……its ok to feel like you want to throw them at someone ….

The usual ending to this as we all know is ‘make lemonade’, I looked up the phrase out of curiosity and courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia is said to be this…

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a proverbial phrase, used to encourage optimism and a positive can-do attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune. Lemons suggest sourness or difficulty in life, just like lemonade.

When life gives you Lemons

You know what its like, it’s a beautiful day, your strutting along with your shoulders high, chest all puffed out, you can feel the sun on your back, the birds are tweeting, and your just thinking how amazing it is that everything is starting to come together, you kept it together when most people were waiting for you to lose it, you maintained a sense of calm when people were trying to get a response out of you … you’ve done pretty damn well until…….”Ouch” here comes life, dishing out the lemons again and one just hit you square on the nose!.

That has been pretty much me in the last couple of weeks. I have tried so hard to keep everything together for the last 7 months, and to a degree, I have managed it , because all I have had to focus on was keeping it together. I have had the time to look after myself and throw myself into the things that keep me sane.

I didn’t have a lot of other external influences fighting against me as I have had in the past few weeks, that unfortunately are a necessary evil for the time being,  but have put me in a position where I haven’t been able to maintain my wellbeing, the gym has been sacrificed, my Yoga routine hasn’t been what it should be , my diet has suffered and my alcohol intake has increased!, and I am forced, at the moment to be around people, and in an environment that I don’t find to be particularly healthy, on any level, and in turn I haven’t been able to maintain the state of equilibrium that I had fought so hard for.

Needless to say, all of this has ultimately contributed to me feeling like I am pushing water up a hill, juggling jelly, walking the fine line of sanity .. and for want of a better phrase, feeling like utter shite!.

I had started to feel my mood slipping over the course of some weeks and my reactions and thoughts were becoming quite negative, my patience towards certain people started to wear extremely thin, my forgiveness and tolerance towards other people’s inauthentic behaviour had really started to bother me, whereas previously I would just move on from it and be the bigger person, it was starting to consume my thoughts and I was being weighted down with a sense of wanting to just retaliate, and expose some people for what they are, to stop being the bigger person and just finally throw he gloves off and let all of what I have been keeping inside, out , no more taking the high road.

I was getting angry.

This isn’t how I operate and it isn’t naturally the person that I am, the sheer fact that my mind was taking me there I was finding completely exhausting, it just felt like all of these plates that I had been spinning quite successfully up until now, were all crashing down around me and there was not a single thing I could do about it.

I had been so focused on being positive , staying positive and working towards building and maintaining a healthy mindset , a lot of the things I post and read about are about positivity and being grateful, which is absolutely what I believe in,  and how I try to live my life on a daily basis, but that doesn’t mean that it works for me everyday, and recently I was finding myself starting to not believe.  I was feeling hard done by, I had been the bigger person, in the face of adversity I had kept a smile on my face, I had reacted positively to negative behaviour,  and I didn’t feel the Universe was rewarding me, it was just kicking my arse…. again.

I am not writing this blog to try to portray myself in a certain kind of way or preach to people how to live their lives. I am not writing this because I have all the answers. I am just writing honestly about situations I find myself in, so today really I am writing to say that actually , its ok to fall off the ‘Happy waggon’ once in a while.

 

Social Pressure

There is tremendous pressure these days from Social media to show how happy we are, how in love we are, how perfect our lives are.  It’s a happiness competition.  Its a race of who is going to reach the finish line first, looking the best, wearing the best clothes , having their picture taken in the most instagrammable place!.  Look at me!, Look at us!.. Look at what we have got!. We are so happy! I love my life!….In the world of social media, everyone has all their ducks neatly lined up in a little row and never has a day of self-doubt.

The reality of course, is quite different.

Along with the pressure from Social media , there is also the pressure that we place on ourselves socially to ‘keep up appearances’, and to a certain degree, I don’t think this is completely unhealthy thing to do.  A certain amount of ‘keeping it together’ helps, as long as you’re keeping it real at the same time. If the two worlds you are living are too opposing, mentally this isn’t going to be a healthy thing in the long run and there has to become a time where you crash and burn.

