Live Life Like a Whack-A-Mole
With the Knowledge That Things Always Get Better
I struggled on my daily walk today, for some reason when you get to be a lady of a certain age everything starts to stop working like it used to. Everything takes ten times longer to heal, including hangovers. Parts of your body hurt for no apparent reason and when you can’t find your car keys it turns out they are in the fridge. Like what’s that all about?
A completely different topic, that’s what, (f**k you menopause)…anyway, I struggled because my right hip has randomly decided to belong to another person this week. I think he’s male and about hundred years old. It makes walking interesting. I was still determined to go but it’s just typical that just when an exercise programme is going well for me, I get a set-back.
But keeping a positive mind-set I needed to think about the issue differently. I thought about the bigger picture. I was much slower walking than I would normally be, but I still went walking and keeping active is much more likely to resolve the problem than sitting on my backside. This is just a temporary situation, it won’t last. It’s not going to derail my longer term plan.
One bad day isn’t the end of the world. I’m not talking about grief here, that’s a whole different issue. I’m talking about a bad situation or a bad day. I was going to say even a bad week or maybe even a year, but there is no way that a year can be all bad (pandemic aside). Even in a day there will be some small glimmer of hope you can hang on to.
I also know that sharing my problems helps. I was never very good at this, but I know that when someone listens to what you’re going through it usually feels like a weight has been lifted. I’ve also learned to be a bit kinder to myself, if I’m struggling a bit today, I’ll just take it a bit easier.
“Tough times never last, but tough people do” — Dr Robert Schuller
It’s also important to let yourself feel your emotions whatever they are, not to bottle things up. So if you need to have a good cry, cry. Just don’t stay in that place forever. Find something to lift your mood and bring some positivity back.
It’s also not good to compare yourself to other people. Not good, but immensely hard to actually not do. We are bombarded with the best bits of everyone’s lives on social media and television. None of it is real. Well, some of it probably is but it’s only ever part of the story.
So today on my Strava you’d see I walked 3 miles, okay go me (not as far as I normally do but a walk is a walk). You won’t necessarily notice that I walked like a penguin or that half way around I had to stop and scare passers by doing hip flexor stretches. I’m sure they were thinking “wow an athlete limbering up to sprint off….oh no it’s just a penguin”.
But it’s all about perspective; you don’t know the real story unless you ask questions or someone tells you. Focus on you and how you make progress every day, even if some days you fall back a bit. Keep your eye on your long term trajectory and push that upwards.
A much more positive way of dealing with negative issues is to not see them as problems, but to view them as challenges to be overcome.
Do you remember the game you might have played when you were little -“Whack-A-Mole”- where you had a rubber mallet and when the mole popped its head up you had to whack it.
If you think about each problem popping up and when it does you just have to whack it with an imaginary hammer until it goes. Granted, that might be a bit trite for more serious problems, but for trivial issues it might work.
The thing about the Whack-A-Mole game is that the moles sometimes popped up in two’s or three’s and you had to be fast and furious with the rubber mallet to get them all. It’s a good analogy for life’s problems because that is what it can be like sometimes. The thing then is to stay calm, whack the biggest mole first and then the others will be much easier to tackle.
Positive people are not happy all the time. What they have inside them is the innate belief that things will always get better. Nothing stays bad forever.
She was unstoppable. Not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them” — Beau Taplin
I’m on my 365 day journey, #365small changes, what difference are you going to make in your life?
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