When Life Hands You Lemons...

Throw them back and say “catch!”  Unless they also come with sugar, a juicer, and a pitcher, lemons are pretty useless in and of themselves.

Been thinking a lot recently about the phrases people use to try to cheer each other up.  Some of them are cute, some are meant to make you feel better, some are simply said because the person doesn’t know what to say.  Very few of them have any value in real day to day life.

As a counselor I hear people use trite sayings and ’motivational’ phrases all of the time, but how much do they really work?  Most research tends to point to the fact that the only person who gets a happy feeling from motivational sayings is the person espousing them.  People tend to react in a positive way to specific praise and motivation, not so much to generalizations. Personally, I mostly swore off of them after hearing a mother say the lemon thing to her suicidal daughter at a hospital intake one night.  The look on the daughter’s face pretty much was a combination of utter disbelief and disgust, and completely mirrored what was in my thoughts at the moment.

So, instead of cute little motivational phrases, how do we motivate ourselves to change?

You hear many people talking about being ‘in the moment’, or being ‘present’ in their lives.  Many of us wander around on autopilot every day.  We do what we have to do to keep a roof over our heads and the light bill paid, but we rarely lift our heads up to see if there is anything else out there.  Unfortunately for quite a few people, the natural curiosity of trying to see what else there has been beaten into submission by a world and by well-meaning people who don’t have the ability, the courage, or the desire to imagine what else is out there.

The world is a place of infinite possibility and continuous reinvention and the more we try to deny that the less we really live, and the smaller our lives become. 

So when life hands you lemons remember that ‘life’ has handed you nothing.  You decide what you need and want-and if its important enough you will get there without the trite sayings or ‘motivational’  posters that everyone loves so much, but with the help of people who understand you and care about you no matter what life's handed you recently.

Chuck Norris and the Art of Kicking Butt

Depending on if you’re one of those glass half empty or glass half full types, life is a series of challenges to be met and obstacles to overcome.

I’m a half-empty kind of person as it has been my experience that just when you think things cannot get any worse...they do.  And in the most spectacularly worst way possible for the time. My life has become a true art of prepping for worst case scenarios-because in my experience it happens. Whether it is self-fulfilling prophecy or not I don’t know-that’s one for someone else to look at, but I’ve always looked at it as insurance against ‘how things are’.

Enter Chuck Norris-movie and TV version.  What does he have to do with my inability to see other than the worst of all possible results in this worst of all possible worlds?

Chuck Norris destroys worst possible results.  Over and over again-in every movie or TV show I’ve ever seen him in, Chuck Norris plows through the confusion and drama, gets to the point of the matter, and solves the problem.  Usually by use of some pretty awesome slow motion karate movies (or was that the Six Million Dollar Man?  I get confused sometimes).

Chuck Norris doesn’t worry about ‘worst case scenarios’ because for him, they don’t exist.  Events are just another bump on the road to awesomeness for him.

What lesson can be taken here?  Aside from the fact that it’s always good to prepare for any eventuality, the whole point is to live life in the now.

Tired old phrase-very over used, in all honesty.  But it really is true.  One of the reasons that Movie/TV Chuck works so well as a character and an archetype is because sometimes, all the plans you make don’t mean a thing and you have to be able to improvise.  You don’t have time to be scared, upset, or engage in pointless drama or endless evaluation of circumstances; you react to what is around you and take care of what is in front of you and move on.

Too often we get bogged down in all of the underlying ‘stuff’ life throws at us.  Most of it isn’t worth the time or the attention that we give it.  Sometimes the best thing to do is to simply deal with it and move one.  Not every event deserves further thought or contemplation.   As a society we’ve become too concerned about what the context of everything is and as a result, we allow ourselves to be run over too many times when we should be simply reacting.

Developing a healthy way to live and a healthy outlook on life sometimes requires us to strip away all of the pointless rumination and simply act.

Sometimes we all have to simply be Chuck Norris.

At Any Given Moment

Found a really cool poster on Pinterest awhile back and it really hit me hard.  I’ve been going through a spectacularly difficult time as of late, where absolutely nothing has broken my way.  Ended up in one of those ‘To Be or Not to Be” moments that many people have experienced recently.

I’m tired of fighting to simply keep a roof over my head and keep my lights on.  Somewhere along the line we’ve all lost track of the truly important things in life-one of which is help each other and caring about each other.

Then I found this quote on Pinterest: 

For where I was at the time it was powerful.  It was a true epiphany for me in terms of new goals to set for myself.

One way or another, I am going to find a way to get strong not just physically, but mentally too.  I hadn’t realized how much I had let my mental strength go until that moment.

We have the power to author our own stories and change our own outcomes, regardless of where we start from.  Even from in the basement-or even from UNDER the basement we can do it.  This is true for everything in life, be it losing weight, finding a job, or surviving a breakup.

All it takes is a simple plan-one step at a time.  When every problem in your life suddenly decides to gang up on you and hit you all at once, take charge.  Make a list.  Depressing?  Not if you repeat the idea that ‘this is not how the story is going to end’.  Pick the one biggest issue that is causing one or more of the other issues and solve it.  You don’t need the perfect solution at this point-you don’t have the luxury.  Any solution that works is the current perfect solution-fine tune it after you have time to breathe and evaluate.

It’s really amazing how empowering that can be.

This is not how my story is going to end-that I can promise- and yours doesn’t have to end ‘that way’ either.

Peace!