Hello people it’s good to be back!
Some of you who follow the Re:Root blog may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet for a few weeks around here, almost as if I went AWOL. And why? Well the best laid plans can go wrong. Sometimes life just kicks in and everything goes pear shaped. (For those of you either not from the UK or from my particular generation that means that the plan went wrong.)
And oh boy it went wrong… or did it? The answer to that is both yes and no.
On the one hand I did not plan for problems with my medication, college, telephone, money and deadlines to hit me all at once subsequently affecting my sleep so that I was functioning on totally drained resources and starting to spiral into a depressive place. However on the other hand the teachings I received during this time, the strength I had to manifest to stop myself sliding down a slippery slope of depression and the cathartic process of allowing my emotions to release has meant that I have come out on the other side a little stronger, a lot wiser and incredibly grateful for the abundance and experience of my life.
In a previous post 5 STEPS TO SURVIVING THE HARDEST OF DAYS… I talked about how to survive when you have a crappy day. Some of the guidance here is applicable when life goes pear shaped. But usually when life goes pear shaped it is more than just a crappy day or a couple of days. It’s something unexpected happening which interrupts the flow of your life in a negative way. It can be a week or two and if not taken control of its longer and longer, a pear shaped situation can be seemingly endless. And that my friends is dangerous for you.
When life goes pear shaped we can choose to allow the situation to drown us or to take it head on and get your life back on track in a richer, wiser way.
Getting your life back on track when it goes pear shaped is possible. How? With a little connecting, taking control and reconnecting it is possible to deal with the pear shaped moments in life healthily and constructively.
When and if the excrement hits the fan in your life try these 8 steps to bring it back online again.
Be in the moment consciously
When life goes pear shaped the first thing it triggers is our flight or fight response followed by an emotional reaction. A lot of life guidance out there veers us away from feeling and towards taking charge of the situation and yes while that is important it is equally important to allow our bodies natural mechanisms to function. Basically I mean at the start of whatever is happening let your feelings do the running for a few days (preferably no more than three). Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling, it’s healthy. Be sad, be angry. I don’t mean let the feeling take over you but just be mindful that you need to feel what you are feeling, Notice each feeling consciously and work it through. Journal, talk, draw, sleep, workout do what you need to do to get to the stage where that feeling is not the be all and everything.
Realise life’s not gone wrong, it’s gone pear shaped.
The words we use shape our view of our reality internally and externally. If you ask yourself why is this is going wrong you are using very negative language. Something that is ‘wrong’ is perceived as hard to fix if not irreparable. By using the word wrong you are putting yourself in a victim role, a passive role, this has happened to you. In order to bring life on track you need to step into an active role and to that you need to consciously change your language use to change your thinking and change your situation.
Try and think of it this way: In the Urban Dictionary the expression “pear shaped” is
“based on the visualisation of a plan being like a perfect circle. When something goes wrong, the plan is distorted and becomes pear-shaped.”
So life has not gone wrong it has just been distorted. This mental shift may not feel like much however it is an ENORMOUS energetic shift in your thinking when you need it the most. A distortion can be adjusted or reversed.
So when you get to the stage where that feeling is not the be all and everything, turn your thinking around by recognizing that life has just gone pear shaped, it is currently distorted. And if it’s only distorted you can change it. But how…
Look for the teaching
Why did this happen to me? (Who has never thought that in their life.) This is exactly the question you need to ask yourself next. (And I don’t mean in the “why did this happen to me it’s not fair!” sense). You need to look for the teaching.
Life is constantly throwing us clues…and we ignore them, or can’t hear them or notice them but don’t do anything about them. When life goes pear shaped it can often be because a particular message has been trying to get through to us for some time and it has had to take it to Defcon 5 to get us to notice. (For example I really do believe that one of the reasons type 1 diabetes manifested in my life was to teach me to take care of myself something I was appalling at). No matter what the situation in life there is always a teaching. And it is these teachings that help us to grow.
Integration of the teaching
What are you going to do about the teaching or the message life is sending at you? For me I recently unearthed a lot of repressed Daddy issues I thought in place and dealt with that unconsciously still affect my self confidence, even more so now Mr T and I live together . I could ignore this information but that would result in another even bigger distortion in the future. So I jumped onto to google university and am currently doing 5 mins self love affirmations daily while I slowly work through this old wound.
So once you have found the teaching find your self a way to incorporate this into your life. It may be a small thing or a big thing you need to do, the important thing is DO SOMETHING with your teaching and DO IT NOW!
Motivation
If you have been following the steps you have your understanding and a plan of how to incorporate this into your life. Sometimes this is motivation enough to reform your pear shaped life into a perfect circle again. Sometimes it’s harder.
If like me you have to fight old habits like falling into the depression cycle then it’s incredibly hard to “pull yourself together and take charge of your life”. However no one will do it for you. Only you can run your life. Accepting this will help with the motivation. Make sure your success criteria can be easily fulfilled. In a nutshell don’t set yourself up for a fail by aiming to high and pushing to hard to start with. Basically take it slowly and succeed with baby steps. Success is the best motivator in the world so give yourself lots of easy things you can accomplish and slowly work through them (see below).
Be kind
Be kind to yourself and don’t overestimate your success criteria. What I mean by this is you need to start small. To get your life back on track you need success experiences. However you have also been through a process so start with the little things. Washing up is a great mini success experience, as is cleaning. It also has the added bonus that as you clean up your outside world you also clean up your inside world. Once you are managing the small goals work up until you feel like you are back on track then just keep on going! Remember also to not get into the guilt cycle if you don’t make a goal for a few days or even a week. It will happen when you decide you have the right energy to make it happen.
Being Proud
It not easy to get back on that horse after that fall. However you are trying and you need to be proud of yourself for that. And I mean actively proud. You need to be your own cheerleading squad and celebrate your victories no matter how small. The small battles are often the ones that need the most celebrating. You got out of bed Yey! You opted for a healthy breakfast at the table instead of cereal from the packet under the duvet Yes! You went back to work today! It’s time for a celebratory dinner. I know it might feel false at first however there isn’t always someone to clap you on the shoulder to say well done so we have to do that ourselves. A great habit to get into at the end of the day is to write an achievement list. Basically a list of all the things you are proud of yourself for today. And make sure that you start each sentence with I am proud of myself because…………….. AND you include the little things you otherwise tend to disregard.
Call in Support if it gets too tough
No matter what we do need other people. Even Superman and Batman needed their support in the form of Alfred and Louis. So even though this article primarily focuses on what you can do for yourself, you can also ask for help. Whether it’s off loading on a friend or creating an accountability person or finding a therapist, call in the support you need. The important thing here is to make sure that this is the support you NEED. It might be great to cry on a friend initially but after a week is this the best help you need? Is this going to help you consciously turn things around? Identify the help you need and ask for it.
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By consciously connecting with ourselves and feeling, taking control our negative thoughts and reconnecting with our lives in an altered state of understanding and motivation we can reform the distorted circle and get our lives on track again when things go pear shaped.
I look forward to hearing about your success stories down in the comments below. Right now I off to give myself a little self love in the form of yoga followed by a glass of water and then probably a glass of red wine to end the day.
Have a lovely week <3
#enjoythejourney
