Learning from a Bad Day

An interesting thing happened this week.  I thought I was choosing a week of peace and quiet.  I’ve been relaxing, doing a lot of knitting, some reading and writing.  Some of the time this week has been very relaxing.  BUT.  Today was no fun.  Today was very stressful and it’s hard to say exactly why.

Even though I wanted to take it easy and allow myself to be happy, I felt very anxious today.  I found myself dwelling on negative past memories.

Yesterday afternoon I felt very content.  I listened to the pleasant book-on-cd “Espresso Tales” about life in fictional Edinburgh by Alexander McCall Smith.  I finished knitting the cool scarf that I started last week.  Contentment was finally mine.  I was pretty thrilled by the experience of contentment, which is rare for me.

I expected to be about to repeat the feelings of contentment by doing almost the same things again.  I spent time in the same comfortable room.  I thought it would be great.  Instead, negativity and anxiety found me.  Then, I kind of found thoughts about bad memories to go with my bad mood, which of course only escalated my nasty mood.

I fought against the bad mood all day long.  Why me?  I thought.  Why can’t I decide when I want to have a pleasant day?  I thought I had all the factors of a pleasant day in place.  I thought I had created the perfect scenario for happiness.

In late afternoon after my mini laptop gave me difficulties, I hit the roof.  I felt incredibly frustrated.  Frustration is one of my least favorite feelings (which is probably understandable to many people).  I kept myself from throwing the laptop across the room, so at least I had some sense left.

I talked to my husband on the phone, and I was pretty livid.  I thought it was horribly unfair that I should feel so bad when I was trying to use perfect conditions to feel good.

I got some fresh air and an iced coffee from McDonald’s and I started to feel a lot better.  It was a beautiful day outside, a sunny afternoon with a blue sky and fluffy white clouds.  I realized a few things.

Somehow I had managed to take my inexplicably bad day and learn something new from it.  I realized that I can’t shrink from life and expect to avoid all negative emotions.  Life is life.  I won’t somehow be able to outwit the worst of it and only pick the good stuff.  Life isn’t fair, but the way life randomly smacks you with new stuff to consider is pretty darn equal for everyone.

I also thought to myself, if I’m going to deal with random frustrations even when I am trying to enjoy a pleasant day surrounded by the comforts of home, I may as well get out there and do something daring and fun with my life.  I can at least try to follow my biggest dreams since I can’t sit out the drama of life entirely anyway.

Third, I’m going to have to give the majority of my inquiries into spirituality a rest for now and just be myself and try to rely on my basic smarts and common sense.  I have really been trying to be perfect in some way, also in an attempt to avoid conflict and frustration in life.  But I guess that is not the right way for me to look at it at all.  I have unreasonable expectations from life that create a foundation that falls away like sand with the slightest obstacle.  I expect life to always treat me well if I bargain with it and whine.  Guess what, that won’t work either.  I thought I could avoid all of the hurt of life somehow.  But all I can do is be strong and face the difficult stuff.

Even though my learned ideas seem harsh, they strangely make me feel a lot better.  I have more compassion for others because I think almost everyone is doing the best they can while facing life’s difficulties themselves.  I think there are many conflicts in the world that are caused by humans acting unethically and treating each other badly.  However, there is also a lot of grasping at survival going on in the world currently.  Even though none of us are perfect, we can still try to help each other in the kindest and most thoughtful ways possible.

I have renewed faith in my own strength and forward movement.  I won’t be waiting for a magical perfect moment anymore, because I don’t think that perfect moment will ever arrive.  But I can grapple with life in my own way each day and do the best I can.

Staying Lighthearted about Moodiness

As my semester of psychology classes closes down this week, I felt some frustration this afternoon that I didn’t do better in a few of my classes.  I got by, but my academic performance was not up to my original expectations.  I felt very disheartened and let myself feel bad about it.  But by the time the afternoon was over, things had already changed a lot for me, and I was able to transform my negative situation in a strange, roundabout way.

This is what I wrote this afternoon when I was feeling negative:

The time has come to unearth absolute honesty and to unleash my sardonic, dark, moody side.  I need to just accept the sardonic side for what it is and let it be.  I can’t keep dark moodiness shoved into a hidden closet any longer.  The weight of my dark moodiness and sorrow has become too much for some image of a petite little girl who only thinks of sunshine every day.  I am capable of being happy and cheerful, but it has gotten to the point where I have to admit that I am incapable these days of sustaining cheerfulness.  I wrestle with some dark issues and sorrowful moods.  (I am officially much more moody and extreme than a typical person.)  Like a modern, female Hamlet I just go ahead and ask myself huge, messy questions about life that most people are bright enough to let alone.

