Kay:

Hey there, Questers! And, welcome back to another week of mentorship questing with Kay and Shi! Today is June 29th, and this is Episode 126! And, we’ve got a Rifiki quote coming to you from The Lion King, today. In the movie, Rafiki says, “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But, the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”

Shi:

Now, you do a way better Rafiki than that! And, I hope that maybe you can unveil it later for us because you’ve got such a great Rafiki voice! But, this is just such a great moment in The Lion King movie! Rafiki is kind of the mentor monkey who helps guide Simba along his quest…

Kay:

#MentorMonkeyMonday

Shi:

Now, there’s some alliteration for you! But, during this quote, Rafiki actually hits Simba on the head…He hits Simba on the head with his scepter, and then, Simba says, “OWW! What you do that for?” And, Rifiki, of course, retorts with this quote, “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But, the way I see it, you can either run from it, or…” (and then he swings at him again with his sceptre) – but this time – Simba ducks…meaning that he then learned from the past! So, it still hurt him to get hit the first time, but he learned and was able to duck from the second swing. So, a great physical example and a great metaphorical example!

Kay:

Now, raise your hand if you have ever been hit on the head by life, and then you get back up again and you don’t duck? Shi and I are raising our hands! And, we think we’ve all made that mistake before, where we learn a lesson, or we think we learn a lesson, and then you get into the same exact situation – and you barrel through it – and you don’t actually learn the lesson. Or, when the lesson comes around, it’s so painful that you run away from your feelings and you never really internalize why you went through the pain in the first place…

Shi:

Well, it hurts, right? And so, what do we know about hurt? We know that we often protect it, and we let it heal over, and then we never think about it again?

Kay:

Well, it’s like the thorn in Michael Singer’s book, Untethered Soul. He talks about how having pain is like getting a thorn, but then, instead of just taking the thorn out and dealing with more pain in order to remove the thorn, we protect the thorn and we build a whole plastic apparatus around it.

Shi:

Well, as long as nothing touches the thorn, it doesn’t hurt! So, you just leave the thorn in there and you end up orchestrating your whole life around the thorn, so that nothing ever touches it, or bumps it. But, you know, obviously LIFE happens, and then that thorn hurts again. And, we wonder: Why wouldn’t we just remove the thorn? And, I think Rafiki’s lesson is very similar here.

Kay:

Well, the thing about the thorn, and Rafiki’s lesson here, is that, if we end up turning from the past and we run from it, when people ask us, “Well, why did you run from that?” We start making up excuses, which pretty quickly puts us into a victim mindset.

Shi:

Yep! And that leads us really well into the core of this quote, which is about mindset. It is about how you see something, and how you define it. You can either just be hurt by something, or you can learn from it, but the pain will be there one way or another. So, you either just get hurt, and you run away trying to avoid the pain. OR – you can sit with the pain, you can examine it, you can bring a little light to it. And, then you can transform from the victim to the victor…

Kay:

Not all learning is in strategic change either, or in physical change, like ducking. Some learning can hit you with a scepter, but some learning comes in the way of, “I had to learn how to be quiet with that”, or, “I had to learn how to let myself grieve.” Because, all pain is there to teach us something, even if it really hurts in the process.

Shi:

Exactly! I know for me, two summers ago we were up at the “Shakespeare At The Lake”, which is one of our favorite traditions. And, we were sponsoring it, and we had a bunch of our Squeeze In guests up there with us. But, I was not the driver that night, which meant that I was having a little too much fun with alcohol, and ended up running at the end of the night, and tripped on my own long dress and skinned my knee really bad. So, this physically hurt, but the more painful part of it was, of course, the healing of the knee and the shame about having tripped in front of all of these important guests to my business, at a function that I didn’t need to be that sloppy at. And, it was very painful. And, I kept thinking to myself, this should be a symbol. I should DO something. And, I didn’t do something about that for another five months. So, I continued to let it be painful. But then, we ended up deciding to take off a month of drinking, which turned into two months, which turned into a quarter, which turned into a year, which now it’s been a year and a half since we drank! And, we feel so good and we don’t want to go back, but I still have the scar of the skinned knee – and, when I look at it now, I feel proud, not shameful, because of the decision I made from that harmful experience!

Kay:

That’s because you didn’t run from it…you learned from it. So now, I’m going to pull my best Rafiki accent out for you all. So here we go, “Oh yes. The past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”

Shi:

Solid Rafiki – I love it! All right. That means it’s quest time. So, this week, for your #MonkeyMondayMentorshipMotivation quest, we have an assessment quest for you. It’s time to test yourself by reviewing your past major experiences, and pick one that still particularly hurts. Then, ask yourself, what have I learned from this, that’s helped me make better decisions since then? Monday means new week, new truth, and new opportunities to let yourself grow! SO – take your quest assessment and ask yourself: What is something painful from my past that I’ve learned from, and grown from? Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!