No one wants to go through transitions, but we all will. Things must change because we are growing, evolving beings who are here now to learn what lessons we need to reach our full potential.
Don’t give up – let go
You may feel like giving up when it feels like the sky is falling in. But what is the alternative? Rather than giving up on the possibility of feeling happy again or on your dreams for the future, let go of the attachment to them. This means you should go ahead and dream and take the action that can make those dreams into a reality. But, don’t buy into the belief that if they don’t happen, that you won’t be able to be happy.
Don’t fall into blaming
The first thing we typically do when something goes wrong is to blame. We blame others or ourselves, depending on the situation but blaming does no good whatsoever. It’s a waste of energy and keeps us focused on the problem, not the solution. Notice when you feel you want to blame or self-judge and come back to how you can solve the problem instead.
Don’t numb yourself
There are many ways we numb ourselves to the pain we feel throughout our lives. Of course, we could use drugs or alcohol, but even more often, we use keeping incredibly busy or tuning out by watching TV or playing mindless games. Even though it’s not fun, it’s important for your healing to experience the pain that you feel. Unless you do that, the pain will stay with you in various forms until you allow yourself to feel it.
Don’t isolate yourself
When we are scared, embarrassed or worried, our natural instinct is to hide away to lick our wounds. Of course, there is a time for that – a time when we need to be alone with our feelings and thoughts but it’s too easy to stay in that place of isolation far longer than is healthy. The less connection we feel to family and friends, the more depressed we become. This almost always increases our feelings of fear and worry. So, make a point to be around the positive, supportive people in your life, even when you don’t feel like it.
Don’t hang out with negative people
When you feel like life sucks, you are more vulnerable than at other times when life seems rosy. Being around people who are always complaining or blaming is a sure way to make yourself feel worse. Know that it’s okay to say ‘no thanks’ to invitations that you know will end up in a huge complaining or back-biting session. Instead, get together with people who support your dreams and visions of the future.
So, it may not be all fun and games, but if we wish, we can learn important lessons that will serve us well as we move through tough changes.
What is really important?
When things are status quo, we believe the big, external things in life are what matter. What kind of car we drive, what our job title is and how much money we have in the bank are all that seem to matter during our normal daily lives. But when “tragedy” strikes and we lose something of true value, it helps us reassess what is really important in life. We shift our thinking and start spending time with those people and doing those things that make us really happy.
That fear doesn’t need to hold you back
Often, we feel we have too much to lose to take a big risk and change something we desire to be different. But when it all falls apart, no matter how we try to keep it together, our greatest fears come true. We see that we really have much less to lose than we thought and that being delightfully happy is worth the risk. We can stop letting fear hold us back and take a plunge into what we’ve always really wanted.
Letting go of stuff is freeing
We hang onto stuff like it’s a life raft. It can be material things, people or situations that deep down we know is no longer making us happy, but we are scared to let it go. When Life forces our hand and we lose what we thought we couldn’t live without, we can finally feel free. Free from holding on so tightly that we focus all of our energy on holding on instead of re-evaluating if we really want it in the first place.
You don’t have to be perfect
We spend so much energy trying to be perfect every day of our lives. We beat ourselves up over the tiniest little flaw or mistake. All this struggling is exhausting! And ultimately, the best we can do is to pretend that everything is perfect in our world because we are never going to get to a stage where everything is perfect. When you share your experiences with others whom you trust, you will start to see their masks come down. You will hear about how imperfect their lives are, and yet see that they are still happy.