We've all had years we can't wait to kick out the door. Life threw us curveballs, and we never played Little League. The paths we had chosen led us down difficult roads. Or we felt the stun of surprise, the stab of broken trust, and the hopelessness of hurt.
Social media makes these moments no easier. Few people post the huge ah-huh. The miscalculations or the boulders shoved aside. What hinders and helps as we push out the past and ring in a new era?
Certainly not rumination and self-downing. Opt instead for three gifts you can grant: Self-compassion, gratitude, and calm amid life's storms and sudden tsunamis.
Moving Ahead Gracefully in an Unbalanced World
People tell you to give yourself grace. Take a mental health day. Then what? How do you curb feeling so frazzled?
Gina Simmons Schneider, Ph.D., suggests a myriad of balanced choices in Frazzlebrain: Break Free from Anxiety, Anger and Stress. She features self-soothing in her first chapter.
"When you take time out of each day to comfort yourself, you feel less frazzled and happier," Dr. Schneider writes. Follow a five-senses soothing approach by hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and seeing to self-soothe."
Let's take visualization—looking and seeking out beautiful flowers, art, or animals at play.
When I met Schneider in her hometown of San Diego, I treated myself to a morning at the infamous San Diego Zoo. It struck me how calming it was to see the animals in their habitats. As they relaxed, so did I. When they romped, I felt my heart lift, too. So struck by this, I next visited the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., to replicate this joy.
My visit occurred during Panda Palooza, a months-long farewell to the giant pandas Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and Xiao Qi Ji. They were slated to depart the Smithsonian's National Zoo as their loan agreement ended. They would soon return to China for the parents to live out their elder years and for CheeJi, as the staff called the cub, to enter the panda breeding program.
The trio's departure in the D.C. Metro region was a big, darned deal, stirring heartfelt emotions. My own newest calm tactic felt like it flew off on that FedX Panda Express. Until I reframed that YouTube could provide the animal antics and zookeeper commentary, giving me a healthy, wholesome hit of calm and curiosity, especially at the end of a draining day or work week.
Giving yourself grace can also mean allowing for imperfection, being grateful, having a sense of humor, and not taking yourself so seriously, as well as silencing negative self-talk. Lastly, you balance your brain through a healthy diet, exercise, restful sleep, fulfilling work, and quality relationships, which are achieved through building communication and people skills.
Compassion for the Self
Authors Irene Smit and Astrid Van Der Hulst collaborated on A Book That Loves You: An Adventure in Self-Compassion. Their outline reveals loving your active brain and imperfect body, being alone, embracing a unique mind and idle time, loving your ups and downs, as well as learning to let go.
When the mind is one big storm, the authors validate yet focus on the cognitive-behavioral reframing from negative to positive. The absolutely lovely page content provides ample prompts to use senses—doing, seeing, and repeating, the tactile touch of tearing out and creating bookmarks and cards and journaling the answers to numerous questions.
They provide the upshots to worry yet extol the virtues of mindfulness. Worry is the paradox of living in the moment. Part of self-compassion is also learning how to mess up. "Perfection is out—failure is a new success," the authors pen in one chapter. They cite Dutch experts in the field of failure. Take Apple, Inc., which went broke several times, but Steve Jobs came back stronger and ultimately met with huge success.
How do we talk to ourselves when something goes wrong? What messages do we internalize? Sadly, people tend to feel ashamed and go to great lengths to keep this discomfort at bay. We finger-point, place blame, and become defensive. These, we know, are immature defenses. They deserve to be righted lest they tank our growth and maturity.
Gratitude in Your Attitude
"Grateful people are more caring, compassionate, fair, and have more respect for others," Smith and Van Der Hulst write.
If you need daily nudges for being thankful vs. remorseful, A Year of Gratitude perched on your countertop or desk grants "gratefulness practices" such as reaching out to others or smiling at the world, taking a stand for what you value, being generous, and looking up at the blue sky.
Published by Workman with Grateful Living, a global organization that promotes mindful gratitude, this calendar offers behavioral prompts, quotes by well-known individuals, and thought-provoking questions to instill happiness about what we have rather than a yearning for what we do not.
Calm Coping
Therapists routinely provide clients with handouts to improve coping mechanisms and reduce stress. These include exercise, fun habits and hobbies, deep breathing, yoga poses, and much more.
Another comprehensive collection is Everyday CALM: 365 Days of Inspiration and Mindfulness to Reset, Refresh and Live Better, a morsel of wisdom for the new year published by Sourcebooks. I suggest you find the calm tips that inspire you and revisit them…again and again.
January 5th: "Find out who you are and be that person. That's what your soul was put on this earth to be," says Ellen DeGeneres. "Find that truth, live that truth, and everything else will come."
June 13th: Nothing invigorates a day like the feeling of sunlight on your face.
September 5th: If your work environment is cluttered, the chaos constantly competes for your attention and reduces productivity."
December 20th: "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step," said Martin Luther King, Jr.
In summary, self-compassion, gratitude, and calm — are three game-changing approaches that only you can conjure when kicking one year to the curb and ushering in a whole new you.
Copyright © 2023 Loriann H. Oberlin, MS
References
Frazzlebrain: Break Free from Anxiety, Anger, and Stress Using Advanced Discoveries in Neuropsychology by Gina Simmons Schneider, Ph.D. (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2022)
A Book That Loves You: An Adventure in Self Compassion by Irene Smit and Astrid Van Der Hulst (New York: Workman Publishing, 2022)
A Year of Gratitude, Page-A-Day Calendar © Grateful Living. Published by Workman Publishing, 2023.
Everyday CALM: 365 Days of Inspiration and Mindfulness to Reset, Refresh and Live Better. @Sourcebooks, 2023.
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