Be grateful for every minute of your life… even if you are going through some really hard and painful time. Remember that life is not linear, it’s rather a sine wave with a series of amazing highs and disastrous lows. What does it really mean? It means that nothing lasts forever. Every moment of life will pass, even the hardest one. Life can change in a flash without any warning. We all know that because change is the only constant in human existence. And that’s a fact. Certainly, it’s not always easy to notice those changes especially the small ones, because we are fully focused on various aspects of everyday life like our job, school, bills, taxes, mortgage payments, grocery shopping
But even if we do not notice these small periods of transitions, the graph of our life still remains a sine wave. One minute you’re on cloud nine and everything goes even better than planned and then suddenly you are hit by life-changing catastrophe. Reality is quite unpredictable… that’s for sure.
Confront the fear
But when a disaster happens and your life becomes extremely complicated you feel powerless and out of control. Nothing new, right? Ok, grit your teeth and hold on because the next stage is even harder. It’s when self-doubt takes over and you go into a panic completely forgetting that this is a quite normal human reaction when something terrible happens. Unfortunately, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by difficult and extremely strong emotions especially when strange and bizarre thoughts are running through your mind. From my personal experience, I’ve noticed that usually when something really bad happens, fear takes us over and we fall into some sort of a vicious circle. It goes something this way:
Accept the things you cannot control
A disaster happens → anxiety immediately kicks in → strong emotions start to overwhelm you → you go into a panic → then you start noticing that you are more scared of being scared than of the catastrophe that just happened
and that’s how the vicious cycle begins…
To avoid this vicious cycle you have to be mindful and learn to live a conscious life. Because, observing and accepting strong, unpleasant emotions and the complexity of a difficult situation is the only way to be able to get through this.
Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard accepting pain and fear really is because there is always this absurd conviction that if we accept unpleasant emotions and the reality of disaster that just happened it will last forever. There is nothing more deceptive than this. Indeed it’s the exact opposite of that. Because, by denying, rejecting or negating pain and fear we become stuck in the sameness of reality. So why we do this? The answer is simple: We are afraid of being afraid. As ironic as it sounds it’s true…
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that, in every stage of our life we are and we will be hit by some life-changing catastrophe because it is just written in our human existence. It’s one of those things we cannot run away from. It’s some sort of unwritten law of the Universe, a fundamental axiom that cannot be denied. So in a sense, we have to accept this, otherwise, we choose to live in denial, what can be easier but for sure extremely dangerous in a long term.
We don’t believe or we just forget how strong we really are in front of horrible situation life puts us in. And the reality is that we are stronger than we think. You probably know this famous quote by Bob Marley:
You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.
How can you notice and acknowledge the real power of your mind? Quite easily, think about a really tough time when you wanted to give up because the pain and fear seemed to be too strong to be able to deal with them. I’m sure you’ve been there many times you just forgot about this. Because we tend to put difficult episodes behind us and forget about what happened. Do you remember it now? If yes, keep this in mind, and breathe in there. This awareness keeps us afloat, shapes our character, teaches us humility and helps us discover who we really are as individual human beings.
Life is like an ever-shifting Kaleidoscope. You never know what will happen next, that’s why we need to be grateful for every single second we have. Because, if we are here only for a moment, and our journey is only temporary we need to live our life to the fullest. Life is a gift and every second of our existence is precious. We never know what comes next so the time to be grateful for everything, for those who we love and who loves us, for everything we have and experience, for every single moment we can take a deep breath and just live.
Remember that it’s not happiness that makes us grateful but it is gratitude that brings us happiness.
Stay strong and take care!!
Let the power be with you!!
xx Kate
