We all know it’s going to hit us in our lives. A time that we just don’t know what to do anymore because we feel awful. Maybe you lost someone dear to you, or you have the feeling that you’re failing in life. You know that you will get through this or perhaps you’re even past that point.
I’m here to help you overcome this time of misery, seeking out the positive in the current situation to keep you going.
1. Believe In Something Bigger
Sometimes it can help to believe in something bigger than yourself. Be it God or simply The Universe, whatever it is, believe in it. If you have something to believe in that’s bigger than yourself, you’ll go through anything with faith. Thinking that He or The Universe will take care of your problems. Understanding that everything happens for a reason and that this period of misery is a test.
Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness.”
Maybe you were raised religiously, you could totally put this practice into action. Or practice it now; pray, meditate or chant. Do anything that helps strengthen your faith.
2. Talk With Others
Sometimes it helps to talk to others about how you feel. If you talk to people who care about you, they’ll likely be there for you in any way possible. Even though you have a hard time making yourself vulnerable towards others, sometimes it’s the best thing to do. Don’t be afraid to open up.
These people can be friends, family or even strangers you end up talking to. Don’t force it upon them though. If someone asks you how you feel, you could tell the truth and open up. After that, you can ask them how they ‘really’ feel instead of ‘fine’. In my experience, if you tell the truth if someone asks you how you’re doing, they’ll likely open up to you to which can strengthen the relationship. And as you may know, relationships are critical to your happiness.
If you don’t feel comfortable to talk to these people for whatever reason, you could always go and see a psychologist or an expert in that area. This may cost you money but what is more important happiness or money? Happiness of course! They know what they talk about and can really help you overcome this misery you’re feeling.
Another option is to seek out people who are going through the same thing as you. If you have problems with alcohol, you can go to an AA meeting. There’s even a group for friends/relatives of the victims of the crash of MH17. Search for groups on facebook or google, believe me, you’ll find a lot. All these people have been through the same thing as you are going through so they will be able to help.
3. Be Alone
The opposite of reaching out is to isolate yourself for a while. This may look like contradicting advice, but I think this can really help some people, especially introverts. When I lost my best friend at a really young age, I locked myself up for 3 months to recover and figure everything out. It ultimately turned my life around which led me to write this article.
Take time off of everything, don’t go to work or any other thing you have. Just call in sick or something, I don’t know, make something up. Or be honest and tell them that you’re going through a ‘down’ period and you really need it. This can be hard if you have children, but you could always schedule your day around spending time on your own.
When you are alone, you don’t have to do anything, just contemplate or let go. Everything that you feel or do, let it happen, you need it. I read a lot of books in my time of isolation, but you don’t even have to do that. Just don’t set any expectations and see what happens.
If you want to do something but not something intense, you could meditate. Sit, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. That’s all you have to do, here’s a simple guide for meditation.
4. Start Expressing Yourself In Art
There are a lot of benefits to making art, some of them are listed here:
- Creating art relieves stress
- Art can help express your subconscious
- It encourages creative thinking
- Art boosts self-esteem
- Art increases tolerance, empathy, and love.
Now, if these reasons aren’t enough to get you into art, I don’t know what will. Of course, there are a lot of different forms of art, one of them is what I’m doing now, writing.
Other forms of art:
- Dance
- Singing
- Painting
- Drawing
There are so many art forms, just do what fits you best or feels the best. By expressing yourself in art, you will get the misery out of you. This makes it easier to deal with it as you now have a visual of the causes for your unhappiness.
Start making art today, try something!
5. Be You
One thing I practice and preach is being true to yourself and others at all times. Even if it’s a negative something like feeling miserable. It’s not wrong to be miserable for a while, we all are sometimes. Just be you and do everything that is you. Do you want to scream? Scream. Do you want to cry? Cry. As long as you’re not hurting others intentionally you’re okay, be you.
Be vulnerable and open up as I said earlier. But now, you don’t even need to talk to anyone. Just open yourself up for everything that’s happening around you.
Let everything happen as it happens. Everything happens for a reason, and so does this feeling. Being unhappy is needed to become happy. Just as you first have to lose yourself to find yourself.
You’ll feel better when you’re you because you don’t have to hold back or hold yourself up to specific standards anymore. Try it and be happy!
6. Have Fun
A lot of times, I catch myself beating myself up because I’m having fun while there are so many things I have to do. But then I realize that it’s as important to have fun as it is to work. My rule of thumb is this:
Play as hard as you work.”
So if you’re working (really working) 8 hours a day, you also deserve to have 8 hours of fun. Playing has many health benefits.
So, go and have fun! This could be for a couple hours, days, weeks or even months. Sometimes you just need time off. After I graduated from high school, I first dedicated 3 months of my gap year to playing video games (and smoking weed at that time). You know what happened? After 3 months I wanted to do something, and I felt I had a more significant purpose to go after, I’ve never felt so good to work on something in my life. It motivated the crap out of me, and now I try to keep the balance between having fun and working.
So, really takes this time to play and maybe even plan it in your schedule. This way you’ll rest and regenerate your energy for the next day.
Something You Need To Know
The last thing I need you to know is this:
Life is so ironic, it takes sadness to know what happiness is, noise to appreciate silence & absence to value presence.”
Life is hard, and you need to deal with it. There’s no easy way around it, you have to face it and be tough as shit. We’re all hypocrites, emotional beings and selfish. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.
Are you going to take responsibility for your life? Or are you going to watch from the sidelines?
Just know; eventually, everything will be alright. Everything happens for a reason, you need to have valleys to have peaks in life. But I believe that everything will turn out to be okay.
And so will you.
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