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How to Use Contrast to Enhance Your Life

Guest post by: Brad Swift

Article Overview: In my work as a Life On Purpose Coach many of my clients often experience times of "extreme contrast". These times can be very difficult and challenging and may have actually been what led them to seek out my services. So, let's look at how we can use contrast to actually enhance our lives. Contrast is defined in the dictionary as 'to compare or appraise in respect to differences.' Now we can either use this contrast to be right and make others wrong -- which we often do -- or we can use it to further distinguish what we want in our life, who we are committed to being, etc. by looking at what we don't want -- the contrast -- and allow it to point us to what we do want.

How to Use Contrast to Enhance Your Life

In my work as a Life On Purpose Coach many of my clients often

experience times of "extreme contrast". These times can be very

difficult and challenging and may have actually been what led them

to seek out my services. So, let's look at how we can use contrast

to actually enhance our lives.

Contrast is defined in the dictionary as 'to compare or appraise in

respect to differences.' Now we can either use this contrast to be

right and make others wrong -- which we often do -- or we can use it

to further distinguish what we want in our life, who we are committed

to being, etc. by looking at what we don't want -- the contrast -- and

allow it to point us to what we do want.

Simple example. My family and I were recently in a community play. One

of the college age girls in the cast that my 13-year old daughter,

Amber, really likes and viewed as an older sister role model, invited

Amber to spend the night and part of the next day with her. But when

the night came, she suddenly couldn't do it, giving the explanation

that she needed to clean her apartment instead. When Amber offered to

help with the cleaning, she declined. We later found out a boy had

offered to come over and fix dinner for her and a friend.

When I learned of this I was livid and indignant. How dare she treat my

daughter this way? I was ready to call her and point out in very clear

and angry terms the error of her ways. I spouted off for a while to Ann

and Amber while driving home from rehearsal which helped me to calm

down enough to consider another possible way to 'respond instead of

react.' I finally got to the point that I decided to use this

'contrast' to look more deeply at what's really important to me, to

examine my core values. From this examination I realized that

integrity, which includes keeping one's word, is an important value of

mine. In other words, integrity is something I am willing to invest

time and energy into having more of in the world, especially in my

world.

Now, it's likely that at some point I will speak to the young lady IF

and WHEN I can discern a way to speak my truth in a way that she can

hear it and be contributed to by it. And from a place of righteous

indignation (which is where I was) isn't the place or way to speak that

will serve.

So, when the Universe offers you up a big plate of extreme contrast,

what will you discern and learn? What ways of being are you seeing in

others and perhaps in yourself that you realize no longer serve? From

there, look to see what other way of being could serve to, in a sense,

counterbalance the other way? If you viewed this contrast as the

Cosmic UPS Truck trying really hard to deliver you a gift, what is the

gift(s) wrapped within the packaging of this contrast?

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Article Tags: coach, enhance life, extreme contrast, life coach, life purpose



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