November 4, 2014
You should be able to feel sad if you need to. Sadness is a healthy emotion. You should not deprive yourself of that experience. As I had mentioned in a previous post, sadness can make us very creative and innovative. However, feeling stuck in a rut is not a good thing. If you feel stuck then it is time for a change. This is especially true if your sadness if not due to experiencing a big loss whether financial or otherwise.
Sometimes your brain can get off track and when this happens you can lose focus. Losing focus can lead to depression. Sadness is one of the symptoms of clinical depression. The key to avoid getting stuck in a rut, with that sadness, is to recognize that your mind is in fact getting off track and giving yourself time to put it back together.
You can begin to do that by dealing with negative circumstances in a positive way. For example, if your car breaks down don’t say, why me? Or if you lose something, don’t call yourself names. Instead, acknowledge the fact that thousands of cars break down every day and for some people it is a common occurrence. Similarly, many people lose valuable stuff every day and have to deal with it as well. It is not something that only happens to you. It is something that happens to well-adjusted strong people like you. It is important not to let any negative events get to you at a personal level. Rather than trying to figure out why bad things happen to you, focus instead on resolving the situations as if they were an opportunity to learn something from. In reality, if you put all of your energy in resolving the situation at hand, you won’t have time for negative self-talk and/or sadness.
In addition to avoiding negative self-talk, when you feel sad, you can also try to stay busy by finding activities that make you feel good about yourself. This could entail volunteering for a cause. When you volunteer for a cause, that you feel passionate about, you won’t have time to dwell on your sadness because you are so much more interested in getting results from your efforts as a volunteer. All the energy that you would otherwise use, to feel sad, you can channel it to make a difference in this world.
You can also take regular walks or drives through areas that are known to feel pleasant. Pleasant images can be very distracting and will keep you from focusing on your negative experiences or experiencing sadness.
By now, I think you get the point. The key to avoid getting stuck in a rut with sadness is to acknowledge that your mind is off-track and that unless you do something about it, you will continue to stay stuck. Unfortunately, no one is going to be able to get you out of there but you. You need to do that because you deserve better. To accomplish that you can take the steps that I mentioned above or you can also be creative and create your own positive distractions.