When Life Throws you Curveballs……

When Life Throws you Curveballs…………………

Hi Guys, I am back again, in my last blog I just touched up on the benefits of being in the present moment and also I outlined few tips on mindfulness, hope you enjoyed reading it.

While I was just thinking about the next topic to blog, I am reminded of couple of incidences, how people are able to surmount the challenges when life throws curveballs. The emotional turmoil they go through while handling the situation.

Challenges catche you off guard, it can strike you in many ways be it a personal loss (losing near and dear one’s or spouse), getting afflicted with terminal diseases, career and job upheavals, financial loss and many more.

When you faced with such  unpleasant life’s situations, it’s quite natural to despair and lose all hopes. Life looks gloomy.  However, there is silver lining around the dark cloud.

Interestingly, I have seen some cases where the affected person has shown phenomenal endurance and emotional resilience; they display never say die attitude, without any trace of hopelessness or depression but they  stay calm and composed during the turmoil and are fully incharge of life.

 When such incidence occurs some guys nearly collapse and react negatively. On close scrutiny, we see a pattern of behavior (in most cases) where an individual get in to “Victim mindset” and start brooding about the situation rather than finding solutions, Seldom they make effort to wriggle out of the situation and end up prisoners of their own mindset. They often find solace in sharing their stories with sympathetic people. 

In the game of life, curveballs are inevitable and life is full of ups and downs,twists and turns, while we cannot control what happens around us but can certainly control what happens within us by expanding  horizon of thinking and developing emotional agility and flexibility, this will surely enable us to respond to the situation than reacting.

Every problem has solutions, we need to look at from different perspective, when shift in perspective happens you find the solution just around.

1.        Acknowledge:

 When misfortune befalls all of a sudden, acknowledging and reconciling to the reality will  be difficult, it takes time and psychologically mind goes through few phases to come to  terms with reality.

Phases are: Shock, denying, anger, bargaining, depression and finally accepting.

Individual maturity and tolerance level determines how quickly one moves out of each stage.

Example:  someone might take longer time to come out of shock state and someone else may take more time to come out of depression or someone may quickly accept the reality.

2.       Stay calm and composed:

Do not get panic and stress yourself since mind gets clouded by negative thoughts and  blocks your judgment. Few of them get panic attacks which leads to health complications.

Harmful neurotransmitters are released when you are distressed/panicked which leads to mental health issues. Keep your mind calm, don’t race your mind in an imaginative world (mind immediately rush to imagine worst case scenario, it may not happen in the future). By staying calm you will come to terms with reality and which  will enable you to take better decision.

Focus on your breathing, slowly breath in and breath out, observe your breath pattern and focus on it for 10 to 15min, mind becomes calm.

3.       Talk to trusted partners or counselor:

Confiding with someone who you can trust act as Catharsis,it helps  in building  emotional resilience. Trusted confidante can offer you wonderful suggestions and give different perspective.
a counselor will be a better partner in your recuperative journey.

4.       Reinvent and Rebuild yourself:  

Curveballs are actually blessing in disguise, utilize this as an opportunity to reflect (we may not have thought of it till now) on your potential and look for ways and means that exists to serve society at large. Reinvent yourself in the new direction, create new path, acquire necessary skills.This is an opportunity to grow and keep you moving forward.

5.       Let go of things:

 Learn to let go of things, do not hold on to emotional baggage. Shun the ego clashes, decide it’s worth the energy to hold on to it or let go and redirect your energy to more solution oriented things.

6.       Affirmation:

Affirmation is positive stroke you keep suggesting to your subconscious mind, periodically keep repeating the positive affirmation and you can turn your desire in to reality.
( We shall see in my later blogs how to affirm and program subconscious mind)

Last word:

Everything happens for a reason, it may not reveal right now, as the drama of life starts unfolding you will get to know the real reason at the right time…..surrender to the Universe and see the magic.

PS: in extreme cases like loss of spouse and terminal illness, when things are irreversible, it’s difficult to handle and I would say time is the healer.