HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT LESSONS FOR YOUR LIFE
Otherwise the Universe Will Choose Them for You -- by Gary Null, PhD
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all!”
— Rumi
The Tests No One Prepared You For
Do we choose our lessons or does the universe choose them for us?
When we are in school, learning is very straightforward and easy. There are no tricks to that kind of education. Teachers impart information they believe is important for a student to learn. Students are then responsible for learning and assimilating what they have been taught. Today teachers will sometimes even tell students what will be on an exam, and the students will pass according to their different levels of proficiency. But does this really prepare anyone for anything essential in life? In most cases it does not.
The philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and educated himself into one of the most influential moral teachers in Western history, made a distinction that our educational system has never absorbed. He said that we cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them. The exam in school tests whether you memorized the material. The exam in life tests whether you can remain present, honest, and courageous when the material is your own pain, your own fear, your own conditioning. No one teaches that exam. And almost everyone fails it, over and over, until they decide to learn.
Every day we are given challenges and we need to know how to pass them. Unfortunately, the majority of us do not know how. Even worse, we are not diligently seeking the lessons that enable us to grow.
I want to share a long story with you — a true story — which exemplifies very well the principles in this essay. The story’s content and situation may not reflect your life exactly, but it is very instructional about how tests are faced in life.
Joyce: The Gifts Put on Hold
There are two people in a relationship whom I know very well. Over the years both of them have shared their stories and journeys with me. I have known the woman, whom I will name Joyce, for about three years. The man, whom I will name Tony, I have known for much longer.
Joyce is very creative. She loves the arts and music and believes she can become a talented singer. Her heroine is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s former wife, Sarah Brightman, a very gifted classical performer. Joyce plays the piano and some guitar. She is loyal to her work at menial jobs but is bored and feels that whatever she accomplishes is not good enough.
Joyce was in a relationship that was stagnant, a dead end, but she held on steadfastly. There was no joy or pleasure in the relationship, only constant quarreling and neglect. Because Joyce grew up in a family that believed if you make a mistake you must stick by it, she remained obligated to the relationship. When I asked her if she was happy, she replied that she was miserable.
Joyce put all the gifts she felt she possessed on hold for the sake of the relationship. In other words, she gained a relationship but lost her life.
The Lebanese poet and philosopher Khalil Gibran wrote about love and marriage with an honesty that most people find uncomfortable: Let there be spaces in your togetherness. He was not counseling distance or indifference. He was counseling the kind of relationship in which both people are free to grow, free to be themselves, free to pursue their own gifts without the other person’s insecurity turning that freedom into a threat. A quality relationship is one where there is no judgment, no attempt by partners to change or limit each other, and where the individuals are accommodating in order to be themselves and to be free to grow. Joyce had the opposite.
Joyce would tell me: Gary, I would love nothing more than to be a free soul, to live my life as I really want. I need private time, and I do not want to be questioned about where I am going, what I am doing, who I met or called. I do not want jealousy from a possessive man who is so insecure that he feels threatened if he is not involved in everything in my life.
Joyce was assuming that the man she was with was the only man she could be with. If she felt otherwise at times, guilt and shame arose, which only made her try harder.
Think about how often you have heard people say: Try harder. Or: Not everything is perfect. We do not have the best relationship, but at least we have stuck it out — as if that will win them the door prize. So many relationships today subsist on suffering. The partners no longer feel they have anything in common. Communication dies because they feel they know what their partner will say before she or he speaks. Nothing is new in their lives, and there is only the repetition of eating the same meals and acting out the same routines.
This is not a quality relationship. It is a hardship that people take pride in because they have stuck it out. If you ask these people to run a marathon, they will respond that they could never endure it. Yet they are enduring far worse by running a marathon in their relationship every day of their lives, except they are blistering their souls instead of their feet.
