Today’s Advice On Hard Times
It’s a often overshadowed piece of advice that time usually heals a lot. Many of our pains and struggles hold a true grasp to us, for an amount of time, that often feels grudgingly long. For many things, and certainly for many struggles, the feeling doesn’t last forever. Even when it lingers on, it slowly gets more and more bearable.
Now I want to be quite clear that I hold the topic of grief on a totally different table than what I just wrote. Grief does have its own process, and it can get toned down as we go through passing time, but it’s a whole different complexity. Especially since recently, experts have began going away from the idea of “stages of grief.” An idea and theory that I would say I am more prone to as well, with what I have recently studied and learned over the past year or two.
Grief is too multi layered, and each person has their own complexity. Having a written set of stages for every grieving person is just not as realistic to believe anymore. Grief isn’t something I want to get into too much detail over today. I have covered it in the past, and I will likely re-visit it specifically, in the near future.
When we look at our worries of today, and our fears for how long something bad will last, we seem to overpower our own minds with this panic and an impatience sort of desire. It can certainly make things worse.
When looking back at my own misfortunes, I am able to see a time, when I literally could feel myself counting the hours, and counting the minutes to an end point in which I had no clue for when it really was.
I learned a lot back then about the time frames in which we know, and the time frames which are rather unknown.
The passing of time can be on either side of the extreme. For negative experiences, we want them to flash by in the blink of an eye. And of course it is those fun and happy times we want to never end. It’s difficult to find a balance with that.
Is there a way to make brutal experiences speed by? How does an inmate get into a proper mindset when he’s twenty years old, and beginning a 20 year sentence? While each day seems mentally painful, do those 20 years end, with a released person saying to themselves, “wow those two decades seemed to go by fast, all things considered.”
For most tough times, it does seem to drag on, but in the same notion, it seems to be fast, when that end is near. Can I give advice that is a true problem solver when looking at how to make passing time be the exact pace for comfort? How would that comfort even be defined?
Hard times will hit us all, in all levels of force. I am quite far from the perfect words of advice for this. But I can tell you, usually, pain from an experience does ease eventually. We can look at it as impossible, and wallow in our depression and pity. Or we can try to educate ourselves on what to do, and what not to do, when we are trying to heal.
For this type of journey, I am more prone to lean towards my love of mindfulness, as a practice to get us through our struggling, slow days. One of our worst problems is we spend our days, with all our thoughts focused on how brutal something feels. Or how boring, or dragged out it’s making us feel.
We have to remove ourselves from this type of thinking, and get ourselves to a place where we are able to focus on our regular day to day lives.
Now I may be able to make it sound easy, but utilizing mindfulness or not, it will still be a complex process. But mastering mindfulness is a practice that brings with itself a natural edge, once we really learn how to tune in to that idea of being mindful. Focus on the here and now.
Realize that there will likely be blessings and things to be thankful for, even when not all our experiences are good ones. We can lose sight of so much in life, when we are blind to our day to day experiences and opportunities. We have to keep a grasp on our focus, and be sure it’s shining towards the right things. I’ve spent many days wasting my thoughts on negativity.
I have also spent that time learning that I can stress, worry or lose sleep over the things in life, that I cannot control. That’s the final, and most important point. We can only get through our days, by putting our heart and mind into what we ourselves have control over. Don’t hold yourself imprisoned in your own mind.
Work hard on yourself, to continue molding a fresh, and healthy you. Be mindful of what you need to change, and determine on a reasonable deadline for new and changing goals. Let’s get out of our own heads, and make the time that we’re living, time that is quite well spent.
Michael Patanella
is a Trenton, New Jersey Author, Publisher, Columnist, Editor, Advocate, and recovering addict, covering topics of mental health, addiction, sobriety, mindfulness, self-help, faith, spirituality, Smart Recovery, social advocacy, and countless other nonfiction topics. His articles, publications, memoirs, and stories are geared towards being a voice for the voiceless. Hoping to reach others out there still struggling.
