Dr Margie Warrell Contributor
Margie Warrell emboldens people to live & lead more bravely.
Trust yourself. No matter how bad you're feeling, this too shall pass
THOMAS M. BARWICK INC.
Perhaps you’re not having the best week… or month… or year. I get it. Many feel the same. So if you’re doing it tough right now, here’s 10 truths to help you weather this ‘storm’ better, and emerge better off. 1- Dwelling on what you don’ want works against what you do want We all have our ideas of how things ‘should’ be. So when our plans derail and the reality we find ourselves in is a far cry from the one we’d worked for, it’s easy to get into a wrestling match with life. But the biggest thing that messes us up is not the external conditions of our lives, it’s the picture in our heads about how we think those conditions should be. When you let go and accept your reality for all that it is, you reclaim energy lost to the battle against what it isn’t. 2- You’ve overcome tough times before. You will again. Sure they are not like the one you’ve dealt with now. But you have a 100% success rate at overcoming difficult situations. And if you think back to them, you’ll recall that at the time you worried you might now have what it would take only to discover that you did. Well that same tendency to underestimate your resiliency is still wired into you. So just remember, you are capable of difficult things. You’ve risen above them before , you win again. 3- No matter how bad it feels now, it won’t feel this way forever Research by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert found that people are generally pretty lousy at forecasting their feelings when they’re in the middle a tough situation. In fact, in the midst of a crisis, we tend to think we will always feel the way we do now. Not true. “It’s not that things don’t hurt,” Gilbert says. “It’s that they don’t hurt quite as long or as much as we think they’re going to.” So no matter how bad you feel right now, know that you will not feel this way forever.
4- You are bigger than your problems
As difficult as your circumstances may be, don’t let them define your or become your identity. You are not your adversities, your job status or bank statement or messy divorce nor anything that has ever happened to you. Anything. Who you are is far beyond any external measure, situation or experience.
Avoid putting a label on yourself that hems you in or casting yourself as a victim of life. As pioneering psychiatrist Alfred Adler wrote in What Life Should Mean To You, “We determine ourselves by the meanings we ascribe to situations.” It’s not your adversities that shape who you are, but who you are in the face of your adversities. Don’t let your problems be your identity.