry on. And usually, if not always, what is gone left us something to make us a little bit better at carrying on.

If we tell ourselves a healthy story about what is gone....