It’s important to be able to recognize when things are going well. We all face different pressures, challenges, and difficulties everyday. Some of them are little things that pop up randomly and some of them are bigger things that follow us from one day into the next. But that’s how it’s always going to be. Having some difficulties doesn’t mean that things aren’t going well. If we’re so busy looking at the tough stuff then we can miss noticing that overall things are good.
Being able to recognize when our lives are going well is a skill. It’s an area that we can probably all improve upon. It’s a skill that requires some quiet or distance. When we are moving from task to task, from appointment to appointment and we’re focused on our lists of things to do, we have little chance of recognizing anything. When we’re caught up in the rat race and any bigger thoughts are drowned out by the noise, we can’t really see how things are going. We have to step back, out of the whirlwind, in order to be able to see what’s really spinning around. Then maybe we’ll notice that it’s really just little things and what seemed like a big storm is just a drizzle.
Being able to pull back and recognize when things are going well is only the first part though. We have to allow ourselves to appreciate it. It’s still so easy to get sucked back into the busyness of our lives, our schedule, our worries and issues that we carry around with us. Once we realize that things are ok, or maybe even good, then we’ve got to keep standing outside the whirlwind long enough to feel that and enjoy it. Then we can let go a little, relax, and even smile knowing that all those details only seemed big and important because that’s all we were looking at. Then when we do step back, into our schedules and routines, we’ll be a little lighter.
One of the ways, to be able to step out of the noise, is to remember how fleeting everything is. When we feel upset, we are stuck in that feeling and we forget that it won’t last. We’ll be feeling something else soon enough. Just remembering that can help us feel less upset. Whatever it is we’re dealing with is immediately less important when we remember that it won’t last.
I just got back from a vacation. Vacation is supposed to be fun and relaxing, right? But it’s never all fun and relaxing, especially when you’re on vacation with kids. Every single day had a rough spot with kids’ behavior. I was having a hard time with that for the first few days. Each time that I was listening to the yelling of a child everything else got drowned out. I was stuck right in it the same way that the child doing the yelling was stuck. We both thought it was the biggest deal in the world. We both were unable to see that it was just one thing and that it wouldn’t last and, for me, I wasn’t able to remember that it’s just part of the process of this little human’s struggle to handle his/her emotions.
One of our vacation adventures was going out on a boat to go snorkeling. We went a little over three miles off the coast before we stopped to snorkel. On the way out, I was sitting in the front of the boat, with the kids, while everyone else was in the back. It was pretty calm but we weren’t in a very big boat and we were going against the current to get out there so we felt the little ups and downs of the water. The kids were having fun with it. One of them stopped holding on, “Let go, it’s scary but you get used to it!”, laughing.
Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. It was fun because it really was pretty calm. There was no fear that one of those bumps was going to capsize us or knock one of us out of the boat. We knew it was just a little bump. Just a little “up” before the “down”. We knew we’d come down and we knew we’d go back up again.
Just like every random emotion that we feel throughout the day, just like every difficulty we face in our lives, each little bump of the water would end. There was always another bump ready to lift us back up. Up and down. Up and down. That is the story of our lives. Caught up in an emotion, the emotion passes. Caught up in an emotion, the emotion passes. We’re faced with a challenge or difficulty, the challenge passes. Here’s a new challenge, that challenge passes too.
After that, the rest of the vacation was so much more relaxing for me. Any time a child yelled, I thought to myself, “up and down”. When things didn’t go our way, “up and down”. When I could remember that it was all fleeting, it wasn’t as important. It was just another bump that would pass to be followed eventually by another. These bumps lose their power to stir us and control us when we remember that they won’t last. They don’t feel as important when we remember that they are not forever.
Whatever it is we are feeling or whatever challenge we are dwelling on, it will all pass. If we can remind ourselves that it will pass, it becomes smaller, easier to manage, and not so bad. We give these moments their power over us by staring at them and ignoring everything else. When we remember that it’s all fleeting, we deflate it and we can see the whole picture again. Up and down. Up and down.