Sometimes amazing things happen to you.
Life can really suck sometimes.
When you find yourself in a situation where you wish life gave you something as harmless as lemons, here’s what to do.
There will be intellectual factors in this situation. If you lose your job, for example, you’ll need to make some plans. Things like making a budget and applying for new jobs.
File that under D for ‘duh’.
What people often forget are the emotional factors.
After you take a punch, right after you take care of any urgent issues, take some downtime.
Lie down on the grass or stare at the wall.
It’s easy to think of the clichéd sufferer: someone who responds to the ground falling under their feet by drinking blindly.
A less obvious, but still cliché, is the person who throws himself into work. “I need this,” they’ll say.
These can only be attempts to escape from their unpleasant reality.
Hmm?
What’s that?
Aren’t you an alcoholic, workaholic, or any type of addict?
Do you actually enjoy a lot of downtime?
Excellent!
However, with or without a screen on the face?
Social media, reading, television, video games, mindless web surfing – they are all distractions from the pain of it all.
And maybe you need a distraction right now.
However, take downtime first. Lock yourself in a room with nothing but your thoughts.
Lie down on the floor and look at the ceiling.
Don’t think it’s a waste of time, it’s the most important thing you could do.
Don’t think it’s awkward, embarrassing, or lazy.
No need to think at all if you don’t want to.
Because here’s the thing:
Your mind wants to process what happened. And of course, you can bury your conscience in distractions so you don’t have to.
Processing is painful, after all.
However, you can’t hold out forever.
You know those moments when your best ideas come to you? For many people, it’s when they’re falling asleep, in the shower, on a long walk, or driving a car. That’s because these activities are mental downtime. They are so natural to you that your conscious mind can switch off, letting your unconscious creativity flow.
Guess what?
These times are also when you process your difficult emotions.
Do you want to feel all the anger, grievance, frustration, betrayal and pain while driving?
Or while you’re trying to sleep?
Yes, I don’t think so.
Unless you let it out at a healthier time, your unconscious will use those times to do what it needs to do.
If you’re lucky, that is.
Your unconscious may not let it all out then.
Instead, you could bury the bread deep.
When you process your discomfort, you can overcome it. When you bury it, it’s always there, eating away at you.
It might even erupt at some unexpected time in the future.
If that happens, who knows how much downtime awaits you.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. People talk about releasing pressure because it’s a great analogy. The sooner, more often, and more thoroughly you vent your steam, the safer it is for everyone.