 

A problem shared

We all deal with difficulty in our lives in different ways , some people like to talk about their problems , some people don’t. I come into the latter, and you may think that is odd , as I am writing about certain things in this blog, but that is purely because it’s helping me and I am hoping it may help and inspire and help others, and besides, you will notice I have a very good knack of talking about issues without revealing a great amount of detail!…and I do hope you appreciate how difficult that is!.

I saw this quotation a while ago and it has just stuck with me …

‘Dont tell your problems to people, eighty percent don’t care, and the other twenty percent are glad you have them’

I am not a great believer in sharing every single detail of your life.  More often than not,  when I am going through difficulty,  that is when I am most likely to go off the radar for a while, some people are the opposite to that and share every single detail and every single problem.  I am not saying my way is the right way and the other way is the wrong way.  I just think that there needs to be a healthy balance.  For me personally , I need time to work out how to tell you I have a problem, but also tell you that I have it under control and I am working towards resolving it or even better, tell you it’s resolved.

The unfortunate truth in today’s world is people enjoy hearing and reading about the big fails of other people more than they do the successes. Tabloids survive because we are living in a culture where people are more interested to see someone have a breakdown than watch them have a lovely life.  It makes some people feel better to know that another person is suffering, especially if that person has a perceived level of happiness or success, nothing is better fodder than a fall from grace, its sad, it’s not pretty, but its true.

There is also sometimes the confusion between morbid interest and genuine interest, and I have touched on an example of this in another blog post, and that by generating sympathy it might generate you new friends. The answer to that question is no, it wont.

 

Friendships

I know my friends wish that I would lean on them more for support, aside of the obvious Geographical barriers I now have to go through in order to see them, I could have stayed in touch with them more, I could have called them all to tell them what was going on , but I didn’t, and my friends know me enough to respect that this is just the way I needed to handle things and I will come back when I am ready, and we will pick up where we left off.  That is because the friends I have now in my life are low-key, low maintenance, respectful people. My friendships now, are based on quality rather than quantity and I love them for that.

At the end of the day it is whatever works for you , but also what works for your friends, partner, family too.  I am lucky that I am very self-aware , and aware of the people around me and what their limitations are, or not, as the case may be.  When we are going through difficulty , it can seem like we are the only ones going through difficulty, and it can bring out selfish behaviour in some people, and this can impact heavily on those closest to them. I have had first hand experience of being on the receiving end of this and it can be extremely draining, especially when you feel like you are just being offloaded onto, you know the scenario , your partner comes home from work ‘Hello darling’ …..and before you have had chance to ask if they would like red or white, they have vomited their day and problems all over your new dress!, it’s an hour later and all you now feel like doing is going and sitting in a darkened room. Alone, so much for the romantic evening!.  Ah the memories!!.

So I guess, what I am trying to say is just be mindful of who you’re leaning on and how much and for what reason?. We all have different limitations, different capabilities and levels of coping. What one person may be able to help you with, might be too overwhelming for another.  Choose your audience. If you choose one at all.

 

Its ok

In summing up, there is nothing wrong with having times where you don’t feel ok, and it is at those times where we just need to trust out bodies and be kind to ourselves in order to get through that tough period.  Dont expect too much of yourself.

If you are not firing on all cylinders and you are unable to act or react or think as you would normally, that’s ok , take some time to come back from it, don’t force yourself to go to the gym if your exhausted, have the cake if you want it, stay in bed all day if you need to.

Its ok to have feelings of anger, negativity, as long as you are able to not let yourself be consumed by them, if we were only supposed to experiece one range of emotions we would only have been given one range of emotions, but we were not , we have a whole complicated raft of them and there is no shame in experiencing or showing signs of them all. Being sad just means you are sad , it doesn’t mean that your failing.

Dont add extra pressure on yourself in already pressurised situations. This is something I have had to give into recently and realise that sometimes in life you cannot do everything and sometimes the things you want to do have to take a back seat to the things you have to do, but its all temporary and its all changeable and as long as you have that in your mind it will be ok.

I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and I am right where I need to be and these emotions that I am going through are all part of the process in preparing me for whats to come, so I just need to trust.  I said to my mum the other day, ‘Why is this happening to me?, Why am I here in this place?.. Why is everything so hard?’ and she said ‘Its just a test my love, of your strength of character’, and as we all know, mum’s are always right, so if I don’t trust the Universe right now, I’ll just have to trust my mum.

Thanks for reading.

Love as always,

Lyndsey xxx