We all have those moments
in life where it feels as if we are hit hard and knocked down by our circumstance. We are cruising along doing pretty well for
ourselves and all at once, something happens that takes us down and stops our
forward momentum. We hit a wall in our business, experience a
health issue, or have a personal relationship failure. Something happens that causes us to slide into
negative thinking and feeling.
What can we do to get ourselves
out of this negative life space and avoid the pity party?
Live in the truth for a short
time. Give yourself a bit of time to feel
bad or mourn your loss. When you feel let down by someone, or something that didn’t happen for you, it is OK to acknowledge
those bad feelings and really feel them.
If you avoid the bad feelings and try to push them away, they will become
more powerful than they actually are. Give yourself a short time to feel negative
emotion about the lost dreams. Once you
have felt the negative feelings all the way through, it will be easier to let
go of them and move on.
Avoid a victim mentality. Feeling like a victim for example, when a
client yells at you for something beyond your control, destroys your
self-confidence and removes your sense of empowerment over the circumstance.
The more you dwell in disappointment and worry about that client’s feelings, the
more difficult it will be to get into problem solving mode and overcome the
difficulty. Self-pity or victimhood can
be destructive if you choose to dwell there.
Get a little
perspective. We often feel sad or disappointed
about something that we will not really remember in a month or so. Think about the big picture. Let your mind go to a place several months in
the future and think about whether this disappointment will be relevant
then. Are there other more important
things that you can think about now to move on?
Realizing that many of the things we experience in life will not be
important months or years in the future, will help you to gain perspective
about the issue at hand.
Remember that success does
not always equal happiness. Successes
often feel great in the moment, but that happiness is not sustained over the
long term. Studies of lottery winners show
that they are no happier one year after their lottery win than they were before
the money. Life has a tendency to even
out with levels of negative and positive emotion. There are times when a good failure is more
important to your long-term success than an instant win. You can choose to be happy with each moment
regardless of the circumstance.
Identify your next
opportunity. Focusing on the lessons that a failure brings will allow you to envision
future successes. Knowing that each day offers renewed opportunity to try again
will allow your brain to get beyond the self-pity and move on to future
possibility. Focusing on your next move will help you let go of the current
problem and use the lessons learned to propel you forward.
When things don’t work out
the way you originally planned, realize that nothing has gone terribly
wrong. Failure and disappointment are
difficult for all of us to deal with, but you can face it with dignity and grace
if you follow these five steps. Treat
yourself with compassion and see what you can learn from the situation. Try not to judge yourself so you do not get
stuck in a downward spiral of the prolonged pity party. Let it go and move on.
Dr. Julie Cappel
Join me on the Podcast!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730
“It's not what happens to
you, but how you react to it that matters.” - Epictetus
“Twenty years from now you
will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you
did do.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.
