What if I told you that your greatest trials are your greatest blessings. Would you believe me? Would you be like “Uh, no, you don’t know my trials. Maria, you do not know my trials, so you can’t say that.”? What if that’s true though? What if it is true? Have you ever considered that? Have you ever heard the phrase “your gift is your curse?” Have you ever heard that phrase? I have a tip for you. The tip is exactly that–your gift is your curse. If you can learn to adopt this perspective, you can use it for good in your life. That’s my tip. 

Your gift is your curse and you can learn to harness it so it can bring you more joy and less heartache. I’ll share an example. I have the worst memory ever. Well, probably not ever, but I have a really bad memory, and I’m super, super distracted. I get distracted so easily. My phrase that I tell my kids is–and you’re probably going to just roll your eyes–the phrase is “Just because I don’t remember, doesn’t mean I don’t care.” And I mean it! Just because I forgot about you does not mean I don’t care about you. Just because I forgot that I said I was going to do something and didn’t do it, doesn’t mean I don’t care. I promise. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? 

My poor kids, I used to feel so bad for them. I really do care. I do care, but I forget. I forget all the time. Truly, I forget all the time. It’s bad. It’s like a curse. I feel cursed, like “Oh my gosh, what is wrong with you? Get it together Maria.” I have alarms in my phone for everything and  then when they turn on, I turn them off, and then I forget to do the thing that the alarm was set for. I just turned it off because I have so many and I think, “I’m busy, so I’m going to turn that off.” But then I don’t get back to it. Anyway, I’m not going to ramble on about it, because that’s another one of my curses. Hello! 

But you know what? I’ve learned to harness this curse and realize and reveal the gift inside of it, and that is the tip I have for you. That is the key. That is the way to have more joy and less heartache. I need to realize that this memory and this distractibility that I have been given is a gift. And when I change my thinking, and when I look at it as the gift that it is, I find so many hidden treasures.

Here’s an example. When I am happy, I am all in. I’m so happy, nothing can bring me down. I’m super happy. In such moments, it’s as if there never existed anything ever bad, ever in my life. I can’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of the bad stuff. I only remember the good stuff, so when I’m having a good time, I’m totally all in. Literally, I can be all, all, all in when I’m happy. I can because I totally forget all of the bad stuff. It’s amazing! You guys, it feels really good! It feels so good because I don’t remember any of the bad stuff. My husband is so amazed. This is a gift for me. And I feel like it’s so awesome. It’s so awesome. 

When I’m with people, I’m all there. I’m all with them. I completely forget everything else and everyone else and I’m there. I’m with that person and I’m in that moment, and I can be right there. Because I totally forgot about everything else. It’s awesome, you guys it feels so good. It’s my gift. It’s a huge, huge, blessing and it’s so powerful and it’s amazing. It’s a gift. But, when the eggs are boiling and you’re having a good conversation somewhere else in the house, it’s a curse too. But it balances out, and the more that I look at it as a gift, the more amazing I realize it is. It’s pretty cool. It feels really good. You have one too. What’s your curse? It’s so much easier to see it as a curse. Curses are way more obvious.

My advice for you, my tip for you, my recommendation for you, is to figure out what’s your curse. You already know it. It’s super obvious because it’s part of a cycle of things that go wrong in your life all the time. Do you always forget stuff like me? Or do you get distracted like me? Or is it something else? It’s probably something else for you. How is it a gift? Ask yourself these questions. What is my curse? How is it a gift? How can I harness this gift for good? How can I learn to appreciate the gift that it is? How can I find the hidden treasures that have always been available to me in my life, and how can I change it?    

I used to want my forgetfulness to go away. It’s awful. Forgetting all the time is awful, and getting distracted is awful. It just is. I have felt bad, and guilty and ashamed of it often. But I have realized that it’s also a gift, and it allows me to be completely in the moment, all in and all happy. When I’m happy, I’m all happy. When I have joy, I have all joy. I cannot remember anything bad. I just can’t and I can’t hold a grudge because I can’t remember why I got mad at someone. You have hidden treasures like that too. I encourage you to look for them, because you have them.