Today we are talking about 3 things you can do to turn around a bad situation.
One of the greatest acts of self love and care is to take care of yourself in a hard situation.
So often when you find yourself in a challenging, hard, or bad situation there is a loss of control that is attached to the experience. And while you may not have power over the external factors around you, you absolutely have power over your mind, perspective, and emotional wellbeing. Making sure you utilize that power, can change the entire experience that you have.
So whether you are dealing with an externally hard situation that you have no control over like all my friends and family in Texas right now, or you an internally challenging situation that is emotionally and mentally hard, these three steps will help you turn it all around.
Slow Down and Get Conscious With Step One:
Allow yourself to be where you are.
I know this one might not really feel like a step but it is actually really powerful. The tendency is to suppress or push through challenging, traumatic or hard experiences. But if you give yourself room to consciously be where you are, it can slow down the momentum behind the situation.
If you need to cry then cry, and if you need to emote, then emote. Be there, but leave that door open for possibility. Don’t allow yourself to spiral so far down that you get distracted by or pulled too far into what is, that you can’t active step two.
Giving yourself space to consciously be where you are with that boundary, it also helps you from getting swept up and emotionally carried away by external situations. This step allows you to become your own solace and is a powerful act of love and care.
Switch Gears With Step Two:
Activate optimism.
This step is all about switching gears and creating a choice. When you experience a challenging situation your brain gets triggered to think from the place of fight, flight, or freeze. You will naturally scan the situation for all of the things that are wrong, reevaluating the painful dynamic over and over again, and you can get lost in the loop of suffering. Your brain tricks you into thinking that if you keep reliving it and keep focused on everything that is wrong you won’t find yourself in the situation again. The problem with that is you actually keep reliving the suffering in the moment and take it forward with you into all your other moments.
But if you choose to activate another part of your brain you have a reprieve. Optimism is a choice and it is something you must actively engage. When you choose optimism you focus your mind to scan for all the things that are right. It’s like a filter that helps you search for the things that are ok, the silver linings, what is right, and what is good.
That choice allows your prefrontal cortex to take over. This is where you have the power of higher-level thinking, and can find creative solution. When you are living through the lens of optimism everything in your life feels so much better. There is naturally more hope, more room for possibility and space for joy and light to make its way into your experience.
I did a video and blog about optimum practices and am linking it here and in the video section below. These practices allow optimism to become more 2nd nature to you. Your brain will start to naturally gravitate towards this choice the more that you focus there.
Create Action With Step Three:
Lean into what is going right, what you are grateful for, and what feels good.
This step is all about taking action and that action is reaching for thoughts that feel better. With every thought that you think you are making a choice. So make sure you are leaning into gratitude by choosing thoughts that are grounded in that place. Choose to focus on what is right and what feels good to you in that moment. Keep reaching for thoughts that feel better then the last.
When you are in these extreme situations or rough patch or places there is still a lot of good going on around you. You just don’t have the capacity to see or experience it because if you don’t do these changes your focus is set to scan for the opposite. So you miss them, looking right over them you can’t allow them to soak into your being.
Start by doing this in your own mind but then don’t be afraid to speak it out loud. Talk about what you are grateful for with your inner circle. Share with them the things you see that are going right in your life and through the hard moments.
Yes, you are dealing with a physically or emotionally challenging situation, but your outlook about it changes the whole experience. And while you may not have a choice over the external physical parts of the experience, you absolutely have a choice over your outlook and the way you process it all.
Remember, choosing to activate optimism in a challenging situation doesn’t deny the horrible reality of what’s happening; it offers you glimpses of relief. The emotional difference between the two is huge and has a biological effect on you.
Using these three steps will make your entire experience will be more positive, even if it’s a mess. You will be opening the door to possibility activating a very powerful part of your mind and being. Making that choice allows more of the good flow right into your life.
So remember that you may not have power over the outside world or what is happening, but you have power the shift how you feel, what you think and how you move forward.
