It’s really strange how our emotions seem to control our lives. Well… perhaps not so much our lives, but how we feel about our lives. You can be sailing along quite happily and then suddenly a big storm appears out of nowhere – just didn’t see it coming – and bang your world is in pieces and the prospect of a return to the idyllic happiness you were experiencing is gone forever.
What did I do wrong?
Is God punishing me?
Has Life got it in for me?
I’m a good person, I don’t deserve this, do I?
These are the kind of thoughts that appear, along with:
How will I cope?
Where will I live?
I feel so lonely.
My words do not even come close to touching the depths of despair that may be drowning you right now.
A few days ago I heard from a friend. Her husband had left her after 20+ years of happy marriage; children moved away, family home – filled with wonderful loving memories – being sold. Life was over and she was distraught and had no idea who to turn to or how to cope with all of this unfairness.
I remember when the same sort of thing happened to me about 20 years ago. My psychologist said something that was the most powerful thing anyone has ever said to me. It was also the last thing I wanted to hear when I was feeling so sorry for my self – knowing that my life, and my happiness was over.
He said…
“Why not you?”
It stopped me in my tracks and made me think. My assumption was this stuff only happened to other people. I was a good person and so deserved good things, not this hellish nightmare. But it slowly dawned on me that I’m just like everyone else and sometimes stuff happens that we don’t like. It doesn’t say anything about us. It doesn’t make a statement about our goodness or our badness.
Sometimes bad stuff happens to good people.
It’s as simple as that.
Once you really get that, you can move on and start to live again.
Once you really get that, you can let go of the past and look towards the future.
Once you really get that, you can see that it is just another challenge, with just another solution.
You don’t have to like the current situation but the sooner you can move to a state of acceptance of what is, the sooner you can move away from it and into a brighter future. While you mourn for the past (and this is a perfectly natural and healthy thing to do – for a while) you are held in the past. When the grieving is finished life will open up once more for you.
But in the meantime you can feel completely overwhelmed and unable to cope with just getting through the day. To that end I wrote The Ten Commitments: For When the World Overwhelms You.
This brief book guides you through the process of how to get through a day when coping with the demands of the world is just too much. I walk you through ten simple steps that you can cope with – even in the midst of grief.
Help is available to you when your world overwhelms you, and today, it seems that so many people make so many demands on our time, energy, and emotional stability that the experience of being overwhelmed is happening all too frequently. Grab your copy TODAY and if you don’t need it today at least you’ll have it ready for when you do.