Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. – Robert H. Schuller
For the longest time I never really caught on to the ups and downs of life. I just went about my business day-in and day-out. When a bad day would happen, it would often end up in a bad week. I would instantly blame others and somehow I medicated myself out of my bad mood to catch a glimpse of a good mood. Overall though, I always felt I was down. My morale became hopeless.
Over the past year or so, I have been a lot more observant of the peaks and valleys of my place in the world. There are times when I am on top of the world and then there are times when I am down and out. When I am up, everything I say and do just seems to breed energy in others, when I am down, it seems I can do nothing right and I can see that I am a drain. When I first observed my swings, I would get very anxious. My anxiety riddled me as I wondered if I would ever get back up again. What can I do? What is everyone else’s problem? I still had some blame in my mindset and figured it was just other people that were making me blue.
Knowing that the common denominator in my life is me, there is no other person to blame for my “blues”. It is hard not to finger point and refrain from comparing myself to others when I am down. Breaking the nasty habit of becoming green with envy, red with anger and blue with pity took me a very long time. Those bad habits only served to drive me even further into a hole as I would give up my control over my life to others -without them even know it. So what is it? What am I doing wrong? Or am I even doing anything wrong? Perhaps, life is just cyclical, but really… what is causing my dip?
Whenever I am down I just seem to sputter in place and I wonder if it is my demeanour. Is the tone of my voice off? Are my facial expressions gloomy? Are the words I am using wrong? Am I not exercising enough or too much? Am I not eating right? Is it the weather? Is it the season? Is it……. It’s tough not knowing what I am doing wrong. It is even more tough to not spiral out of control with anxiety, worrying if I will ever dig myself out of the dip. But there is one thing I do know for sure and that is when these down days are upon me, they are becoming short lived. They are shrinking for the simple fact that I know it is ALL me, and that it is definitely not you.