When Life Gets Hard
Nuggets of Wisdom
I recall a particularly difficult patch in my life - you know those times that seem to come completely out nowhere and knock you sideways, right off your feet? Those moments where you can’t quite see how the heck you’re going to navigate your way through the utter turmoil of it all?
Yep, it was one of those character building times!
Whenever I find myself in a situation that stops me in my tracks, I take a bit of a ‘pause’ to let myself catch up. My logical mind can take over a bit (thank you over-thinking brain) so I know I have to check in with myself and feel things.
The fastest way to the other side is through it and that, my friends, will involve feeling all those big, uncomfortable and tough feelings!
Despite my best efforts of avoidance in my younger, not-so-wiser years, I learnt that there is absolutely no short-circuiting the feelings part. If you don’t feel it now, you’re sure as hell gonna feel it later and it’ll usually pack a bit more of a punch if you leave it too long!
During this particularly challenging, life-altering time, I was going with the mantra “one day at a time” and giving myself the grace to slow it down to what I thought was a glacial pace. But then, one of my own mentors said to me:
“Mell, you might give yourself a bit more grace and take it hour by hour or even minute by minute”
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could go slower (much, much slower) and let myself catch up to processing it all.
Life definitely goes on. It will keep on going around us no matter what is going on. There will be demands on your time and what people expect of you. But this human experience we all get to have means that we’re going to have times in our life when the unexpected happens. When we have impossible decisions to make. When we lose someone close to us. When we can’t see a way through and we have to go as gently as possible with ourselves to move through it to the other side (where I promise, things do get better). But it does require giving to ourselves.
That little nugget of wisdom, to take things minute by minute when you need to, got me through a time in my life where I needed to pull the reigns tighter than I thought I could to slow things down.
It meant I could process every feeling that flooded through, and these were in fact changing minute by minute. It gave me the permission to look at it a little more gently and to give myself the compassion that I needed to move through.
So if you find yourself in a situation right now that feels really big, try approaching it minute by minute and go gently with yourself. Don’t judge it. And definitely do not judge yourself. It will take as long as it takes to move through it, and you deserve your every kindness and grace to move through it.
Reach out and ask for help from your trusted support circle (friends, family, mentors) because even though we might feel we have to ‘be strong and do it all ourselves’, we actually don’t. Just like you would be there for your loved ones, they want to be there for you too, so let someone in and share your problem with them.
Sometimes, half of the healing process is just being able to talk about it to an ear that wants to listen.
xx
Reach out to me if you have any questions, are unsure of how you feel or just want to chat. Let’s work through this together.
Let’s be friends on Instagram
