Face it: Life is not a bed of roses. Or, if it seems to be a bed of roses, it’s not without a whole lot of thorns. 

That’s just the way life is. We have high times and low times, and times when we get thrown into a seemingly bottomless pit and then have a shovel dropped down to us to keep digging. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, like in the current economy; sometimes it’s due to our own stupid decisions. In either case, life is overwhelming to the point that we just want to shut down and hope it all goes away.

So, what to do in such times?  Here’s a list of thoughts:

1. Don’t shut down. Perhaps the most important thought. Acknowledge the situation, or you’ll never get around to doing anything about it.  Many use alcohol or other addictions to mask over things and try to “forget”, but the problem is that the situation is still there when you come back down. And it’ll continue to stay there until you deal with the situation head-on.
2. Acknowledge that some things that are out of your hands. There is great freedom and relief when we accept that we can’t fix everything or everybody and that there are things in life that are just out of our hands and beyond our ability to handle or change.  Accept what can’t be changed as it is.  Most importantly, don’t ever base your own happiness on others’ happiness. That’s called codependency.
3. Focus on what you can do something about. While a lot of things are not within our control, there can be things in the situation that we can (and probably should) do something about.
   • You can do something about your attitude. Everything is a matter of perspective.  Is it the end of the world, or an opportunity for you to learn and grow?  Your answer to that question will radically change the way in which you deal with life.
   • Deal with what’s in front of you right now. You can’t change the past, so accept it and let it go.  Neither can you cross a bridge that you haven’t gotten to yet. Therefore, deal with what’s right here in front of you.
4. Don’t blame others for what you caused yourself. If you’re the cause of the situation, acknowledge it and, if possible, make it right as much as it’s in your ability to do so, but also be careful that your efforts to “make things right” don’t actually make things worse.
5. Accept that some relationships and situations simply can’t be fixed. Sometimes circumstances and words can damage a relationship beyond repair, no matter what we try to do to fix it. The best kind of wisdom is knowing when you can take an action toward restoration and when it’s better for the sake of the situation to just walk away and let it go.  Don’t insist on having it your way.
6. Look for learning opportunities. The first question I learned to ask in tough times is whether there’s a lesson to learn from the situation.  This is especially true if you find yourself in the same bad situation over and over again—it means there’s a pattern or habit in your life that needs to change in order to stop that cycle.
7. Consider journaling. Some people are great at this, but most of us couldn’t imagine writing our lives down on paper. But doing so has some advantages, especially during rough patches in our lives:
   • There’s something about putting our thoughts and issues on paper that makes it real.  This is especially true in recovery contexts. It’s easy to dismiss a thought; it’s a lot more difficult to do that when it’s in black and white in front of you.
   • It helps you organize your thoughts and find potential solutions.  Consider journaling as a means of bringing order to the chaos in your head.
   • You can see (and celebrate!) your progress.
   • You can use what you’ve written down later as a reference point for similar situations down the road. When the same or similar situation happens later on you can review how you dealt with it the last time, what worked, and what didn’t work, so you can handle the new situation more effectively.  A good example of this principle is from an engineering company that I worked for in California; whenever they lost a proposal for a project they held a “post-mortem” meeting to review their failing pitch and talk to the customer to find out what worked in their proposal and what didn’t work, so that they can incorporate the lessons learned into a more successful proposal for the next opportunity they get the chance to bid for.
   • It helps you find patterns and cycles in your life that may be causing you trouble unless they’re dealt with. Often when journaling you’ll see a pattern of words and/or actions that cause the same bad result, and when you see those things you can deal with those patterns right away to eliminate or minimize them and their impact.

We’ll look at journaling in a future post.

Image credit: “Lethal grounds 2” by LaRezistance. (cc) by-nc-sa