Your Triggers Are Your Biggest Lessons From The Universe
Aug 30, 2022
Sometimes in our lives, we find ourselves caught up in situations and even in people that just trigger certain actions and emotions, most often negative. How do we make sense of these? In this episode, Yanet Borrego tells us how triggers lead to your biggest lessons. Sometimes, they show up as a way for the universe to teach us a lesson or help us break patterns. Yanet shares her experience resisting her manager and how she allowed herself to grow from that situation. Join this conversation and gain insights into how the universe puts things and people in front of you to show you how to evolve.
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Your Triggers Are Your Biggest Lessons From The Universe
How is it possible that what triggers you may not trigger other people? It is because there is always a lesson to be learned. If not, you wouldn't have noticed that situation or that person. If not, that person wouldn't be annoying or frustrating to you. Let me illustrate this with an example. My mom lives with me and my husband. She helps us tremendously with everything like the laundry, the dishes, everything. She does work a lot.
There was a time in my life, not long ago, where I kept telling my mom, “Mom, you have to find your purpose. What is your purpose? You need to align whatever you're doing in your life with that.” I kept telling that to my mom and being frustrated over it. I was feeling that she wasn't getting it. There was a moment where I kept asking myself, “What is the lesson? Why is this triggering me so much? Why is this frustrating me so much?”
I quickly realized that whatever I was telling her to do, I needed to apply to myself. Whatever I was telling her to do was a projection from my inside because I knew that my purpose was coaching. I knew that I was working on aligning my career to it. I had created my coaching business a few years back. I felt that I was at the point where I needed to take a decision to further align with my purpose.
The person with the most behavioral flexibility controls the system and has the biggest influence.
I would say 99% of the time, anything that triggers us, it can be situations, behaviors or people, all of those things are lessons we need to get. All of those triggers are actually projections of things that we need to work inside of us, that we are projecting outside of us. Whenever you point the finger to someone else, you say, “It's that person, not me,” there is always a lesson to be learned there. When you notice yourself doing that, you’ve got to take an honest look inside and say, “What is a thing that is triggering me within myself about this person or situation that I actually need to work on?”
Let me give you another example because we learn with stories. I was working in consulting in my last corporate job before I transitioned into full-time entrepreneurship. I had probably the most challenging manager that I had in my career. Not challenging that he was demanding, but challenging that in my opinion, he didn't know how to manage well. He didn't have the knowledge even in consulting to manage our team.
At that moment, I was the one working the closest to this manager. I’ve been in consulting for eight months, and there was this manager before him that I got along with. She was amazing. She left the company and this other manager joined. We didn't see eye-to-eye, to be honest with you. He and I didn't have the same values professionally or in any other area. It was something that was frustrating me because in a way, I felt I didn't respect this person professionally, to be honest with you. I was struggling with myself. I was like, “Why do I need to report to this person? He's asking me to do this, but I don't agree with that.”
I kept going over and over. I was getting so frustrated and suffering, and I escalated it. I was told, “Be patient. We are working through some things.” I'm like, “Why do I need to work with these? Why am I the person that is working the closest to him? Why not someone else?” I started asking all these questions. I quickly realized that the way I was seeing myself was from a victimhood perspective. I was the victim of the circumstance. I knew better. Empowerment is all about recognizing what is going on and taking control of what you can control, and letting go of the expectations of the rest of the things you cannot actually control.
I remember walking from the client’s office, where we were working, to my car. I kept asking to myself, “There is a pattern that I'm running. What is the lesson that I need to learn from this guy, that for whatever reason is triggering me?” Easily, I could have been like, “Okay, he's like that,” and just have gone with the flow. Honestly, I was being very rigid on the way I was dealing with this manager. I kept asking, “What is the lesson?”
One of the things that I learned in my Neuro-Linguistic Programming training, and it's something that I apply every single day of my life, is that the person with the most behavioral flexibility controls the system. The person with the most behavioral flexibility is the one who has the biggest influence. At that moment, I realized that was my lesson. I was resisting him. I was resisting this manager. When you resist something, the other person is going to resist you back. When you push someone, that person is going to push you back because people don't respond to resistance.
You have learned what you need to learn from that situation when the pattern stops repeating.
