I don’t want to be misunderstood here.  Yes I’m very happy and very good at optimism.  But this does NOT mean I don’t have bad days.  I do.  One night last year I was so miserable about my life that I decided if I wasn’t any happier in a year’s time I could kill myself.  Pretty serious stuff.  It was quite a black patch.  But it didn’t last.  I let myself cry and eventually fell asleep and the next day things didn’t seem quite so desperate.  The sun came out.  I made a pact with myself to give myself a chance and see what I could achieve in the next year.  I bounced back.  That is what this is about.  Going with the bad days, accepting them, not fighting them, and training our minds to recover more quickly.

I think I put a lot of pressure on myself because I’m ‘the optimism coach’ but that doesn’t mean you have to be ‘up/on/happy/positive’ ALL the time.  We all owe it to ourselves to rest and recharge.  To acknowledge all our feelings.  To respect all our feelings and treat ourselves with loving kindness.

I want to be a ray of sunshine but even the sun gets a break over night from the this side of the earth.

It’s been quite an unsettling week this week.  I’m not sure exactly why – probably many things adding up.  There were very big storms in Australia.  I’ve been fighting off a cold.  And it feels like crunch time that I needed to make decisions and make some sort of income happen.  So maybe there was a lot of fear weighing me down.  But I just let myself do nothing on Monday and Wednesday.  Rubbish TV, walking and some good book reading.  I felt much better.  Then this afternoon was the final swap of stuff from the guy I was seeing.  It feels so bleak when someone gives you a big hug and walks out the front door and you wonder if you will ever see them again.  I suddenly wanted my old life back – to have a good safe secure job with a good income, to be able to book holidays, to have Sundays lazing on the lounge or in the park and have dinner cooked for me.  To get a little drunk and watch a good movie snuggled up on the sofa.  I cried when he left.  I gave myself permission to sit on the lounge and feel sorry for myself and watch rubbish TV all afternoon. But for some reason I decided I might try to get a couple of things on my list done instead.  And listen to some inspiring podcasts.  Oddly I feel much better.  Maybe letting myself feel all my feelings this week has made me better at dealing with them.  I am actually shocked at how ‘okay’ I am this afternoon.  I’m certainly not great; I feel tired and like there is a bit of a hole in my chest but I’m not sobbing inconsolably.  Seems like some amazing progress in this adventure called life.  Maybe with more practice sitting with my feelings, and feeling my feelings (we didn’t discuss feelings at all when I was a child), and just accepting them, allowing them, will mean the more difficult ones will pass a little more quickly in the future.  And maybe delving into these feelings and working out why I feel that way in the first place will allow me to make change to bring more positive into my life.  More of what I want.

Do you want less bad days?  How do you cope on your bad days?  Do you find the harder you try to resist your negative feelings the more they won’t let you go?  They just keep coming back to haunt you?

Be kind to yourself (especially when you are hurting and trying to heal).  Self care, self love, self acceptance.

Wx