What I Do When Everything Sucks
Like right now, for example
*NOTE: This post was updated prior to the assassination attempt. I’ll have more thoughts on that later. For now, let us remember that the law of attraction is absolute and always functioning, like gravity. Like attracts like. Violence begets violence and never solves a thing.
Hello, Readers!
I’m re-using this post from about ten years ago, because I’m in too bad a mood this week to write a new one, (politics) and because when I started reading it to freshen it up for you, it actually helped me. It made me turn off the news, which in turn, made me stop yelling at the anchors. It made me get off Threads, which in turn, made me stop yelling at politicians. (I love that they’re so accessible now to yell at, though.) It made me start listening a new-to-me audiobook, All About Me by Mel Brooks.
And so I figured, maybe it would help you shift gears too. I think we’ll be okay. I really do. And so here, freshened up for new readers, is “What I do when everything Sucks.”
This is a hard topic, my friends, because when we’re in the middle of a perfect storm of crap, we can’t see beyond it. The storm clouds are too dark. The crap is too thick and smelly. And everything in our life is going wrong.
There’s a reason, of course. Not that you care right now what it is, but you might later, so I’ll spill it. When one thing goes wrong it grabs our attention. We get all focused on that thing, whether our focus is on trying to fix it, trying to make it go away, trying to understand it, wishing it had never happened, wondering why it did, or regretting it, it doesn’t matter. Our focus is our radio dial, and it’s attuned to the station that’s broadcasting shit. So all we can hear playing on this station, is more problems. They snowballs until we are completely drowning in a sea of poo and feeling no hope. There is no way out that we can see, because the ways out don’t exist in our reality. We’re looking at the poo sea. And we’re drowning. And that’s all that exists for us in this particular moment.
This is the time when it’s hardest to shift. Well meaning friends all offer suggestions, and to each one, we reply,
“That won’t work, because…”
“That’s impossible because…”
“There’s no way I can do that, because…”
And we’re right. No solution can come. They don’t exist where we are. They’re not playing on this channel we’ve tuned in. Before we can find a solution, we have to change our radio dial, tuning it until we’re on the right frequency to pull in solutions instead of problems. No amount of wrestling with or fighting against the problem is going to do that. The one and only thing that can change that dial, is for us to shift our focus.
We have to stop wallowing in the trouble, stop flailing in the sea of poo. Stop trying to find a way out of it. We have to just let it go. Just let it go. Just let go. Just stop fighting. Just stop struggling. Just stop trying so hard. Sink to the bottom, beneath the crap sea. Sink to the bottom and rest there for a minute.
We must get the focus off all the stuff we wish didn’t exist. Stop thinking about it. I know that people think “Ignore it and it’ll go away” is a ridiculous lie for the simple-minded. But it’s based in a deeper truth. That we attract more of whatever we’re focused on.
Can it really be that easy? No, because not focusing on the garbage that’s up in our face is not easy at all. It takes practice, persistence. But there are tips. If you just give it a try, you might be able to find your way to a much better life. What have you got to lose?
Step 1. Change Your Focus
To get our focus off the crap, we have to find something else to focus on. Something that feels good. Or at least, something that feels a little bit better. Or at the very least, something that provides a little bit of relief. Do the easiest things first.
Watch your favorite movie, (as long as it’s a happy movie, or a funny movie, and not a tragedy.) I recommend anything by Mel Brooks. Listen to your favorite music. Sing along. Dance, even. Eat your favorite food. Indulge in some chocolate. Spend time outside in the sunlight. In the moonlight. By a campfire. In a tent. Bask in nature. Play with a puppy. Hold a baby. Hang out with the people who always make you feel better. Maybe the shiniest happiest people you know aren’t quite the right ones, just yet. They might just make you want to punch them in the face with all their shiny bunny joy joy. So maybe just start with someone whose presence usually leaves you feeling a little better than you feel when you’re not around them.
Step 2. Journal
Get a pretty journal. Or make one. At the end of each day, open your journal and write down ten things that were good about the day. If there aren’t ten things, write down five. If you can’t manage five, try for three. But try to make them three different things each day. Lunch was really good. I saw a bluebird on the way home. A little girl smiled at me. Someone paid me a compliment. It was sunny and warm outside. I got a lot done. ANYTHING that’s good. Keep track of those good things during the day, and write them down in the evening.
Step 3. Adjust Your Lens
This is a little more challenging now, but if you’ve done step two for a few days, you’re ready. Start looking for good things about your life where it is right now. Start finding positive, true things about where things are right now. Positive, true things about the very crap you’ve been fighting to get away from, as a matter of fact. If you hate where you live, that hate is holding you there. Start finding things to like about where you live. Things about it that you can be okay with. You don’t have to love them. But maybe your place keeps you warm and dry. Maybe reflect on how good it is to have a roof over your head and a soft bed to sleep on. Then start to praise those things. Start to really appreciate that you’re in a soft bed, and not sleeping on a street or a hard floor, or in a ditch.