I realized that I needed to have more flexibility in my communication and my behavior. Instead of resisting, I needed to accept that he was my manager, and I was reporting to him. The next day, I walked into the office and I walked with this presence of acceptance and humbleness. There was a moment that our egos were clashing. In my mind, I'm like, “You're not worthy of my respect.” In his mind, he's like, “You report to me, so you need to do what I say. For me, that was so hard.
I got to the understanding that I was the one that needed to be the most flexible in this communication, because we were struggling with communication and with everything else. The next day I walked into the office and as I mentioned, I was a lot humbler. I had a conversation with him because I tried to be very direct with these things. If there is a moment of having a conversation that may be confrontational, it's important to have it.
I went to him and I was like, “I realized and I've been reflecting that for the last few weeks, I've been resisting you as a manager. I wanted to apologize for that. Moving forward, I want you to know that I recognize that I am reporting to you and I am committed to a client to do this project. I want to make sure that we work through things. We do these because we want to make sure that the client is successful.”
Believe me, that conversation was hard for me because my ego was hurt. After I got the lesson, I stopped repeating the pattern because I got a greater understanding of how I needed to grow myself, of what I needed to learn. You know you have learned what you needed to learn from that situation when the pattern stops repeating. If you keep attracting the same situation or the same job or the same romantic partner with a different face, it means that you haven't gotten the lesson yet.
Whenever you get the lesson, that's where you break the pattern for the first time. The pattern breaks and you continue moving on with your life, and a new pattern may start repeating because you need to get another lesson. This is a lifelong process, this is a lifelong journey, and that's what we need to understand.
Funny enough, I showed up super humble. I had that conversation and was very honest about it. I apologized. Right after that, and I'm not kidding, three days after, he was released from my project and he was moved to a totally different project. I got a new manager that I respected and that I got along really well. It is interesting how the universe puts in front of you the things that you need to learn. The universe puts in front of you the situations and the people that are going to show you how you can evolve and grow. Sometimes, these people or this situation may be uncomfortable and painful, but whenever you release that pain and you break that pattern is when you get the lesson.
The universe puts in front of you things, situations, and people that are going to show you how you can evolve and grow.
I want you to start practicing something. I'm going to give you an actionable item. Whenever you're in a situation that you find challenging, whenever you're in a situation that you feel frustrated and irritated and it keeps repeating over and over, I want you to first recognize that most of the time we are projecting our beliefs, our insecurities, our fears into other people. Part of taking responsibility for your growth is to realize and start asking yourself, “What am I projecting? What is the thing that I can work on in order to have more harmony with the situation?”
I can prove you that is a projection because not everyone is triggered by the same thing. Twenty people can be in the same meeting, and someone says something in the meeting. One person gets triggered and the rest of the 19 people out of 20 don't get triggered. Why? Because that person is projecting something within herself or himself into that situation. Part of taking responsibility for change is starting to ask yourself, “What am I projecting that I'm perceiving out of the situation?”
The second question to ask, “What is the lesson to be learned?” Remembering that whenever you get the lesson, the pattern stops repeating, and you grow and evolve into a new height. It's important to recognize that one, perception is projection. What you perceive is a projection of what you're going through internally. The second, there is no wrong way. There is no wrong decision because there is always a lesson to be learned out of any challenging situation.
If there was not a lesson, you wouldn't be facing that trigger, that situation and that partner. Many times, the people closest to us are the ones that trigger us the most because we spend the most time with them and we love them. Because they're close to us, it's a lot easier to project what we are struggling within. They’re our romantic partners, our moms, our dads, whatever that is for you. I want you to recognize also to remind yourself that perception is projection. The third thing, there is always a lesson to be learned. What is that lesson for you? That's the question to be asked. I hope this episode was super helpful. If it was helpful to you, please share with your friends and family. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Important Links
- https://Calendly.com/yanetbcoaching/clarity-call
- https://www.YBCoaching.com/wellness5minsroutine
- https://www.Facebook.com/yanetbcoaching
- https://www.Instagram.com/yanetbcoaching/
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/yanet-borrego-coaching/?viewAsMember=true
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqxL829o0Vk-QdY12F-GgMw
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