Just like every other person, I go through days in which I feel amazing; everything goes with the flow I like to surf on, nice things come my way and my dearest frenemy stress decides to not keep me company. But not every day is like this. And that is not a bad thing at all. In fact, just like nature, life is like a cycle. The good alternates with the less good (let’s not get too negative). That is what creates balance. Although, it might be hard to embrace those less good days just as much as you embrace the good days. I mean, who really likes to feel uncomfortable, restless and annoyed in oneself? I don’t. But I think I have found a way to cope with the days (or moments) in which I feel not as happy as I would like to.
A while ago I published an article (in Dutch though) in which I interviewed my favourite blogger. In the conversation that arose while interviewing we started to talk about cycles. How life is a spiral, a natural cycle. How our modern society does not particularly like natural cycles because they do not rise forever. Natural cycles also drop. But just like a tree does not keep growing more and more green leaves without dropping them every fall, life (and business) is not meant to only grow. It has this natural cycle of rising and dropping. If we try to get the line to do nothing but rise, whether it is in life or in business or in friendship or whatever, a massive breakdown will follow. A well-known phenomenon that is a good example of this is burnout. You work and work and push because you do not want to ‘get back to that lower level’ or ‘stop achieving’. And then your body says ‘it’s enough’ and it crashes. You are forced to go back to where you started. While if you just followed your natural rhythm, gave in to your tiredness and embraced your less happy moments, that massive crash would not have happened. Just for the record; I do not mean to insult people who have faced a burnout or another kind of breakdown. I experienced a massive breakdown myself and I ended up seeing it as the greatest lesson I have learned so far. But I am, as usual, slightly deviating from my point.
What I want to say is that ever since I had that conversation, I realized that no matter how hard I would try to skip those less good days or moments, they will come anyway. And if I were to ‘postpone’ an unhappy time, it will only come back harder in the future. The days in which restlessness comes to join me, in which I feel uncomfortable in my body or in which I just want to cry all day for no reason; they will come. And they are just as valuable as the happy days, because they are part of a cycle, my cycle. They have to happen to keep my life in balance. They have to happen to prevent me from crashing again.
And this point of view is a total game changer. You probably know the phrase ‘it is okay to not always be okay’. Well, I used to think of it as a nice phrase but when I actually were ‘not okay’ I did not really think that was okay. In fact, it friggin annoyed me. But now that I saw and realized that the less good days are just as much part of the natural cycle of my life as the good days, it made it much easier for me to embrace them. To accept the restless, unhappy, uncomfortable or sad feelings. To actually welcome them. Just as I would warmly welcome the feelings of pure joy, excitement and love.
How do you cope? What is your point of view?
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