Step 4. Begin to take Action
Now it’s time to start to making changes. Never take action until you are aligned and in a good place mentally. It’s wasted energy otherwise. But now that you’ve tuned your dial to a slightly more upbeat station, you can begin to make changes. Take those things in your life with which you have now begun to make peace, those things you’re now “okay” with, and make them better.
If all you have to feel good about is a soft bed to sleep in, for example, then make your bed very neatly each day. Keep the blankets and sheets always clean and smelling nice. Put some stuffed animals on it or add a pretty bedspread or sham. Line your nightstand with objects that have meaning for you. Hang pretty things from your ceiling, a prism, a fairy, a feather you found outside. Hang a photo that brings you joy on your ceiling so you see it when you open your eyes. If all you have is a bed and a ceiling, make them the most beautiful, comfortable, joy-inducing bed and ceiling there have ever been. Make them better and better, until you absolutely love your bed and your ceiling.
Step 5. Spread Widely
Apply this method to everything in your life. First find something good about it the way it is, and work to get okay with that, and then, start making it better and better until you just love it. Just like you did with your bed and ceiling.
Do it with your job. Do it with your relatives. Do it with your relationships. Do it with your health. Do it with your finances. All of it. One by one. Find things that are okay about it, make peace with it where it is, and then start making it the best it can be.
Here’s Why
You see, if you can find the slightest thing to be happy about, you can build from there. The focus on that one thing, and the good feelings you get from it, will be the vibrational shift you’re looking for. That focus is how you change your dial to the station that’s broadcasting joy, and peace, and love. As you practice this, the bad things fall away, and more and more good things come to you.
It’s ironic, perhaps, that you can’t get out of where you are until you learn to love it there. But it’s also true.
It is so very important to find a way to be okay where you are, to appreciate and bask in each tiny good thing in life. To understand that our power to create our lives is in the moment. This very moment. Right now. And there’s nothing bigger or more beautiful than knowing and seeing for the first time the creative power inside you. Within you. You are so much more than you know.
Find that. Grab hold of it. Then and only then can you really begin to tackle the things you now see as problems, although most of them are going to work themselves out as you shift your energy, because they will no longer be able to exist in your experience.
Any that persist in bothering you, you can now deal with. But now you will deal with them because you care about how you feel, because feeling good is more important than anything else to you, and because tackling an issue that’s bothering you, will feel better than leaving it to fester. And the problem will not longer seem to big and scary and hard. Because you will have changed.
We are where we are, my friends. We can be miserable where we are, and stay right there being miserable. Or we can find a way to be at peace where we are, and at least we'’ll have peace. We can find joy where we are, and at least we’ll have joy.
But we won’t stay where we are for long when we do this. We’ll move toward more peace, more joy, a constantly improving life, and the reward of knowing that we created it ourselves, because we are the creators of our lives now. We’re no longer just dealing with whatever comes, but deliberately moving toward the lives we want, and finding joy in every step of the journey.
Just as the bad stuff gets our focus and snowballs into more and more bad stuff, the good stuff works the same way. It snowballs until it fills our entire existence, and spreads from there. It can spill over onto everyone we know, everyone with whom we interact, and eventually, spread out to make the entire world a better more joyful place.
Take these simple steps, and see for yourself that the crap can only cling if you keep on looking at it. Turn your back on it, turn toward the solution, not the problem. Look toward what you want, not what you don’t want. Find things to feel good about, not reasons to feel bad. And you’ll be oh, so much better.
Things that Help:
Meditate: Relax and focus on nothing but your breaths moving in and out of your lungs for fifteen minutes a day. My other favorite guided meditations are the ones by Abraham, in Getting Into The Vortex.
Read: Esther Hicks, Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, Gregg Braden
Watch: What the Bleep Do We Know About Anything; The Shift with Dr. Wayne Dyer; ONE the Movie; The Secret
Journal: List the good things, all the time. List the good things about people or matters that are becoming problematic before it gets worse. Constantly work to notice what’s good.
Change: The story you tell, the way you talk about yourself, the topics of discussion in all your phone calls, emails, chats, text messages, etc. (I need to revisit this one, because all I talk about right now is politics and it’s not good for me.)
Seek: Joy. Always do what feels better, what brings you bliss.
Relax and let go. Take things more lightly. Laugh more. Play more. Relax more. Worry less. Stress less. Complain less.
In doggy terms, bark less, wag more.