adversity

There was a period of time in my life when I felt broken emotionally and couldn’t see through the density of my situation to a better tomorrow. I knew only to take one step at a time, placing one foot in front of the other. So that’s what I did. One foot and one step at a time. Step by step I filled an entire day and then a second day and eventually a week and all of my steps added up to my forward movement.

One night in a moment of uncertainty, confusion and deep anguish, my dear friend Bea called to check on me and she taught me something I’ve always remembered and carried with me as truth:

You never have to go back to yesterday; it’s over. Where you are is here. Now. And nothing that happened in a string of your yesterdays can hurt you today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

I understand now what I was incapable of seeing then: the past and its cacophony of emotions born of experiences (some of which we choose and others chosen for us) have power over us today only if we choose to give those emotions a place in our heads and in our thoughts.

What matters is what we think because our thoughts, which flow through us and can sometimes be really loud in our heads, determine our state of being.

Your feelings are real to you. Your adventures in life will generate a wide range of thoughts, which will create emotional responses that will inform your journey. And you get to make the choice every single day about how you interact with those emotions.

When it seems as if the voice in your head is too loud and your thoughts are negative and the accompanying emotions feel too heavy to carry, please remember

You never have to go back to yesterday; it’s over. Where you are is here. Now. And nothing that happened in a string of your yesterdays can hurt you today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

Take a deep breath. Let the chatter and emotions come to a resting place inside your head. And then choose to embrace a different emotion.

I am grateful for the knowledge that I’m wired for happiness, as are you.

I’m also grateful to have lived through enough of life to reiterate Rainer Maria Rilke‘s profound wisdom:

No feeling is final.

No amount of hurt, joy, heartache, euphoria, stress, pleasure, pain, delight, grief, happiness, trauma, enjoyment, agony, amusement, sadness, entertainment, anguish or diversion will last forever. I promise.

That’s not to say we won’t be faced with all of these emotions, to varying degrees, at some time or another throughout our existence. I believe we should experience this broad range of emotions. How else can we possibly learn and understand and grow into better humans if not through these very personal moments that add up to a lifetime?

Just keep going and when you think you can’t, just take one more step and then another.

I’m cheering for you.

Choose you. Choose happy.

Recently I facilitated a group discussion on the topic of life’s challenges and how we choose the way in which we encounter said obstacles. I made it clear then, and I wish to state loudly in this platform, that life comes complete with some doozies, curve-balls and turns in our paths that we can never anticipate. Not ever. And these are hard things we go through. Each and every one of us. No one is exempt from these experiences. To think otherwise would be naive. Yet even in the midst of the tough times I sometimes find myself questioning the fairness of it all, the rightness versus the wrongness of my situation, as if such variances existed. (They don’t.)

Gratefully, I don’t stay down long, and I would venture to suggest that neither must you.

Last week I happened upon Dr. Amy Johnson, a social psychologist, master certified coach, author and public speaker, and I am extremely grateful to have found such a trove of information and insights.

Dr. Johnson has a philosophy that I am now officially adopting into my vernacular because it explains my own cyclical relationship to difficulty over my lifetime. I’ve always wondered how and/or why it is that I “bounce back” so quickly when something knocks me down and I tended to write it off as “the way I’m wired.”

Here’s what I love: I was right! I AM wired to bounce back AND SO ARE YOU!

Dr. Johnson suggests that our factory default setting is wellness. You didn’t know you had a default setting, did you? Yup. Just like your mobile phone can be reset if something goes awry, so can you with a little bit of effort on your part.

We (the proverbial we) have a tendency to overthink our circumstances or weigh ourselves down with negative thinking or burden ourselves with frenetic self-talk that serves only one purpose: more stress and more negative thinking, which lead to heavier and heavier hearts, which heaviness repels joy.

I am one of the happiest people I know.

I am not always happy.

When I am unhappy or feeling burdened with what might seem the impossible, I do a factory reset and remember to express gratitude for the highs as well as for the lows, and that gratitude provides an undercurrent of peace that runs throughout my life.

Dr. Johnson puts it this way:

You are well. Your default nature is peace of mind and clarity. Always. Even when you don’t feel it.
When you don’t feel peace of mind and clarity, it’s only because your own personal thinking (inner dialogue, habitual mental chit chat) is in the way.
When your thinking settles down, as it always does, you’ll be bounced back to your peace and clarity.

Understanding that we possess this default setting doesn’t preclude us from life’s adversities, but embracing this outlook allows us to get back to our place of emotional wellness that much faster.

Beware your thoughts getting in your own way; they’ll work really hard to be heard, but remember our thinking creates our feelings. Take control of your thoughts and what you believe and you will bounce back to wellness and a state of peace faster than the rug can get pulled out from under you!

Choose you. Choose happy.

Just Keep Going

Factory Default: Wellness