Appreciating Sad Days

27th Apr 2015 | Leave a comment Appreciating Sad Days Deciding to alter a career is hard as a result of it isn't a call in any respect â€" it's a process. Decisions can be made instantly, like jumping off the side of a mountain. But processes are made up of tons of and thousands of mini-decisions, taken intentionally in sequence, extra like climbing the mountain. This take energy and time. Deciding to research that company, meet that contact, re-write the CV, go to that speak â€" all of these matter in reinvention, and yet none will move you far in isolation. It is sustained commitment that counts. Yet that’s exhausting because our habits â€" the material of our lives â€" drag us again. Inertia holds all the psychological aces. Inevitably this means there shall be days after we lack the power and struggle to maintain transferring forward. I keep in mind there were days when I would really feel overtaken by disappointment, often on a Sunday afternoon, as I contemplated another working week. I felt stuck in an enormous, darkish hole. So what should we do on these unhappy days? Society tells us we must reject disappointment and struggle it off. The drug firms provide pills to numb unhappiness and soothe its rawer edges. Advertisers sell us happiness as the ‘remedy’ for unhappiness. Hell, even psychologists advise us we ought to be happy. Yet my expertise was that the extra I struggled to get rid of my sadness, the more caught I turned. The extra I tried to alleviate my sadness, the less I dealt with the underlying points on the root of it. I just dug my gap deeper. It took me years to know that the most effective factor to do on unhappy days is to give up the struggle with it. Stop digging. The neatest thing to do on days like these â€" I am having one right now â€" is rest awhile in disappointment and appreciate the plain reality of human sorrow. I found such value in merely recognising days when one of the best factor I may do is not make issues worse. Or make one, tiny step ahead. Then, when tomorrow came I had much less distance to make up. One less factor to be accomplished. By giving up the wrestle to eliminate sadness, I also learned to appreciate its message. Sadness tells us not simply what we’ve lost but what we worth. The memory of unhappy days acts as the soil from which new instructions develop. If something may develop out of your unhappiness, what may that be? Photo by Matthias Haltenhof: /portfolio/ Career Change, Career Development, Developing Coaches - ACT Training Tags: ACT in teaching, Dealing with difficult thoughts and emotions, Experiential avoidance, Flexible pondering: utilizing ACT in profession change, Headstuck, Psychology of profession change « Don't focus on ardour - focus... Role Models » Check your inbox or spam folder now to confirm your subscription.