When Things are Starting to Go Wrong
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We all have good days and bad days, or even good mornings and bad afternoons. And when things are going well, we get lost in the moment, and sometimes when things are going badly, we can't escape from it no matter what we do.
And clearly, in both of these cases, there are times when things are out of our control. Events are happening that we have nothing to do with, and they are what is making us have fun or be miserable. But at other times, what is happening IS dependent on what we are doing and on what we are choosing.
So, it makes sense that we could do things differently or choose different things, and situations would turn out differently. But nobody is perfect, and we can't predict what results our actions will cause as we go through a regular day. And of course, we don't want to change anything when things are going well, but we would all like to change the times that are going badly. And it is possible. But only if we can recognize when things are starting to go wrong.
Usually, the red flags of this are people's reactions, or we suddenly feel stressed or panicked. These are early warning signs and the signal to take action and not follow the course that we are on, which will pull us further into a bad situation. But what action do we need to take?
Well, we can turn things around by quickly throwing ourselves into any task that keeps us busy for a while. So, during our day, if we feel that things are starting to turn on us either with the people around us or with the thing we are doing, we should always look for something that can mentally or physically engage us. Usually, this means doing something alone, and the simpler and more repetitive it is, the better.
By doing this, we haven't exactly escaped from what is happening, but we are doing something very important. Difficult periods can only last for a certain amount of time. They are all time-dependent, and when that amount of time has run out, the difficult period ends. So, by keeping ourselves busy with something unrelated, we are running down the clock, and although we can still feel the tension of it, we are not taking part in it and making it worse for ourselves. And by the time we have stopped doing whatever we chose to do, we'll find that we have sidestepped the bad time that we were starting to have.
So that's the difficult times, but what about the good times? How can we maximize the times when we can have fun? The answer to this is all in the planning. When we plan to do anything for fun, we should always leave space for the unknown to happen. And the way to do this is by not planning all of the details of what we are going to do. And the reason for this is that we experience fun when we do something spontaneously. So if we leave space in our plan, it allows these spontaneous things to happen.
Another thing to be careful of is if the planning is starting to get too complicated. If it is, then it's best to give it up and do something else. We always need to read what's possible at the time because forcing something to happen will never turn out to be fun for anyone, least of all ourselves.
