What to do when Life didn’t go the way you thought it would
So, life hasn’t been going the way you thought it was going to? I mean, 2020 did leave us with a lot of new and interesting ways of living our lives (thanks 2020). Maybe you were laid off. Maybe you can’t travel to see your family. Sometimes life just doesn’t go in the perfect straight line we envisioned in our heads. So, what can we do when life decides to take us on more rides than a day at Disney?
Breathe
Sounds a little cliche doesn’t it? The most basic advice. ‘But I do that all the time” Focus on breathing in good energy and blowing out the negative. Need a few minutes to get back to a center? Close your eyes and just focus on breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Even set a timer on your phone for two minutes. It will clear your head and bring you back from the edge of the mental cliff you’ve been dangling on.
Focus on the positive
Again, with the cliche advice? I know sometimes it’s easier to say to focus on the positive but how can we when we’ve lost our job? Or a close relative has died? Or maybe we are doing our best to make ends meet and it just still isn’t happening? There is always something positive or a situation to be grateful for. You woke up today? Awesome you get a chance to go out and do your best to work towards a different outcome. It could be something as small as your cat is excited to see you first thing in the morning. Maybe a favorite song you haven’t heard in a long time comes on the radio just as you turned the car on. Maybe you make it inside your workplace just as it starts to rain. It doesn’t have to be anything major but taking a look at the small things does make the big picture start to look a little warmer.
Remove “I can’t” from your mindset
Sometimes events happen and we don’t think we can move on from it. I can’t go on. I can’t get another job like that one. I can’t afford rent this month. Playing with our new found mindset of being positive, what if we dropped the T from those statements? I can go on. I can get another job like that one. I can afford rent this month. Have you ever noticed when you are looking for certain things they seem to appear? Counting how many red cars pass by? All of a sudden you’ll see tons of red cars. Start to look at things as a game. Going to be short on rent this month? I can make it if I pick up some extra shifts, maybe even sign up for Uber or work some overtime. If you start thinking that you can do these things, just like the red cars you’ll start thinking and seeing different ways that you can.
Life is always going to throw curve balls at us. It’s going to have it’s high points and low points. To quote Rocky Balboa
“No one is going to hit as hard as life. But it’s not how hard you get hit, it’s how hard you can get hit and keep going. How much you can take and keep pushing forward.”
Sometimes we just have to take our lumps and remember not everything lasts forever. In the end, we will be stronger because of it and when more lumps come (which they will) we can look back on where we were or what we went through and be able to push forward.