In my last post, I asked how we can take ourselves out of a bad cycle where you can't refill your various wells (I guess you could call this a personal drought)...
This question is a challenge. After all, if you're already in a situation where it's a constant race to just to stay in place, it's hard to even picture doing anything differently. But there are some steps you can take to break out of a nasty vicious cycle.
The very first thing you can do is create a little quiet space for yourself. Odds are when you're in that state your mind is racing and filled with worry and stress. It's going to be very difficult to start the process of change without some space to work in. Just a tiny bit of quiet can be the first little wedge into this seemingly insurmountable wall. That's because filling the well requires effort and energy and a little space can help you find that.
That can mean taking your lunch break outside or turning off the TV at night for half an hour before bed or getting up a bit earlier to enjoy the morning quiet. Just making a little calm patch in the noise to think. Meditation is all well and good, but this doesn't necessarily have to be that. You don't have to think of nothing or clear your mind or have a mantra. It might even be a good thing to take a few calm moments to think clearly about your situation. Now, resist the temptation to spend that calm time thinking about all the rotten, scary, stressful stuff going on. Instead, just try picturing living your life in a different way -- picture an alternate reality.
Don't worry about figuring out how to get to that reality now. You don't have to know that yet. But making changes in your life is a form of magic, and you can't make the magic happen if you can't picture what you want. Try visualizing a world where you feel good, where the bills are paid, where you enjoy your job. Imagine the details. Picture sights (your new cozy safe apartment), sounds (your breath without wheezing while you go for a walk), smells (dinner on the stove, a product of your full pantry).
The key is to be realistic. You could spend your time imagining that you're model gorgeous, that you inherited a billion dollars, that you never married that jerk... but those things aren't realistic. It's just fantasy and dreaming and we can't extract improvement and action from that. What you have to do is visualize
you in a new life that's based on your actual situation. You aren't going to be able to travel back in time and say "I don't" instead of "I do." However you can picture a life where you aren't stuck financially, relying on infrequent support checks without money for a good lawyer. You can't make yourself taller or blonder, but you can make yourself healthier, better read, more educated, more articulate. You may not have rich elderly relatives who you could start visiting regularly, but you can have a more stable financial situation.
As you start picturing this new life, you'll find that some things seem to fit better than others. The color of the paint and carpet in your future alternate house fade to unimportance, but the fact that you have a garden and can walk the streets safely become more and more prominent. This is your subconscious telling you what's really important for you and what's peripheral.
Having this possible alternate reality in mind is a critical first step to making changes. Because even if it never manifests in the exact way you visualize, believing in the reality of change is critical to making that change happen.
The next step is to start changing your mindset all the rest of the time. Not that you have to have your head in the clouds, visualizing all the time. You still have to deal with your current situation and we know how much attention that can take. But it's HOW you deal that's critical. It's the KIND of attention that matters.
For example, don't spend a bunch of pointless time blaming yourself for the way your life is. It's easy to kick yourself over past bad choices, but all it does is add to the stress and fatigue you're dealing with now. Taking responsibility is important, but endlessly kicking yourself about it is useless. It's just not productive. And don't spend a bunch of pointless time blaming other people either. It's equally nonproductive to point that blame outside yourself -- even if part of it belongs there.
There are many ways that the deck can be stacked against people because of gender or race or economic circumstances. Society also has its vicious cycles and blaming the victim and isolating people are two of the nastiest. But blaming others just uses your limited reserves to generate useless anger and gives you a feeling of futility. The time to point the finger and call people or society out is after you've broken out of your cycle. When you have reserves, using them to help others or point out injustice is of the highest calling. But you can't do that when you yourself are on the brink.
As you focus on your daily challenges, use your new visualized future to help you gain perspective. Your job sucks, but it isn't forever. You feel lonely, but can't you think of one person who cares? You feel horribly out of shape, but that just gives you more room to improve. Change is possible. You probably already believe that change for the worse is possible because you've experienced it. But change for the better is possible as well. And what you do now can make the difference between the two.
Start considering which wells you can begin to fill now. If your financial well is dry, you're going to need some extra income to change that. Money won't just materialize without some effort on your part. But you can start filling your emotional, physical, and mental wells right now. Just the tiniest steps can grow into large changes.
Emotional:* Talk to a supportive friend or family member (emphasis on supportive) or if you don't have one, try to make one. We are judged by the quality of our friends... not because the world is full of judgmental people, but because we become like those we surround ourselves with. If you feel short on those kinds of people, put yourself in situations where you might meet them.
* Connect with people you see every day. These don't have to be your future best friends to bring something good to your life. Do a little something nice for someone. Bring cookies to work and say hi to the neighbors. Ask the postman's name. This isn't about major connections the way the previous item is... it's about the small connections. The little exchanges that help you feel like you are a part of the world.
* Write all your negative thoughts out on a paper. Now for each horrible, defeating thing you wrote, write the exact opposite on a different piece of paper... twice. No really. I mean it. I'll wait while you get a pen. It's surprising how easy it is to write something bad ("I'm just a pathetic excuse for a human being") and how hard it is to write something good ("I'm a valuable person with something good to give to the world"). Burn the first paper and frame the second.
* Feed your spirit with joyful and uplifting food. I like dark comedy and drama and cynical nihilistic commentary on our society in literature and film. And I like mindless eye candy type shows that are effectively car wrecks on TV. But now is not the time for emotional junk food. We're a cynical society. Honest positive emotion seems kind of pathetic and embarrassing. We're not supposed to be uplifted, filled with joy, moved by wonder. We're not supposed to cry when we read books or watch movies. We're not supposed to laugh unless it's at the misfortune of others. I'm giving you express permission to those things we're not supposed to do.