Joyce had a very dominating and dismissive father while growing up. He showed no unconditional love and found it necessary to demean his daughter in order to make her feel unworthy — a dynamic she felt in her current relationship too. So when Joyce had the chance to make a break, she leaped at the opportunity.
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”
— Khalil Gibran
Tony: The Light That Draws People In
Having freed herself from her obligations, Joyce soon wound up in a relationship with Tony. Tony is about as different from Joyce as you can imagine. He is a James Dean type of guy: easygoing, nonaggressive, accommodating, a super-cool rebel. He takes risks to experience things most people otherwise fear. He does not blindly accept barriers and limitations. In short, Tony simply likes people. And now Joyce was beginning to have new and exciting experiences through him.
Joyce, Tony, and I arranged to get together. I asked Joyce how she had been doing. She said: Oh, I cannot believe it. I am doing all these things I have never done before. I asked how she felt about it. She said: At first I did not quite understand it, but then I just let it happen and I started to enjoy myself.
One day Joyce and Tony showed up at a race I attended. Joyce won her race, which was very impressive because she had become very serious about exercising only recently, and for the first time in her life she had won something. Tony was so proud of her when she had the gold medal placed around her neck. Then she ran another race and won again. Afterwards I asked Joyce how she felt.
She said: Gary, I am so excited I cannot tell you. I really did this on my own and I feel great. I am motivated to train now. I just wanted to do something that would break down some barriers. Then she started listing all the barriers she had broken down.
I said: That is terrific. Now, would you have broken all those barriers if you were just on your own?
She said: I am not sure.
So I continued: Joyce, be careful not to mistake experiences, no matter how good or bad they feel, for your own growth if those experiences are motivated, inspired, or impassioned by someone else. You could be using someone else’s energy as your own.
The psychologist Carl Jung called this phenomenon participation mystique — the unconscious merging of one’s identity with another person, absorbing their energy, their confidence, their vitality, and mistaking it for your own. It feels real. It feels like transformation. But it is borrowed light. And borrowed light goes out the moment the source walks away.
Mimicry Is Not Self-Actualization
When I spoke with Tony, I told him the same thing. I also said: Tony, you have to understand. If you are a dynamic energy and very active in public, you might have a dozen or more people living off your energy and you will not be aware of it. While you might think you are motivating and changing people and might think they are transforming because they are in your presence, that is only your ego speaking.
Dynamic men and women will always draw nondynamic people toward them. It is as if these dynamic individuals are a light, and wherever they go there is an illumination of body, mind, and spirit. We feel terrific in the presence of such people. We are like cold children coming into a warm room when we are around illuminated individuals.
This dynamic has been amplified to an extraordinary degree by social media and influencer culture. Millions of people now organize their lives around the habits, aesthetics, beliefs, and routines of people they have never met. They copy the morning routine. They buy the recommended products. They adopt the vocabulary, the postures, the opinions. And they call it personal growth. But it is not personal. It is mimicry. The moment the influencer changes direction or disappears from the algorithm, the follower is left standing in someone else’s clothes, in someone else’s life, with no idea who they actually are.
The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson saw this tendency in the nineteenth century and wrote about it with an urgency that feels more relevant today than it did then. He said: Imitation is suicide. He was not being dramatic. He was being precise. When you organize your inner life around another person’s energy — whether that person is a romantic partner, a guru, an influencer, or a celebrity — you are extinguishing the very thing that makes you irreplaceable: your authentic self.
The key question is: Can we understand that these people are giving us a lesson? We can only learn what a lesson has to offer once we have taken ownership of it. In other words, we have to create the lesson for ourselves over and over again. It must become a regular part of our lives until the day arrives when we are no longer connected to the people who originally inspired or motivated us. If we have taken ownership of the lesson, we become inspiring and motivating ourselves.
Be careful that you do not mistake mimicry for self-actualization. There are so many people who mimic the beliefs, words, and deeds of those who inspire them, but the moment the person leaves the room the light in their life dims, and they revert back to their old self. There is nothing to sustain us when we revert back to the time before the lesson was given.
