6 Life Lessons I Learned from Hugging a Tree

Today I lost it.😬

I was on a coaching call and my daughter took my phone and played with it. When I got it back it wouldn’t work. 😱 I couldn’t get past the home screen, and couldn’t turn it off. 😰

I was scared.

As many of us do when we get scared, I got mad. 😡

I yelled for my daughter to come to me and said in a very loud, angry, authoritative voice: “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY PHONE???” 👿

Rather than appear apologetic or saying sorry, she broke down in tears and ran from the room. 😕😭

That was not the response I wanted.

It angered me more. 😡😡

Here I am running a business from my phone with no access…😲😩

My daughter broke my phone 📱, so I broke her heart.💔

Ugh.😢

🆇 I hate hurting people’s feelings. Especially people I love the most.

👉Sometimes we react out of habit, and it doesn’t feel good to anyone around us, including ourselves.

So, I went and apologized to her and told her that no matter what, I loved her and cared about her way more than I care about my phone or business. 👭💓

Then, still needing to blow off some steam, I went outside for some exercise. 🏃

I walked around our pond. 🐟🐠

I listened to the wind, the singing of the birds, and the sound of the motor to the pump in the pond. 🍃🐦🐦

After a few laps my anger had disappeared. 💃

I started asking myself what I could learn from this experience. 💁

💡💡I realized that losing my phone was not the worst thing that could happen to me. I had a working laptop, so I could still work. I had icloud for backups of all my pictures. Most of my contacts are now on Facebook, so I didn’t lose them. 🔥🔥

In all, I was pleasantly surprised that I was okay if I lost or broke my phone. 💗

I found myself feeling happy that I didn’t have my phone to binge listen to some book or training. 😁

The more I thought about it, the more I was glad that I was alone with my thoughts and with nature. 🙌

Anytime I feel intense emotions, I like to go out in nature and calm down. It is best to allow ourselves to feel our feelings without judgement, so they can pass through us. 😉

It’s a lot easier to do that when we are not distracted by bells and notifications! 🔕

A few more laps under my belt and I felt on top of the world.🌍

Except that I was completely out of breath. Lol 😆

So, I did what most inspired people who love nature do…

I went down a huge ditch on our property and hugged a tree that seemed to be calling to me. 😂😂😂

I had never done that before in my life, but had heard that some people learn many lessons from tree hugging. 🤷

Guess what?

It worked!👍

I think the tree 🌳 talked to me. Not in a voice, but it was like it transmuted words into my mind…

Here is the wisdom I gained from a big tall oak tree:

1. Stand strong and firm when the winds of life come at you. You cannot always control what comes your way or who comes to ruffle your leaves… but you can always choose how you respond to it. If we learn to bend and lean with the winds of life, we will not break. Standing firm doesn’t always mean being right, it means being willing to stick up for yourself but also see things from a different perspective.
2. Look up.👆👆 When things are hard and we don’t know where to turn, always choose to soak up love and like from the source of light… the Sun. Find comfort by plugging into what lights us up and makes our world go round. ⭐⭐
3. Give more than you take. Share the resources, shelter your friends and neighbors, lend a helping branch to those in need. We are all in this together and the more we give, the happier we will be. 🤩 When people “take” from us, we can always grow back.
4. We all have rough hard spots around us we should let go. 👀 There are pieces of us, hard as bark, that we need to peel back if we want to expose our beautiful smooth parts. 💞The older and wiser we grow, the more we will outgrow our old skin and stand strong while sharing our inner strength and weaknesses.
5. Let your roots grow deep, but also make sure they expand wide. 🔁 If you only grow deep, you can fall. Learning to stretch and be open, to collaborate and intertwine with others who surround you, will make you stronger and less likely to break when things seem hard.
6. Move around and see things from a different perspective. After a long time hugging the tree, I felt like I needed to see the other side. ⭕Circling around it, I found that I was now looking at things from a completely different perspective! Instead of looking into a dark and foreboding forest, I saw a beautiful and bright grassy hill. People have many sides to them and if we don’t move, we might miss the big picture. 🖼

As I climbed back up the hill back to the pond,🗻 I thought, “Wow, sometimes you have to descend into the ditch of life to learn valuable lessons.”

You know what is the best part of this story?

👏After losing all resistance and anger, I was able to enter my home with a happy heart, hug my daughter and THANK HER for what she did, and my phone started working again!💃

⭐⭐Yep, miracles happen when we let go and let God. ⭐⭐

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