What do you do when everything falls apart? When everything you’ve been working on suddenly seems to go hell all at once? When you suddenly find yourself back at square one and your dream, which was looking so promising suddenly seems even further away than it ever was before?
You get knocked down…
The last couple of months have pretty much sucked. Not just for me, but apparently also for quite a few of you, as well. At least that’s the case, judging by the messages and emails I’ve been getting lately from all sorts of people who are all feeling like they’ve suddenly been kicked in the teeth and knocked on flat on their backs by life in general. (And apologies to those of you still waiting for responses to your messages… they are coming, but like I said, the last couple of months have been nuts here, too.)
I’m not up on my astrology, so I have no idea if there’s some freaky-weird Mercury-retrograde thing happening that’s mucking things up, or whether it’s something else entirely. But I’m definitely picking up some strange energy patterns lately. Things feel unsettled; seething and almost chaotic. And it’s making a mess of all sorts of things.
Back to square one
Things are falling apart all over the place, and everything we’ve all been working so hard to achieve suddenly seems to have been ripped out from underneath our feet. It’s exhausting, it’s disheartening, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s frustrating.
When it all goes to hell, you may start to think LOA is a bunch of neo-hippie crap. It’s not. Share on XIt makes you start to wonder if maybe you’re wrong and all this mindset and LOA stuff really is all just a bunch of neo-hippie, feel-good crap after all. Maybe life really is a bitch and then you die, and that’s just the way it is.
Throw yourself a pity party
And you know, sometimes, you gotta just let yourself feel that way. Give yourself permission to have a pity party, because, damn it all, you’ve been working so hard, on your mindset and on taking action and doing everything right for a change that this kind of rotten hand shouldn’t be happening to you anymore! You’re angry and you’re indignant, and you have every right to be.
So let yourself feel it. Get it out of your system. Let it flow through you so that it doesn’t stay stuck within you. (And while you’re doing that, I’m going to be over here throwing my own pity party because I’m really kind of pissed at the Universe, myself, right now.)
Find the golden nugget
And then do you know what we’re all going to do? We’re going to take another look at these crappy situations we’re in and we’re going to re-evaluate them. Because there’s gotta be something in this mess that’s useful to us – something that we can dust off and use to make things better. There’s got to be something in this that will help us get even closer to where we want to be.
Because that’s how things work. Everything that happens can be used to our advantage, if we can just step back from the emotional charge that the situation holds for us and look at things clearly.
Step back from the emotions & re-evaluate the situation; find the gold nugget in the wreckage. Share on XSo let’s ask ourselves what we can learn from our situations. Where is the shiny nugget of gold in this mess?
Back on your feet!
If you’ve recently been dealt a particularly hard blow, then give yourself some time to get your breath back. Let yourself rest before you pull yourself back to your feet. Just make sure that you DO get back to your feet.
Refocus. When everything falls apart remember what you were trying to create and remember your why. Borrow a line from Jim Henson’s 1986 movie, Labyrinth, and remember that “the way forward is sometimes the way back”.
In other words, sometimes what looks – and feels – like being dropped back to square one, is really just a means of getting you to where you most want to be, even if it currently hurts like hell. Consider the possibility that this current situation is designed to get you what you want in the best way possible, even if you can’t possibly fathom how that could be at this moment.
One step at a time…
Know that your dream is still possible, no matter how bad you feel right now. You may want to make a few tweaks after this blow, but that’s OK. Just close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And then take a step forward from wherever you happen to find yourself right now.
Because that’s how your dream is going to get built. That’s how it was always going to get built. One day at a time; one step at a time…
photo credit: pixabay.com cc (modified by me)
Hi Nathalie!
Yeah, this feeling seems common among many lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about it myself. Is it possible that once we get really, deeply into something–a project, a mindset, a mission–that we tend to obsess about it, and then micromanage it? I was reading some Mike Dooley the other day and it hit me that I’d begun messing with “the cursed hows” again…it’s all too easy to slip into that when we think about something too much. Anyway, once we do that, we are looking too earnestly for immediate results, and well, the rest of the Universe may still be jaunting happily along at its normal pace, and we’re over here going “Where is it already!?” And there may be times (yes, often!) that it seems like nothing is happening. Maybe, as Dooley suggested, those are the times when everything is, and this is just the lull before it all unfolds. I keep remembering a meme I saw in which a guy was digging and digging, and, finding nothing, he gave up and turned around. But the picture showed that if he had just continued for a little bit longer, he would have found the big treasure. That sweet spot, which isn’t so sweet when we are experiencing it, is when we are forced to shift gears and maybe consider something we hadn’t before, because we’d become so focused on a certain outcome happening a certain way (those cursed “hows” again…).
Anyway, I won’t get into the particulars of a life mission that I am on, but I get perceived setbacks on this journey all the time. It’s frustrating, to say the least! There will be periods of lots of activity, and I become accustomed to that. And then when nothing happens, I begin to wonder if this is a sign that it’s all over, if it’s not going to fully manifest at all, and if I should give up and move on. And then I get a sign and a feeling that says, “Keep Going!”.
