Happy Mondays
Leading life and happiness coach
IS IT a February thing, your age or those three super moons last year? Whatever it is there seems to be a lot of it about at the moment. Everyone appears to be suffering – friends are ill, tumours are cropping up, people with dementia are having to go into care homes. There is at least a low-level ague hanging over most folk I know.
The headlines cause internal groans and as we pitch our tents in misery we pretty soon find the return on investment turns negative.
It does not help to think of the philosophical line that “pain is inevitable and suffering optional” when you are viewing life through a veil of antibiotics and grief. A recent pneumonia-type virus pulled the rug out from under me and I found myself bed bound for the first time in my adult life.
Appointments had to be cancelled, tea was brought and I spiralled into a deep grey fug of self-pity and sad thoughts. Every loss, broken promise and foul phantom of past pain visited my sick bed as I flapped around like a fish gasping for air looking for a release from my psychic and physical suffering.
What we resist persists and sometimes the only option is to wave the white flag of surrender when the escape route is blocked by beefy bouncers and the key has gone missing.
We add to our own pain when we become the victim of it. We hurt ourselves further when we struggle to control that which is beyond our grasp and we set ourselves up for misery when we bow to the falsehood that life should be one way when it is going off grid.
Despite our best visualisations and wishes that life was a glorious La La Land dance of delight it can equally be a gloomy plodding dirge we have to tolerate until the good bits come our way.
Even the dark times show the lighter days in a glorious relief and make us appreciate the good, provided we are wise enough to learn the lessons that lie in the down days.
To struggle with the idea that bad times are a failure, a life hiccup or some kind of mortal malfunction, is not seeing this journey as it really is.
Life is often a confusing slog where the comic relief and moments of joy are serving suggestions not guarantees.
Quite often it takes illness or a life shock to make us realise we can control our lives a lot less than we thought we could.
You can’t bend people or life to suit your needs, your dreams can make the now a mockery of recrimination and holding on with a vice-like grip to outcomes that you desperately want is about as constructive as trying to hold water in your fingers.
Denial is merely a temporary measure so I have put together a few thoughts as a prescription for anyone suffering an ague of the body or soul: THE ALCHEMY OF ILLNESS
Sometimes we need to be still and not act. It is OK to give in.
Simply breathe and focus on your own power.
It is OK if counting blessings does not help. Give yourself tons of self-love instead.
Let the world, others and life come to you. Let go and stop forcing. Allow the body to tell you how it needs to heal. Look at the horror show of your thoughts to see what needs to be addressed.
The lack of happiness in your life is the indication of what you need to change.