Lessons from the Universe and My Trainer

I had a dream last night about hockey and quoting my trainer and it all came together this morning in the car and during yoga. Doesn't it always?

First my dream. Well, one of my dreams--I have all 18 theaters open every night. I don't know why there was a hockey team watching video games or something and they were trying to figure out shots (it won't make sense--it was a dream)...but the idea was that they were complaining because the video game was wrong because they couldn't have made those shots because there were other circumstances in between that made it impossible.

Anyway, I said, well, as my trainer always says, Change your mindset. Instead of worrying about why the game is wrong and why the shots can't be made, maybe the game is trying to teach you to think ahead. Instead of thinking that the shot is the end, maybe think past the shot and what can you do after the shot if it's missed and what move you might make then.

Again, this doesn't make a lot of sense now because it's a dream. But my brother somehow showed up, nodded, and said, Perspective.

My lesson when I woke up was that there are always new ways to look at things and new lessons to learn. This got me thinking about the quote that you see all the time about the universe keeps sending you the same lesson until you learn it.

And I flipped that quote for the first time. At first glance that quote seems to imply that if the same lesson keeps appearing in your life that somehow you haven't learned your lesson yet. You've failed. If you'd learned that lesson, it wouldn't keep showing up. But that's wrong. The universe is going to keep showing you that lesson in different ways to keep you on your toes.

Learning doesn't stop because you've learned something. It's like training. You don't stop training because you've trained once or learned an exercise. You keep training. You learn deeper. You learn better. You practice.

The universe keeps sending you the same lessons because you need practice. You need to remember what you've learned. You need to learn deeper. You need to learn in different ways. With different people. At different times. Maybe you even need to help other people learn, too.

Professionals athletes probably learned how to play as kids. They learned the rules. They learned the skills.  But the learning wasn't over then.

You keep learning and playing and getting better and better as time goes by. As you grow. As you play better opponents. There are degrees and levels of learning the same things. Different facets. New challenges. New ways of using your skills and applying those rules.

We learn life lessons the same way. We learn them. But we then we grow. Time goes by. We face different circumstances. We play different opponents. We have different teammates. We get out of practice. That doesn't mean we never learned anything. We always have more to learn. We always need practice.

I have learned many life lessons. I haven't failed because the universe is still sending me some of the same lessons. The universe is helping me. The universe is reminding me what's really important to me. What I need to practice. Deeper lessons. More facets. It's giving me more practice. It's making me better.