Life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes the difficulty is personal in nature, and sometimes it’s environmental. Divorces, deaths and many things happen in life, including storms, illness, and more that we have no real control over. Whenever something disturbing happens, consider these 10 tips.
Give Yourself a Break – Take a deep breath and just give yourself a break. You’re allowed to have bad days and feel like crap. It’s okay to take some time to wallow in your concerns or your issues. It’s good to feel the emotions you feel and let them all out so that you can move past it.
Set a “Worry” Time Limit – Set time limits to letting loose of your feelings and feeling all the things you need. You can even set many time limits. For example, if you must get through a day of work due to needing the money, set a time later for feeling all the feelings so that you can get through the rest.
Sleep Well – This can be a hard thing to do when you’re having a tough time in life, but you must try to make your sleep a priority in good and bad times. You can always catch up later when it’s vital that you are awake, but don’t put it off too long.
Eat Right – When a crisis is occurring. It’s not the time to start eating all the crappy food. It’s a time that you want to set a schedule and make sure you’re eating enough nutrition and calories to give yourself fuel.
Keep Exercising – It may be even more important now to find time for your walks than at any other time. Walking in nature, taking the time to burn off that anxiety and worry through movement is one of the best ways to get through any hard time. You don’t need to keep going to the gym but keep moving.
Be Mindful – It’s easy to get distracted when your emotions are being affected by what is happening in your life or the world. However, before you start a new activity, always take time to center yourself with a good deep breath so that you can be mindful of what is happening right at this moment. The problem will still be there when you’re done driving to the hospital, but you’ll be alive because you were mindful of the fact you were driving.
Keep an “I’m okay” Journal – When things are bad, it’s hard to feel like anything will ever be okay again. However, most of the time, you can find some things that are at least okay about your day, if not something to be outright grateful for now.
Clean Up Your Environment – Allowing your environment to get cluttered and dirty when the world is crumbling around you seems like a natural thing to do, but the truth is, it makes it worse. Set a schedule so that you keep your environment clean because that’s going to help you stay focused through the issues.
Get Rid of Distractions – Turn off your phone, social media, and the radio or TV when you’re doing certain activities. If you need to focus on it, don’t do other things during it. Even listening to music can cause you to miss out on essential points. Anything worth doing is worth doing 100 percent.
Ask for Help – If you are having trouble controlling your thoughts and nothing you try is working after a few days, you may want to ask for help. Counselors and even life coaches can help you through difficult times so that you can focus on the other things that are important to you too.
A life well-lived is going to have difficult times. The rollercoaster of life is what makes it exciting, and it’s how we learn. Going through hard things helps you grow. You feel new emotions, try new things, and come out better for the experience, even if it felt impossible while it was happening. Everything ends eventually, and you can get through difficult times without losing focus on what is important to you.