Physical:* Get up. Get out. Take a walk. Even a short one. Breathe some air. Feel some weather. Get some sun or rain or snow on your face. Yeah, hug that tree already. Or sit with your back to it and look up in its branches. Find a private place and run a little bit if you can. I don't mean RUN(tm) like some adult exercise program. Run like a kid, ungainly, ugly, just for fun.
* Feed your body with good food. Avoid extremism and diets. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Michael Pollan was kind enough to encapsulate the most important bit of his book
In Defense of Food so that you can start right away without having to read it. Eat slow. Chew your food. Take time for your meal.
* Get some rest. While depressed people can sleep waaaay too much, the average American is chronically sleep deprived. What's ironic is that as busy as we feel we are, most of us spend a pointless period of time before we go to sleep watching TV or reading or surfing (yeah, me too). Not that a little evening relaxation will kill us, but hey, if you aren't getting enough sleep try turning off the electronics and the lights and just go to sleep already.
* Make a small change in your environment just for the sake of beauty, comfort, aesthetics, and pleasure. Clean off your desk / counter / table or take out the trash and scrub the sink. Make a nature altar on a window sill. Light some candles. Arrange some flowers in a vase. Cover your old chair with a nice throw. Toss out that ugly picture that reminds you of your ex. When our lives are out of control, everything can seem overwhelming. You can't do everything... so you do nothing. Try a different approach and just to a little something.
Mental:* Learn something new. Don't make this more complex than it needs to be. Go to the library and find a book or two. See if there's a weekend class. Find someone who knows how and ask some questions. The goal isn't productivity or money or status or power. Enjoy learning just for the sake of learning. Just because it's fun.
* Avoid the news. Seriously. It's not doing anyone any good. If you don't have friends or family to tell you when stuff happens, scan the headlines on a site like BBCs world news and through the glass of the newspaper dispenser. Check the weather on wunderground.com or weather.com. Realize that if war broke out or a flood was coming, you will no doubt hear about it.
* Exercise your gray matter with puzzles and games. Cross-words, sudoku, trivia. Cross-word puzzles have been proven to stave off Alzheimer's later in life. So give your brain a bit of a workout.
* Make a new habit. There's been an article going around the blog circuit about making new habits instead of changing old ones. I'd written about habits before and complete agree. Instead of trying to change some bad habit, make a new good one instead. Or make a new habit that's neither good or bad, just to stretch your brain. Change the order of your morning routine. Write with your non-dominate hand for a while. Take a different route to work or the store. Your brain will be busy forging new connections that you can then use to change your life.
Record any ideas that come to you. As you start filling yourself back up, even just a little and as you keep picturing how your life could be, eventually you'll get some idea of a step you could take. Something you could try to change things for the better. Writing your resume and posting it. Or keeping a loose change jar to help keep track of your pennies. Or trying whole fruit yogurt shakes for breakfast. Take a look at these ideas objectively (it is a scam or get rich/thin/healthy fast scheme? or it is an idea generated by your subconscious to really help you?). If the latter, give it a try. This is how we make change in our lives, one tiny little step at a time.
Finally, acknowledge that there is work involved -- sometimes a lot of work. If you have a long history of cycles of poverty and irresponsible spending, you're going to have to work to break out of it. Make more, spend less, create new habits. If you've been eating badly for a long time, it's going to take work to learn to enjoy natural flavors, unadulterated with salt and fat, and cook for yourself. If you are stuck because of past issues, it takes a
whole lot of work to push through your old fears in order to do the things you know you need to do.
This last point is a challenge to embrace. When you're in a vicious cycle, it already seems like your life is much harder and more work than most people's. Someone with a reserve of money, time, health, and emotional well-being is better able to weather life's rough patches and has the tools and skills to even avoid some of them. So yeah, that person's life is going to seem easier. It IS easier. But in order to get out of a bad cycle, you need to work hard... the key is that you have to work on the right things. You have to work smarter AND harder.
That sucks. And it may even seem unfair. All I can say is that life was never guaranteed to be fair and, hey, what's the alternative? More of the same? Change for the worse? You might as well lay down and die.
I have had people say to my face that I have it easy. That things come easy to me. It's true that I have been incredibly blessed in some areas. I feel intensely grateful for my immediate family, for example. But in other areas I know I've had to work. I've had some intensely crappy jobs, for example. I was physically assaulted by a boss once. I've had to climb up a high sign on a slipper ladder in the rain in the dark in an unsafe area. I cleaned a bingo hall and have cleaned houses.
I've also struggled with very bad times and difficult issues. Most people don't know about them, but they were hard to get through and hard to get past. When I mention PTSD, trust me I know whereof I speak.
And even when I'm not in my dark night of the soul, shit still hits the fan. Like when we were in that rotten summer apartment in Colorado, and the toilet upstairs overflowed with no one home and the maintenance people ignored our calls and it took six hours of being massively flooded with toilet water while we carried our furniture out front door before they came and shut it off... and they didn't even offer us a place to stay? And then when they didn't clean it up right and we began to get ill and get infections (ear, finger, respiratory) and we had no medical insurance and I battled migraines without medication... that sucked.
But what I remember most about that summer was the joy of escaping a bad job and burdensome mortgage and taking some time off. Afternoons at the pool with the Ham, teaching her to enjoy the water. Making friends in the complex and having kids for Ham to play with. I remember it as a calm peaceful time to reconnect with myself and my family and get my priorities in order. I remember it as a very good thing and a wonderful time. We got through it.
You can get through it too.
