Keeping Yourself Up when Your Feelings Say "Down"

"Remember the guy who gave up? Neither does anybody else." ~ Anonymous

It’s totally human to think that everybody out there is having an easier time of it than we are, that somehow we aren’t measuring up. You might be surprised to learn that they feel the same way you do. It takes having some years of experience to discover this and give yourself a little slack.

We have a tendency to judge the lives of others from the small scenes we can see, without considering the things we don’t see of their lives. They might have a stomach full of butterflies when they do their presentation – you know, the one you see as flawless? You may think their singing a song in a performance is grand, but you don’t see their hours and hours of practicing.

I can guarantee you that even those you consider “great,” have small moments of self-doubt just as you do. Behind their public smiles are their own personal challenges.
How do they keep up the smiles – and how can you? Here are some considerations.

Your thinking precedes your feelings – your emotions.
If you’re new to the journey within, you might not have discovered that what you think is what you get. If you are fretting, you’ll produce fear and worry. If you think “I‘m going to do this well,” you’ll have good results. I believe Shakespeare nailed it when he said:

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

And that would be you thinking it’s easy or hard, stressful or not. We all play the blame game on people, places and things, but it’s really what we think about those people, places and things that deserves the blame – or the glory. This would be your choice, so always look inside yourself first.

Find the Good in Your Right Now Experience.We all believe some higher intelligence is overseeing our lives and we trust in that entity’s intrinsic goodness. Where you are right now is critical to where you might go next, so your immediate experience – courtesy of that intrinsically good entity – is good. Look for the good and cherish it, whether you can see how it fits into your future or not.Once you’ve seen this work, you’ll trust that it will always work. It will.

Only One Next Step. I don’t know this for a fact, but I can imagine that the great Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov, pounded on a little toy piano as a baby. I’m also pretty sure his parents may have seen the seed of greatness in how he did it.

You have to see the seed of greatness in you, and you have to see what that can become as you take the next step that you can see to take. From this new vantage point, you’ll be able to see one more step, and as you take every “one step” forward, the next one will appear.

Life is about forward progress, but it takes something I’ll bet you already have: willingness. All those next small steps Grigory Sokolov took turned him into an extraordinary musician and pianist.

What small steps are you willing to take today to become the extraordinary you in the future?

Fail Better than You Do Anything Else. Samuel Becket said “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” If you tune into this one idea, you’ll cherish every failure.

What am I supposed to learn from this? “Life is a schoolmaster,” St. Paul said, and we’re here to learn. So take risks. Stick your neck out. Be willing to look foolish. Shrug a lot, and keep taking those steps forward. You can, because you now know what doesn’t work! And remember this: you walk easily now. You fell down a lot when you learned how.

There is Only this One Right-Now Moment.To keep the playing field level, our higher intelligence entity has given each of us the same ingredients: a mind to think and feel, and 24 hours a day to use it.

How can you maximize your 24 hours to obtain the best life you can so that doubt or dismay doesn’t overwhelm you on the rare occasion? Again, it’s about willingness. What are you passionate about accomplishing? How willing are you to work on it?

You are the one exercising the options in your life. You can sun on the beach, watch endless hours of TV, hang with the boys, or take action. You alone will know which actions that is.

At the end of a day, what can you accomplish so that in looking back, you feel satisfied?

“If it’s going to be, it’s up to Thee.”