The Exit Strategy
There was a period of about three months when Joyce, Tony, and I were in frequent communication. During this time, I had an opportunity to clearly observe the dynamics being dramatized both between them and individually. What I saw was Joyce desperately seeking to discover herself through another person. For his part, Tony gave Joyce the freedom and opportunity to explore herself. Without criticism or judgment, he provided a vehicle of unconditional acceptance for her to experience life on her own.
Although Joyce managed to do this, at the same time she was unable to learn from the lessons. She had mistaken the experiences for the lessons. The lesson is about how we grow from the experiences. Do you understand the difference? Never confuse an experience for a lesson. That is the reason we all have countless experiences but continue repeating the same mistakes.
One day Tony seemed concerned about something. I asked what the problem was. He said: How do I know that Joyce is really happy? I just have this strange feeling that something is not right. I asked if there had been an argument. He said: No, but it is almost too good. I asked him why he could not just accept a positive relationship.
A few days went by, and then he called me with an interesting story.
Two nights earlier, Joyce and Tony had gone on a trip together. Joyce was feeling spacey, apparently because she had not eaten, which was putting her on edge, and they started getting fractious with each other. Tony said: Joyce, I would rather be alone than be with you when you are in a bad mood. As he was walking away, Tony added: I really do not want this energy. But what Joyce chose to hear was: I do not want you in my life ever again.
Is it not interesting what people will hear? This is what the conditioned self heard, because that is the self that always seeks the exit doors in life. When insecure people take a step forward with a new experience, the conditioned self starts planning an exit strategy. There can never be a full unconditional commitment to anything as long as the conditioned self is always looking for an exit strategy.
In our current era, exit strategies have been industrialized. Dating apps are built on the premise of infinite options — the assurance that someone better is always one swipe away. Social media provides a constant stream of alternative lives you could be living. The algorithm shows you what you are missing rather than what you have. And the result is a generation of people who cannot commit to anything — not a relationship, not a career, not a practice, not a belief — because the exit is always visible, always beckoning, always promising that the next thing will be the thing that finally works. The conditioned self no longer needs to manufacture its own exit strategy. The technology manufactures it for you, twenty-four hours a day.
The Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön calls this tendency shenpa — the hook, the itch, the urge to flee from discomfort. She teaches that the moment you feel the urge to run — from a relationship, from a conversation, from a feeling — is precisely the moment to stay. Not because staying is always the right choice. Sometimes leaving is necessary. But the decision to leave must come from clarity, not from the conditioned reflex that equates discomfort with danger. Joyce’s departure was not a decision. It was a reflex. And reflexes do not produce growth. Only conscious choices produce growth.
The Warm Rose and the Ice Cube
The following morning Tony apologized to Joyce and reconfirmed his commitment, love, and respect toward her. Later he told me: Gary, it is as if one evening I am holding this warm, beautiful rose and the next morning I am holding an ice cube. Joyce had severed the energy between them immediately.
The following day Joyce had already moved out, not only physically but also emotionally. When I asked her what her feelings were, she said: I do not want to be around anyone who is going to be hot and cold toward me.
So I said: From what I understand, it has always been hot between you. What you experienced was taken out of context. We are given tests in life, and the way we respond will determine whether or not we are growing. The issues you confront will determine the quality of your character, your integrity, your decency, your ethics, and your determination as a human being. If you fail this innocent test, how will you respond when the test is more serious?
I continued: The good news is that you have not been with Tony long enough to have wasted both of your lives. So where are you going to go now?
She said: Well, you know, I am going to be around other people.
I said: Oh, so now you are going to take this man who cared about you and throw him aside as if there were a better relationship just waiting for you around the corner? Who else will give you unconditional freedom to be who you are?
