Mother Nature has a way of teaching us valuable lessons…if we’d only look or listen! As a personal coach, I often hear how frustrated clients, friends, and colleagues are about their life experiences. I have one friend in particular whose calls are often (unconsciously, I’m sure), disguised as a friendly chat to see how I am. Half-way into the conversation, however, I learn of the real reason behind her inquiry. It usually has something to do with her job or her kids that she is having a problem with and wants to hash it out. I can tell because she’s much more passionate about talking about them than asking how my life is going!!  That’s okay, I listen, learn, and give her my take on the situation.
I’ve realized something about life after watching a PBS presentation on cultured pearls. It showed how Mr. Mikimoto came to be known for his famous high quality cultured pearl. He learned the process from Mother Nature by artificially inserting an irritant, perhaps grains of sand into the oyster. An oyster needs this to get the pearl started and rather than depending on nature to do its exhausting process, Mr. Mikimoto found a way to speed it up. This irritant is the necessary ingredient to produce a beautiful gem. It simply needs something to spur on its growth.So, too, it is with us humans. We need something to spur us on! Often times we become “irritated” by circumstances in our life.
Think of one such frustration that you’ve had…something that just “irritated” the heck out of you! What were your thoughts about the situation? Did you become SO frustrated that you began judging yourself about how you were handling it? Did you judge another person as to what they thought about it? Were you bothered by the lack of help that you thought you were due? Did people’s reactions or lack of disturb you? Did you feel generally dissatisfied?

If so, let’s go back to how the oyster handles an irritation, a frustration. How DOES the oyster handle those grains of sand? What does it do in order to produce that beautiful gem?
Of course! It PERSISTS! It USES the situation it is in to come to a beautiful conclusion! It keeps trying to get that irritant out of its shell, out of its body! It does everything in its power to EXPELL it not knowing that what it produces is to valuable!
I think you know where I’m going with this. If we PERSIST as does the oyster by USING the frustration as a source of inspiration for ourselves, what might we come up with? By persisting we may stumble on a solution that we never expected! By persisting we may discover other resources for our “problem” than we never could have without the irritation! If nothing else, we can use the frustration as a catalyst for the change we need in our lives!
So the next time you find yourself getting frustrated and perplexed about an issue life is “presenting” you, think of how that oyster feels with that grain of sand “irritating” it to produce that beautiful gem, the pearl. What you’ll find is the gem you’ve been hiding in yourself all along!

Linda McCarrin is a certified holistic life coach whose company, “Ripple Effect Presentations” features workshops called “Seminars for the Soul.” They are available in hourly, ½ day, and retreat format.

Contact Linda McCarrin
P.O. Box 1121Orland Park, Il. 60462
Rippleeffect10@comcast.net

Author's Bio: 

Linda McCarrin is a Chicago-born native. She has had a varied career which has included teaching children and adults, selling residential real estate as a broker, working in the health field and finally coming from her spirit by creating and facilitating seminars on topics such as family and employee communication, learning to be more emotionally present to our loved ones, creating healthier relationships with ourselves, family and colleagues. She shows you how your beliefs influence everything from how you spend your money to who your life partner is.
From an early age her intuition was always serving her. But it wasn’t until she went through what she calls her own “personal tsunami” that she began to see that she was not on a divinely planned path. It took a cranial tumor to help her understand that and so she embarked on a course called, “Self-Mastery…A Journey Home to your Self” from Holistic Learning Centers, Inc. It was here that that she realized how much her past programming had kept her from using her natural God-given talents. As a Certified Holistic Life Coach, she now gives national seminars with her company, Ripple Effect Presentations, featuring the “Seminars for the Soul” series. Linda travels to get the message across that we are here to find out who we are so that we can do what we are good at in order to enjoy a more fulfilling life. Her favorite quote is: “People don’t change until the pain of remaining the same is too great.” Email her for a brochure at: Rippleeffect10@comcast.net or write to her at Linda McCarrin, Ripple Effect Presentations, Box 1121, Orland Park, Il. 60462. Her website is being developed.