Okay Life Sucks, Now Stop Fretting and Get Over it!

“My responsibilities have grown but I haven’t. Time is progressing at a much faster rate, but I feel I am stuck in the same place and situation for years. My finances are at stake. Nothing is going as I planned or dreamt of all this time. My life sucks by keeps getting on worse. I don’t know what to do or where to get help from. I feel hopeless, so I just want to disappear. It’s just that I am tired of feeling drained and grieved all the time. Why is it like so? Why does my life suck?”

I am not sure about you but the above questions are the most frequent questions that I often ask myself. And there are mainly two reasons for this, which I guess most of you can relate to.

Either you are not happy and satisfied with whatever is happening in your daily life or you feel that you are the only one who is the most favorite victim of all the hardships thrown by life at an individual, making you further unhappier. It’s somewhat similar to the game which came first “the chicken” or “the egg”.

You don’t feel good because your life is bad or because your life sucks, so you never feel good enough.

And BOOM! You are now caught in this dangerous trap and a complex loop. I am calling it dangerous because it causes a degradation in our self-esteem. And complex because we have made it further complex by fretting about it all the time, rather than looking for any solutions.

Why do we feel so?

Human nature is such that we give more attention to only those things that trouble us. A process is known as ‘Negativity-Bias”.

Ask yourself, how often do you wake in the morning and appreciate how good you feel? Probably not enough.

But if you are stuck in traffic even for 30 seconds, you notice it like hell.

If your business falls short of your expectations, you are quick to complain, rather than appreciating yourself for all the progress you showed till far. That’s just the way we are.

COME-ON! GET UP, GROW UP!

You are not that overly pampered child anymore, who will cry once and whose parents will come running and solve the required problem. This is the time when you are wholly and solely responsible for your problems and their solutions. So grow up. And get on with life.

As you grow up, you realize that life never gets easier. It’s always us who learn to become stronger. Or in a more apt way, I should say, who has to become stronger, because that’s the only option left.

Nobody genuinely cares for the victim.

Remember you are not the only one who messed up. We all have messed up, in one form or another from time to time. Your victim attitude is not going to help you anymore, rather it will screw things more. As long as you think of yourself as a victim or loser, you will definitely act like a loser, thus digging an even deeper depression ditch.

Perhaps you really were a victim, at some point in your life. A sufferer of a deadly disease or an accident or trauma or some form of abuse; it could be anything. Even if that is the truth, the best way out is to get over it by moving forward, no matter how hard it may seem. Because if you won’t try to move forward, this world will drag you behind. It won’t wait for you. And you may get lost somewhere just like the small pebbles or stones who lose their identity in the fast stream of the river current.

Try to understand the difference between ideal and practical cases.

Wouldn’t it be great if everything ran smoothly all the time?

Like we wake up being happy and go to bed again being happy and satisfied. Just imagine how beautiful our life would be if we could land our dream job; if we could travel the world without worrying about money, if our relationships are perfect or if we always have enough time to spend on our hobbies or ambitions or desires. You might be delighted after imagining this scenario, but deep inside you know this is not how life works.

In fact, it wouldn’t be so great at all. You might feel fulfilled for a little while, but pretty soon you would feel as dull as eating vegetables without spices. Just like a rainbow looks beautiful with all its seven colors, in the same way, our life looks beautiful with all its different colors. Just one color will make it boring and monotonous.

If you want to compare, then compare equally

You can find many people out there doing better than you, and looking at them arises an inferiority complex in you. Moreover, your judgemental thoughts make you more anxious as you feel how can they be progressing, and why you can’t. You torture yourselves purposely because of this comparison trap. You keep worrying about others envying their happy lives. As a result, gradually you start feeling sick and more depressed.

But have you ever noticed that there are also people doing worse than you?

They are not equipped and blessed as you, and if you will get to know about their problems, you will realize your problems are nothing compared to theirs. I know it may suck being alone for the holidays, but I also know that there are many others who are experiencing hardship much worse than whatever you’re currently experiencing.

If you’re in the habit of comparing yourself to others, be certain to be equitable in your comparisons. In that way, you won’t find more reasons to keep beating yourself up.

Stop making a gloomy face all this time and move on realizing that others in this world are a lot worse off than you are.

Who am I to give you such advice?

And why should you even listen to me?

I have always been someone who has screwed many a time. Sometimes because of my wrong choices or decisions, other times because of my over-expectations from myself. In academics, in my career, in my personal life, in short in each and every aspect of my life, I failed and failed and failed. I have also been someone who at a particular time was so hard on myself, that I would mentally punish myself for my faults and imperfections. It took me really so long to finally realize that those negative vibes just made me feel worse. They went no way to help me out of my rough patch.

The real progress and change came when I accepted my situation. As soon as I realized that no amount of guilt could change my past and no amount of anxiety could change my future, things started to become simpler. I worked on myself and gradually things started falling right in place. At present, it’s not that I am a millionaire or I am happy 24*7, but I know how I can be happy and what should I do and what should I avoid, in order to be mentally stable.

Still, there are times when I feel life sucks, but I guess that doesn’t give me any more reasons to make a gloomy face every time. Rather, I smile more to make my vibes positive, write more to get a grip over my thoughts, walk more to be again in alignment with nature and try more in order to succeed in my goals.

This self-realization only comes when you are performing at your worst or when you have to deal with your worst days.

BOTTOM LINE

Life sucks!! Not sometimes, but most of the time. We can never prevent our sufferings, no matter how hard we try. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to enjoy our life a little more. What we can do is still live our lives to the fullest. What we can do is turn our sufferings into blessings. By accepting the hardships, learning lessons from them to grow, and responding to the corresponding situations constructively.

You would not be who you are today without those bad experiences. Many times they served us only to make us stronger or gave us a purpose greater than what we could not have imagined too.

So stop bragging about your problems to each and everyone out there and start living more. Yes, my dear, it’s the only time. Go and find some life in your life.