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described the core human dilemma as the choice between safety and growth. He called the leap into growth the leap of faith — not faith in God necessarily, but faith in the process, faith in the unknown, faith that what you will become is worth the terror of letting go of what you are. Joyce could not make the leap. She could make the jump — out of the old relationship, into the new one. But the jump and the leap are not the same thing. The jump is horizontal: from one situation to another. The leap is vertical: from one level of consciousness to a higher one. And the leap requires staying, not leaving. It requires enduring the test, not fleeing from it.
Experiences Are Not Lessons
Whenever life offers us an opportunity, we should seek the lesson in it. Some of us do everything to avoid and deny lessons by remaining firmly entrenched in our old belief systems and behavior. We delude ourselves into believing that we already know and do the important things, so we do not need to learn anything new. But where does this get us? It keeps us right where we have always been.
Only by changing something fundamental in our lives can we evolve beyond our present level. All of the energy that keeps us in a static condition is adaptive energy. It is not transcendent energy. When we begin to move beyond our current level of energy to seek lessons that challenge us, we begin to perceive the truth of who is real and honest and who is not, and the reasons why.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote to his student Lucilius: Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. Seneca was not romanticizing suffering. He was pointing out that the resistance we encounter — the friction, the discomfort, the test — is not an impediment to growth. It is the mechanism of growth. A muscle that is never stressed never strengthens. A character that is never tested never deepens. And a person who flees from every lesson the universe offers will spend their life collecting experiences without ever being transformed by them.
Think of how many times we simply assume that someone in a business partnership or relationship is honest and will not betray us. We believe in them because we have conditioned faith when they say they are honest. Later they turn out to be untrustworthy or they betray us. The lesson is not that people cannot be trusted. The lesson is that trust must be built on discernment, not on need. And discernment is a skill that can only be developed by engaging with the test rather than avoiding it.
Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi death camps, arrived at the same insight from the most extreme position imaginable. He found that suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds a meaning. The lesson is the meaning. And the meaning is what transforms the experience from something that happened to you into something that changed you. Without the meaning — without the lesson — the experience is just weather. It passes through, and you are unchanged.
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
— Seneca
Every Day a New Book
Everything important I have done in my life is the result of my seeking and finding the lessons to be learned. Sometimes I failed the tests I confronted. Yet when I fail, I pause long enough to remove the ego so I can relearn from the test, even if it is unwanted or painful. The healthy approach to difficult tests is to say: Okay, I really do not want to have to learn this lesson again. I want to just learn it once, and no matter how many times I am tested, I know I can pass.
Very often the challenges and tests I am given try the very core of who I am. You do not hear me attack someone or defend myself on the radio or internet because I was attacked. When you are happy and no longer insecure, there is no further need to waste your energy talking about your story and defending yourself.
In the age of social media, this is perhaps the most countercultural statement a person can make. The entire infrastructure of online life is built around story — your narrative, your brand, your curated identity, your public response to every slight and every praise. We are expected to defend, to explain, to perform our reactions for an audience that is performing their reactions in return. And the energy consumed by this performance — the hours spent crafting responses, monitoring replies, managing perceptions — is energy that is not available for growth. It is energy poured into the maintenance of an image rather than the cultivation of a self.
When you are not preoccupied with your story, you can live life. All of life then becomes your story, and every day you open a new book to write a new tale. There are always new adventures and excitement because each day is a new story that has nothing to do with yesterday. Every day there is growth because there is no longer anything holding you back.
The philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart said it with the brevity of a man who had no time for pretense: If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, that will be enough. Gratitude is the posture of the student. It is the recognition that every experience — the painful ones no less than the joyful ones — is a lesson being offered. And the willingness to say thank you, even to the lesson that breaks your heart, is the beginning of wisdom.
Choose your lessons. Seek them out. Engage them fully. Learn from them honestly. And when the universe sends a lesson you did not choose — as it will, as it always does — do not run. Do not look for the exit. Do not sever the energy because the test was uncomfortable. Stay. Listen. Feel. And grow. That is the only curriculum that matters. And you are already enrolled.