I think my aim with unleashing the shadowy side is to change my own idea of myself so that the reality matches up more with the ideals.  I have been straining each day to be happy, and it’s not working out.  However, I can still make it each day and move forward and occasionally without planning I am happy on my own.  But I have refused to have any sugar-coated version of life.  Life can be extremely harsh and difficult to take sometimes, frequently even.

By sardonic for some reason I mean that I enjoy life, but in my own ill-tempered, bleak way.  Usually sardonic means, “scornful, scathing, ironic, mocking.”  Maybe by sardonic I mean that I have a dark sense of humor about my own rage towards life.  My life is messy.  It very often takes huge detours away from anything that I could possibly want for myself.

I wasn’t trying to do anything positive when I wrote all of this.  I was just dealing with some bad emotions.  Then, within an hour or so, a strange thing happened.  When I accepted my bad mood, it automatically turned around.  Just when I thought nothing was working out for me, I handled the situation in a positive way without realizing it.

By the time I sat down to have dinner with my husband before my second class of the day, I had a lot to talk about.  When I accepted my moodiness, I also accepted that I would never be anyone else’s idea of a pristine or perfect person.  I will never be a supermodel who breezes through life and does everything perfectly with a glossy shine to everyday life.  (I doubt anyone really has that existence.)

I realized that my husband loves me the way I am.  Until now I have been saying, “yeah, but wait until you see the perfect version of me in the future.”  I haven’t been okay with myself.  I have wanted the house to look perfect, and me to look perfect, and my grades and everything else about my life to look perfect.  When everything seems messy and imperfect and I don’t accept any of it, I don’t have the energy to keep up with anything because I have set unattainable standards.

I think this afternoon’s turnaround even made me feel differently about the past.  I had wanted to change everything about my life until it was some airy, angels-singing-heavenly-tunes version of absolute perfection.  Nothing was good enough and so nothing was enjoyable with this mentality.

I still have goals now, but I am attempting to be much more realistic and accepting of who I am.  Life is messy, and I am gradually learning how to not punish myself for falling short of perfection.  The funny thing is that by accepting the messiness and imperfection, everything seems a lot more enjoyable just the way it is.

Dealing with Tremendous Stress

By Belle

Sometimes life can blindside you with nearly debilitating stress.  You wonder “why me?” and you wonder if there is anything you could have done to prevent the stressful obstacle.  Often the obstacle is not preventable, just manageable, but you are left with the extreme state of stress nonetheless.

Others do not always know how to help.  Sometimes they seem supportive, sometimes they don’t.  If a good friend tells you that you are feeling the “wrong” way, that actually adds to the tremendous level of stress.  Overall, though, people who care about you can be the best sense of hope and support during a difficult time.

So, after yesterday and this morning I feel bruised and hurt by stress.  Just when I think I have conquered it, I realize that the feeling of dread and hurt remains.

I blame myself for a lot of past issues.  I am happily almost finished resolving the past.  But I think a new, present event can be so stressful that even without additional false meanings and thoughts from the past, it still remains a horrible stress to be dealt with personally.

I am interested in Buddhism and New Age ideas, such as the idea of finding a sense of peace that you can have with you always.  Clearly, I have not reached that state yet at all.  But it is still tricky.  I want to stay positively focused.  But it is difficult not to beat myself up over not being able to be peaceful.  It is a vicious feedback loop that does me no good.

I was listening to Eckhart Tolle and Lama Surya Das books on tape the past two days while I was knitting.  It was calming.  But Eckhart Tolle mentions that a sense of peace will blossom as well.  I feel no real sense of peace at all, which makes me feel like a failure and undermines the whole thing.

This morning my husband suggested focusing outside myself on the lovely view of nature.  On my drive I was able to look at the beauty of Spring approaching.  The trees and grass were vibrantly green against the clear blue sky.  It was beautiful, and I felt better focusing outside myself at the world around me.

So, focusing inward doesn’t work if I create tension and keep my fists absolutely clenched.  My daily goal right now is to try to clear my mind and focus positively in the most basic ways.  My goal is to feel calm even if I cannot yet feel any real sense of peace.