The Season of Ups and Downs and Changing a Perspective Whenever Nothing is Going Right

Right now I am in a season of ups and downs. Just like many people, my whole entire life is just one big up and down, but recently it has been more pronounced.

For an example, I got a new sofa! It is actually a love seat, but it is so much nicer than my old sofa. With that really happy and positive event (And the fact I saved a lot of money on it) came a major low: My vehicle is acting up. It started last week, but it was fixed by this past Monday. The on Tuesday, it acted up again.

With the up and down happening within hours of each other, I began to wonder what to do. I suffer from anxiety, but it is manageable with positive affirmations and other non medicated ways. Yet, whenever I have both a positive and negative happening at the same time, I began to feel anxiety building inside of me again. I hate it whenever both positive and negative events happen at the same time. It makes me second guess what to focus my thoughts on. I don’t want to be pessimistic, yet I don’t want to talk myself in believing I can do something that I can’t because I’m trying to offset my anxiety.

This is when I realized I have been looking at my life the wrong way. I always expect bad things will happen. I always heard the saying “If you expect bad things will happen and they will”. The thing is bad things always happen. It is just part of life. Yet, if you anticipate and expect them to happen, you will be more alert and aware of it whenever it happens. The question is if these bad things happen because of your own action or is it happening because it is a part of life? For an example, my vehicle is having problems. It is also a 20+ year old machine with over 200,000 miles on it. For it to struggle and need more intensive fixes and repairs at its stage of existence is normal. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be happy to own a new sofa. It just means I need to be happy that finding a new sofa is one less thing I need to worry about while I worry about fixing my vehicle.

Shifting a perspective on life can make a major impact on anxiety, but if everything is falling apart around you, it can be difficult if impossible to shift perspective an attention onto something good. In times like that, thinking outside the box of what is “normal” is important. Such as being happy to be able to sit on a sofa that won’t hurt your back while researching how to fix an older vehicle’s engine.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

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