How to pick yourself up when life gets tough
When life gets tough, for whatever reason, we tend to slip into one of two behaviours.
We either slip into a state of misery, casting out blame and tripping into a trap of feeling like a victim of life and circumstances. Or we put all of that blame squarely on our shoulders and weigh ourselves down with guilt, pressure and stress.
The key thing is this; when we recognise the frequency we’re operating on and understand how our emotions can only attract more of those things on a similar wavelength, we can begin to retune it, and ourselves.
When life gets tough, we only need to shift our energy out of guilt and blame into one of confidence and power, to start feeling better.
Why does it feel good to feel miserable?
In our society we’re taught us that nothing is ever our fault and that it’s easier to blame something else for our lack of health, happiness or success.
We learn to shake off responsibility when things go wrong because it’s such an affront to our ego. We can’t handle being wrong, it diminishes our self-worth which is for most of us, quite fragile.
This is where the victim mentality kicks in, a well-researched conscious state that leaves us feeling out of control and helpless.
It sounds blunt but really when we understand how easy it is to play a victim, and how many times we’ve all done it before, we can begin to understand how detrimental staying in this state really is.
In a victim mindset tend to dwell in a place of ‘poor me, why did this happen to me, it’s not my fault, I can’t do it because’ etc. These are some of the most common thoughts in a victim mindset. It’s a fast-moving spiral and when we start thinking this way it becomes very hard to stop.
We feel defeated when something goes wrong and the effort of making the necessary changes to feel better can feel like such a huge undertaking, a mountain that we cannot see the top of, that we don’t even want to try.
In this state of mind, we push all help away, rejecting love and support, preferring to wallow in our misery, licking our wounds and retreating from the world.
We can also become stuck in a victim consciousness though fear.
Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of change, fear of being seen for who we really are and being rejected by the world, these are all fears we have. Sometimes we mistakenly believe it’s easier to hide from that fear, without realising that we can defeat that fear merely by walking up to it with fearlessness.
Weighing ourselves down with guilt and blame
When life gets rough, we also have a tendency to beat ourselves up, retreating into a world of self-recrimination and harsh words. We can be our own worst enemies, especially at times like this, when we’re already down and out.
We need to parent ourselves.
After all, the relationship we have with ourself is the most important one in our lifetime on earth. Like a plant that needs love, care and attention to grow, so do we.
When we are hurting, grief-stricken or ashamed, we need to comfort ourself like we would comfort a child. We need to check our language because, if it’s loaded with criticisms and phrases such as ‘should have done better’, it becomes very difficult to keep hold of any kind of constructive, positive self-value about ourself.
In this state, when things do not go as planned, we immediately think we’re not worthy of what we desire and we are filled with shame and guilt. It’s a form of punishing behaviour that often stems from our childhood or traumatic experiences in our past.
We have to acknowledge that we are just doing our best, the best way we know how. There is no manual for living and we certainly can’t model ourselves on anyone, we are each a completely unique expression of life. Comparison cannot be the driver of your misery. It’s built on an illogical concept. There can be no such thing as comparison because we are all divinely unique, we are not meant to be the same.
Let it go, it’s ok to make a mistake, fail, do the wrong thing, just let go of the guilt.
How to pick yourself up when feeling low
Pulling yourself out of a spiral of negativity and self-reproach really just involves retuning your frequency. Like changing a radio station from lifeishard.fm to lifeiseasy.fm.
However, we need to address the basics before we can attempt to retune. Kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we need a strong foundation before we construct the framework.
This means being properly hydrated, well exercised, having time out in nature and in sunlight, eating plenty of good food and being well rested. If the physical body is stressed the mind will be so, they are one unit that cannot be separated or divided into parts.
Secondly, we need to acknowledge how we feel.
We want to avoid any kind of toxic positivity, sugar-coating how we feel with false brightness. It’s ok to be sad, angry, hurt. Don’t deny yourself these feelings. Acknowledge them, write them down, tell a friend, scream into the wind.
All feelings are relevant and the last thing we want to do is bury them so they eventually manifest outwards into our physical body, which they do. Really listen to how you feel and comfort yourself the best way you know how. Retuning your frequency
Retuning to a harmonious frequency
We need to seek out the inspiring forces that will be a driving force behind us, lifting us upwards and powering our creativity. It only takes one thing, whether it’s a book, a conversation, a song, that can gift us a glimmer of hope, jolting us out of our stagnation. We only need to be open to it finding us.
Our thoughts also need to be tamed. Thoughts are energy; an energy that transfers into our words and actions that create our reality. So, with 60,000 or so thoughts a day, we have vast powers through our imagination to craft and create wonder in our lives.
We need to choose wisely because we also have the power to attract negativity via our thoughts. We create our existence through faith or fear. Trust or distrust.
Therefore, we need to catch the detrimental thoughts before they take root. If you find yourself saying “I’m never going to succeed” immediately change it to “I am succeeding”, this is all you need to do.
This is not some basic affirmation work. This is rewiring your subconscious. The very definition of affirm is to offer (someone or yourself) emotional support or encouragement. You are affirming what you are and supporting yourself emotionally at the same time.
And isn’t this exactly what we all need when life feels tough?
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