How To Stay Graceful During Graceless Times
We all fall from grace sometimes.
Some people more than others.
How many of you find themselves caught up in a funk more often than they’d like to remember? Show of hands, please.
And how many would admit this is usually self inflicted?
When we suddenly get on a downer, life doesn’t smell of roses anymore and nothing is good enough, that means we have fallen out of favour with ourselves.
When that happens we usually look for reasons to justify our feelings and remedies to stop feeling so yukky.
In our attempt to figure life out we forget to live.
[bctt tweet=”We forget that life is made of countless crappy moments and cheery ones, and what we do in between determines how we live.” username=”evokinggrace”]
I recently had one of my epic “boo boo” moments.
So “boo boo” in fact, if I carry on this way I’ll soon get a mention in the English Dictionary.
“Antonia’s boo boo time”: one’s ability to turn peace into a big, massive mess.
Yep, that was me.
At the height of a very nice and joyful time I suddenly found myself catapulted into the gutter.
Sulking my way out of it, I started to dig into my past for reasons that could shed light on what was going on.
The more I digged the deeper I sank.
When I started to think how fortunate I am hoping that would make me feel better, I ended up feeling very angry instead.
How dare I, silly girl, not being content with such a privileged life when the rest of the world is struggling?
Indulging in “self-scourging” is never a good idea.
In the end, I put together a nice little list of why’s & how’s to get me out of my gloom.
But I felt even crappier than before.
Guess why?
Cause I had missed one simple clue.
When you go astray your feelings are telling you that your thoughts are simply letting you down.
It’s not about the world out there.
Or about when you were 5 and you mum forgot to buy ice cream and you felt neglected and still do.
It’s not even about you being your own problem.
It’s just that we all suffer from “chronicle habitual thinking”.
We all pick up thoughts during our lifetime that become patterns.
Creeping out from the depth of our subconscious, like an octopus’ tentacles, these patterns will get a firm hold of us.
And when that happens, the more we fight the stronger the grip feels.
When we simply watch of our mind playing one of its old tricks and we accept that for what it is, without why’s and if’s, we’ll slowly come back to our default state of grace.
In that moment life will start flowing again.
Can we keep graceful during graceless time then?
Yes we can, by simply learning to get ourselves out of own way whenever we get into a “fixing mode”.
If we can just observe our thoughts and feelings without the need to do anything about them, this will give our mind time to clear.
Is this easy?
It becomes easier once we see how it’s only when our mind is calmer that we can look at things from a different angle and feel OK with things no matter what’s going on around us.
If that’s the case, why would anyone want to be in a bad mood for too long?
Wrapping it up:
- we all have countless crappy moments and cheery ones, and what we do in between determines the quality of our life
- we pick up thoughts during our life that become “chronicle habitual thinking”
- thinking patterns hold heavy energy which drag us down whenever we get in a “fixing mode”.
Blog originally posted here.