You ever have those days when everything feels too much? When it feels like every way you turn, you are faced with a brick wall? When it feels like you are the only person in the world going through this? You must be, because everyone else is doing just fine, right?
Wrong.
We all get those days and every single one of us is winging it. The important thing is not what you are going through, but how you deal with it. There is no side-stepping or going around those feelings and situations, what we need to do is feel the emotions, feel the fear and work out what is the next right thing.
I can’t give you a step by step action plan to combat any of this, because your life is unique to you as mine is to me, but here are the things that help me and hopefully you can adapt them to work for you.
This wasn’t the plan.
Okay so things aren’t going to plan. Then change the plan. Nothing should be set in stone, we are people, not machines. Your plan should be dynamic, fluid and flexible to fit in with life and the way it shifts. If there is one guarantee life gives us, it’s that things will more than likely not go as expected. So expect that.
Have a Plan B. And a Plan C. As many letters as you need. Whatever it takes. Progress, not perfection.
Talk.
Don’t bottle this stuff up. Or any stuff come to that. Talk, communicate. Speak to people you trust, who understand you and have your best interests at heart. If you don’t have friends in the same field or area of work, build yourself a community of like-minded folk online and counsel one another.
More than once, I have had a problem and once I started to speak it aloud to a friend, I went on to realise that I had the solution all along. Sometimes you just need that sense check.
Suck it up, buttercup.
Accepting that there will be days like these is half the battle in getting through them. Acknowledge what you are feeling, what you are going through. get through the day as best you can, you only ever have to go through this day once. These feelings are not unique to you; everyone feels like this from time to time. It’s trite to wheel out the stuff about how many time JK Rowling or The Beatles or Colonel Sanders were rejected before they found success, but it’s valid.
The first door you knock on may not be the door to your dreams. It means it’s the wrong door, not the wrong dream. There will be other doors – keep knocking.
You are not failing.
It’s only a failure if you give up. Don’t give up. Sometimes you have to pull back to propel yourself forwards.
And practice what you preach. Yes, I am looking at myself hard in the mirror right now. Today is one of those days, (I told you we all get them) and so was yesterday. I’m determined to make tomorrow different.
Don’t. Give. Up.
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