When you feel like your life is a complete mess, a disaster. Things are out of your control. This just came out of nowhere. You don't know what to do or where to go. What's happening? What's next? Shift that thought for a sec and see what it's like to think about taking 100% responsibility for where you are in your life right now.
It may not be easy, but just think if you are responsible for all the bad situations that are going on in your life right now. Marriage ending, kids fighting, angry spouse. It's affecting your work. It's affecting your weight. You're drinking more than you should. You're watching Netflix all the time. You're not getting anything done. You can't sleep. Everything is brutal.
Now, if you're responsible for all of that, then you're also able to change all of that. You're able to turn it all around. Now, it's not easy some of the times, but with a little shift in how you think about it, you can sure start to feel a whole heck of a lot better than you do right now.
I put together this little list of things that you can do right now to help yourself get out of this funk and just feel a little bit better tomorrow. Then you're going to feel a little bit better the next day. Then you're going to feel a little bit better the day after that. And then as you move day by day by day, you will create the life that you want.
Number One - Self-awareness. Do you know what you are thinking? What you are saying? What you are doing? And do you understand that that affects the life that you have right now? If you're thinking what a jerk he is and what an idiot he is, or how she's done this to me, or how my kids all suck and this is terrible.
If you're thinking these things, if you're thinking, why doesn’t my work understand? You know what I'm going through? How come they're not helping me? Why isn't my mom coming around to help me out? Where are my friends when I need them? If these are all the things that you're thinking all the time, then that's what you are attracting into your life.
The thing is, we don't always think about what we're thinking about, so we don't always pay attention to that. So just take a minute. And if you're thinking something crummy, change it up and think about something positive, anything. What are you grateful for? You have a job. You have children that I'm sure you love. You are alive. That's a good thing.
You've got things that you can be grateful for right now, even though it's a tough time. So that's step one.
Number Two - Ownership. You can choose to complain, to blame, to shame yourself, to stay in this funk, or you can choose to get out there, take action and work towards the life that you deserve and want. It's not great right now, so let's think about how it can be great and move towards that.
Number Three - Set goals. You can set one goal to do one thing completed by the end of next week and that'll move you forward. You can set one goal to do one thing and have it completed in the next month. That'll move you forward. You can plan and take action.
You can decide to get out a journal, create a word doc, whatever works for you and create a plan to do things a little bit differently tomorrow. You can get a few things done tomorrow, even small steps, to solve any problem that you're having in your life right now. It could be to help move you towards creating this separation agreement, working towards creating the parenting plan, having conversations with your kids, whether it's finding a new home to live in. You can create a plan and then you can take action to move towards accomplishing that.
You don't have to do all of these today. These are ideas, things that you can do one at a time to move yourself forward.
Number Four - Adaptability. Decide to be flexible. Stuff is going to happen. Stuff is going to come up. If you have a plan, let's say, to do this and one of your kids gets sick, then you have to be able to be flexible and move that towards tomorrow.
That's a mindset shift. Just being compassionate with yourself, understanding that stuff comes up and when it does, you're going to be flexible. Just be flexible.
Number Five - Learn from your mistakes. You will make mistakes most every day for the rest of your life. Just like me, just like everyone else in the world. When you make a mistake, if you learn from it, it's all right. You move on. Try not to make that same mistake again and again.
This comes back to compassion being kind with yourself. Don't be hard on yourself. You're doing the best that you can.
Number Six - Have a positive attitude. This is huge. You can choose your attitude. And yet it's not easy to be positive when times are tough. I know it's not easy to smile when all you feel like doing is throwing a vase against the wall or bawling your eyeballs out.
I know one little thing that you can do. You find what works for you. One thing that I do is when I'm feeling really crappy, I just think about something I'm grateful for and it changes my attitude. Makes me more positive. Positive attitude is huge and accountability.
Number Seven - Accountability. Find the right people to work with during this time. Find the lawyer who cares, who understands. Who wants less conflict in the legal process. Find a financial money expert. Someone who understands your situation. Who's going to help you to get your money stuff all organized. Work with a therapist if that's what you need. Work with a coach. If that's what you need.
Find a babysitter to take care of the kids. Maybe one day a week so that you can get all your stuff done. Get a gym membership so that you can go to the gym and stay in shape. Find the “Who’s”, the people that can be in your corner to keep you accountable, to help you to move towards the life that you deserve, that you desire, that you want.
And always remember that you are worthy. You are perfect just the way that you are.
And you can choose to be happy.
And until next time here's to youfirst!
Wendy
xo