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I’ve come to realize that some things I hear every day around me or those that I see on social media are just overrated and put in a bright shiny light so far from reality as Jupiter is from the Sun.
Like the fact that one needs to be happy all the time by means such as having a great job, earning a lot of money, having the perfect family with a loving spouse, kids and a big house, car, great holidays, awesome sex life and so on. Or the fact that people (other people of course, not us) have discovered their big meaning in life, they have things figured out and managed to be really accomplished. And by that, they live beautifully and happily and give us the best of the reasons to feel like we have failed.
It’s really okay to feel lost, a stranger to a deep meaning you are supposed to live your life towards.
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Yes – we have failed to live the life they post publicly. Not sure if that is really the life they live. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s not and their problems are just as big for them as ours are for us.
And yes – we feel like we have failed because even if we have some things, we are still missing some of them, and the ones we are missing are the most important (this is ironic, by the way!) We might be healthy, have a job that we love or some great friends, or a great partner, but we still don’t have the prospects of coming close to the perfect picture we see others post on social media. Or the perfect way we imagine those things we are missing are going to fill the emptiness we feel inside.
But guess what? That is okay. You feel like a failure? That is okay. You feel like you don’t make enough money? You feel you don’t have the right relationships? You feel you don’t belong to the place you are in now? That’s okay. We all feel or have felt this way at some point.
Accepting the way you feel will make room in your mind for new perspectives.
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It’s really okay to feel lost, a stranger to a deep meaning you are supposed to live your life towards. It’s okay to feel unhappy, unwanted, insecure, fragile, depressed, sad, unloved, uncertain, lonely, or any other feeling you might experience that is not exciting to feel.
Just get the idea that all this is just the way things are and that is fine; there’s really nothing you need to do about changing that right away. Sit for a while with these feelings and don’t rush into finding solutions and changing the circumstances. Trust me, life is far from pink and it’s only us that can make it better for ourselves, every day.
That’s all you need to do. Learn to sit with how you are feeling. Listen to how you are feeling, be it sadness, regret, pain, lost, injustice, depression. And don’t let your mind wander into finding solutions. Just go over how you are feeling and learn to live with feelings like this. Keep up your routine, friends, job, school, reading, sports, or whatever you are usually doing, but at the same time become AWARE of how you feel.
It’s okay to feel less than happy. Or way less than happy. Learn to accept that and sit next to these feelings without thinking too much about them for now. Just understand something less than happy is there and what is it. Don’t go into what caused it, or what triggered it or why you feel the way you feel.
And for the sake of the exercise, try stopping the annoying process of comparing yourself with a perfect you or perfect others. Okay – you are a failure compared to others or with the image you had for yourself. And that’s okay – accept it and keep living.
What happens if you just feel and stop analyzing
Accepting the way you feel will make room in your mind for new perspectives. You feel lost and hopeless? Instead of constantly asking why, finding who to blame, comparing yourself with some ideal image, thinking how far you are from achieving it and that you have no idea how you’ll get there; basically, analyzing every little aspect of that problem will only fill your mind with unproductive thoughts. This kind of thinking will lead you nowhere and will only make you feel even worse as you realize you might not get where you want and that your life in general sucks.
What if you just accept what you feel? And live with it without wondering why and what are you going to do about it. Stop the mind into going into too much thinking.
Just do that for now. Sit with whatever less than perfect you are feeling. See what happens!
As soon as we learn to do this, we free our mind of the one or many obsessions it has to work really hard on. When it is free, our mind will look for new things…and it will be able to actually see new opportunities, new people, new things, and definitely new perspectives. And that’s where the real solutions lie, in a mind open to receive it.
Real solutions come from the external world when and if we have the room to see them. Our mind is limited to the world we know, and if we keep living in our mind’s world, we will keep coming with the same thinking that will eventually get us to the same place over and over again. We need to open up to the new, and we can only do that by quieting our mind and making it listen to what happens around us.
That’s why you should stop over-analyzing and learn to sit with whatever you are feeling. Things are only going to change, and for the better, the moment we become open and make room for new thoughts and opportunities.
So, it’s okay to feel less than perfect and even miserable. Sit with it and mind your own business. Don’t stop your routines and definitely try to do more of the things you love. Get it into your head that the more you dig into the problem, the further away you’ll travel from finding a solution. Instead, keep your mind open and make room for fresh perspectives. Can you do that? Let’s try!
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