When Life Just Sucks!


Awhile ago I was thinking about how hard it can be to remember happiness strategies when I'm in the best of spirits, let alone when life turns hard. I stumbled on an article that talks about coping with hard times and taking some steps to move forward.

I used to believe that life is just hard sometimes and there's nothing much to do about it except to hunker down and wait for the storm to end. I still believe the first part- life truly is hard at times, but I realize now that even in the hardest times I can be gaining.

I try constantly to ask the question of myself what's the learning here for me. Although it's more difficult to remember the question when life is sucking, I sometimes remember to ask and it's changed many an experience for me. I've been able to move (at least a little bit) away from feeling the powerless victim, and towards a feeling of having some control, and even power. It has become so evident to me that there is value in every one of my experiences. I'd even venture to say that there is often more value in the "negative" times when my defenses are down and the hard stuff is more accessible for consideration (and, yes, feeling).

Success Is What We Decide It Is

We're so messed up about success. We decide what we want and work towards the goal, but if we don't make it we attach the label 'failure' to ourselves. What a crock!

The really cool thing is that I get to decide for myself what success is for me. That means I can make the goal a preference instead of linking success to reaching that particular goal. I find this works really well. Let me give an example.

The first time I decided to train for a 10K run my first impulse was to define success as not only completing the run, but doing it in a certain time. I quickly tossed that success definition as a potential setup for 'failure'. What if I injured myself and couldn't run, or couldn't run as fast as usual? What if I missed some training runs and wasn't at my physical best on race day? Lots of stuff could get in the way of reaching what I deemed to be a successful outcome.

Instead, I decided that success would be doing the best I can while taking good care of myself throughout the thirteen weeks of training. This strategy has served me well through three years of doing various runs.

A great example from this year's Sun Run- I was very diligent about attending three running clinics each week and had bumped up two levels to a group whose speed and endurance was just slightly challenging to me. After two runs with the more advanced group I started having some pain and consulted with the group leader. He told me it could be a torn hamstring but I should try to keep running (carefully) and monitor myself physically before I made a decision about continuing. Well, the pain got worse.

If I'd been defining success as attending every training run and completing the 10K I could have easily labelled myself a failure. Because I had decided that success was doing my best and taking care of myself, I was able to stop running, rest, and see my choice as a success. I ended up not running at all for a month before the race and although I had to walk a couple of times I still completed in my second best time ever!

Success is what I decide it is!