There are so, so many factors involved in the dreams and goals we set that we can’t begin to know all of the intricate details. But perhaps the stage is being set…and all we have to worry about is getting ourselves ready. I really don’t know for certain, but I have noticed that if I am at least moving forward, rather than stagnating and waiting for “it” to happen, at least I am making some progress that, in hindsight, may have served me after all!
I recently took a job outside the home after over a decade. I do like it very much–absolutely nothing to complain about really, and counting my blessings there. I kept asking at first how this could possibly help me along my mission and goal, because in my limited perspective, I was unable to fathom it. But little by little, in hindsight, again, I am seeing small changes toward the greater end–things that I hadn’t even considered being helpful in the big picture. It’s not the job itself–it’s the people and the things I am encountering while there, and the strengthening of my discipline, character and integrity that seem to benefit.
Anyhoo, I might be digressing here, but the gist of it is this: there are a lot of forks in the roads of our journeys. Sometimes the best route isn’t always direct. When we run into perceived brick walls or feel like we’re spinning our wheels for nothing, maybe we should take a little break, rest, and consider something far out of our limited scopes. Anything is possible, really.
I tell myself that and I fully believe it. And yet, the rest of me is still impatient, because I’m not getting any younger! But there is so much I really could do, so much power I could harness, if I didn’t let fear weaken me the way it does. I have to consciously wonder what I really have to lose by trying something different or going a new direction. Often, I stand to gain much. We all do.
And yes, definitely–take one step at a time. 😀
Ah, the “cursed hows”. How they do mess us up, don’t they? I think it is certainly possible that when we get immersed in something and start getting really excited about it, we can start getting impatient for the results that we envision but aren’t yet experiencing. And this is an alignment issue because impatience is the vibe of “it’s not here yet”, which of course just lines up more of that, which then spirals even further. It’s so hard though, to keep yourself motivated when it seems like nothing is happening. In such times, I usually find that it’s best to take a step back — to take a breather and focus on other things for a while to dispel the “negative energy” that we’ve been building up over the big dream. Take a break and then come back to it when you’re feeling better and in a higher vibrational state.
I get the same sorts of cycle happening on my own journey — periods where lots seems to be happening all at once followed by periods where absolutely nothing at all seems to be happening. It’s frustrating as all hell, and I think it’s normal in such situation to wonder whether it really is time to think about doing something else. Again… always best to take a step back and focus on something else for a while when that happens. Let the frustrating and despair evaporate.
You absolutely want to keep moving forward (with the exception of those times, as noted above, when you need to distance yourself temporarily) with respect to your dreams, even if it’s only tiny little baby-steps that hardly seem worth getting excited about. They key is the forward movement… even small progress is progress! Stagnation, on the other hand, is a dream-killer. When we start hesitating and stalling in place, we lose momentum, and it is so much harder to get ourselves back on track again.
I love the way you’re looking at the new job! Every experience that we have can be used to help us get closer to our real dreams. As you noted, even the job itself has nothing to do with what you really want to be doing, there are contacts that can be made, skills that can be used, and habits that can be beneficial to what we ultimately want to create. Always look at the experiences you have with the eye of “how can I use this to help me build my dream” or “what can I learn from this that will make building my dream easier or faster?”. 🙂
The walls. Oh, the walls. There is so much that could be said about walls. How about this: “The brick walls aren’t there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show us how badly we want things. ~Randy Pausch” Also, keep in mind that what we perceive as walls aren’t necessarily walls in reality. Remember the 80s Jim Henson movie “Labyrinth” with David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly? She needs to get to the centre of the labyrinth to rescue the baby before time runs out, so as soon as she finds a way into the maze, she starts running and running and running, looking for a turn or a side tunnel — anything to get her further into it. But there’s nothing. It’s just two straight brick walls as far as the eye can see in either direction, no matter how far she runs. Until she learns to look at the walls differently — to stop taking for granted that they are solid and impenetrable. It’s not until she actually walks up to one of those walls and puts her hand through it that she realizes the truth: the walls are just an illusion.
Learn to make juicy lemonade from the lemons. Heck, punch.
Right on, A!
The author Jeff Goins, in his book The Art of Work, talks about this and how important it is to see the opportunities not to trade in your dreams, but to pivot–considering the other forks in the road that will take you on different paths along the great journey, and offer you skills, insight, and experience you may not have considered in discovering your life purpose. It gave me a new perspective on things.
I’ll have to look that one up. I’ve read Pressfield’s The War of Art but I haven’t read Goins’ book. You absolutely want to look at your “detours” as just a different path to get you to where you want to be. As long as you get there, then what difference does the route make… and think about all the new scenery you will have taken in along the way. Mike Dooley says much the same thing about “going off track” with respect to your dreams. 🙂
Lemon squares? 😉