I’ve been through a lot of crap in my life. My parents’ divorce when I was little. Feelings of abandonment. Emotional abuse. The death of a child. Debilitating illness. My own divorce. You know, the usual.
Perhaps you’ve been through a lot too. And perhaps, like me, your life experiences have led you to always feel like the other shoe is about to drop when things are going well.
The reality is that in life we never know when the other shoe is about to drop, but chances are, if things are going great right now, there will be some point in the future when things won’t be going quite so swimmingly. That’s life. The other shoe drops.
The way I see it, we have two options…we can constantly be anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop or we can fight that urge with every fiber of our being. I’m recommending the latter. Since eventually the other shoe will, in all likelihood, drop, I think we should live every moment in between as joyfully as we can muster in our anxious little souls!
Here are five ways to stop living life like the other shoe is about to fall:
1. Whatever you fear, flip it on its ear.
Come on, we all know that life doesn’t unfold the way it does in our deepest, darkest anxieties. Even if something terrible is bound to happen, it probably won’t happen when or how we think it will. So when you’re cooking up a film in your head about how you think things will happen, flip it on its ear. Tell yourself, “That’s bullshit! That’s not what’s happening here and now!” And then revert your thoughts back to what’s real, not your most terrible imaginings.
2. Recognize that you have a pattern of anxiety created by the bad things that happened in your life.
Have you ever noticed that when things start going well, you start to go off the deep end in your head? That’s because you are following the mind map created by the bad experiences you’ve had in your life. Once you recognize that it’s a pattern, you’ll see that it’s not really that bad things are about to happen, it’s that you’re following old neural pathways. So redirect and create new ones! Create a mantra, like “I am getting comfortable with goodness in my life.” Repeat whenever the negative Nancys start chirping in your head.
3. Seek out a good hypnotherapist.
A good hypnotherapist can help you get over old engrained patterns. The money spent on several visits will likely give you great relief from the old tapes that have been playing on repeat for so long.
4. Accept that good and bad both happen within the span of every human being’s life.
The Chinese have a saying that “Some people eat bitter.” And it’s true. In life, some people get more than their fair share of sorrow and deep hurts. You may even be that person. But just about all human beings also have the opportunity to experience goodness in their lives, even if they’ve been dealt an unfair hand of dark times. Being able to look for the good in life is an attitude and a gift that all of us can cultivate in our lives.
Each of us alive today has the opportunity to make someone else smile and to enjoy that moment. Even if you don’t have much else to be thankful for, start there. Make someone smile today and see if that doesn’t improve your outlook a little. Start small. Today start with one person, tomorrow make it two. And move on from there. Fake it until you make it. Joy will eventually shine at least a tiny light in your soul. Then give yourself permission to expand from there.
5. Embrace the good times and live life to the fullest.
When the good times come, welcome them with open arms. Embrace the joys that come with the laughter and love of friends and family. Cultivate relationships so that you have people to lean on in the good times and in the darker times. And mostly, live what time you have to the very fullest. Laugh the loudest. Sing at the top of your lungs. Play hopscotch on the sidewalk. Do whatever makes your heart sing.
Become that person that others want to be because you are living your life so fully and joyously that they yearn to be just like you. Become alive in your heart. Because those good times and good friends will help you to float through the bad times. And pretty soon, you won’t care as much about the other shoe.
Good one! I might sub “meditation” for “hypnotherapy”; evidence for brain plasticity and the cleansing effect of meditation on neural pathways is pretty strong, and having something you can do to change old tapes that isn’t dependent on someone else feels more self-empowering to me. Otherwise, this hits the nail right on the head for me!
I really REALLY like this. I am so guilty of living the like the other shoe is just dangling and waiting to drop. I convince myself that it’s my way of “protecting” myself, but I know it’s mostly just acting as a catalyst for negativity because that’s all I am focusing on! I have printed these out so I can say them to myself when I start to think about that other shoe!
So glad you enjoyed this post, Erin! It’s so easy for all of us to slip into that thought process and it takes work to get out of it. So pat yourself on the back for making the effort!
And thanks for reading!
Andrea
I had a brief hope that this would not be yet another blog/ article about how waiting for that shoe to drop can be stopped in 5 easy steps. Fact is, for me, the other shoe always drops and they’re never a matching pair. If I were to really sit and reflect on my life, I would end up hospitalized and suicidal. For every tiny little good thing that finally goes my way, I get slammed with something twice as bad. Every. Single. Time. For example, I had a 3.65 GPA, was working an awesome full-time summer job between semesters, even started planning my wedding while saving up a deposit for health insurance. On top of the world, finally! Then, on my first Monday at the new job, we got in a head-on accident on the way home. It’s been more than 16 yrs. and I will never fully recover physically, mentally, or financially. I have struggled and fought, tooth-and-nail, my entire life and I am sick of it. While your blog is well thought and certainly reads as if you wrote from the heart, there are those of us who always have that shoe drop and there is no amount of hypnotherapy that can change that fact. If I could believe this beautifully written post, I would. Sadly, for me, I would not be rooted in the pathetic reality of my miserable life.
Emm, so sorry you are finding it hard to cope. It must have been a really bad accident. I cannot imagine your suffering. I can’t say anything that bad has happened to me. I have had bad things happen though. The latest kick in the teeth for me (ain’t life lovely?) was a serious illness. it was very scary and depressing. At it’s worst I sunk into depression, as it seemed hopeless. One night while flipping through the Internet in search of medical answers and also solace, I stumbled upon a person that suffered from my affliction. She said something to the effect of this-
Try to find wee slivers of joy, whenever and wherever you can my dear. Each day seek them out with all your might. Allow yourself to pause and enjoy the way the sun spills into your bedroom when you wake, a sweet baby’s adoring smile when he sees his mother. The colour of that baby’s eyes. How that baby will smile at you if you kindly smile at him. Enjoy small moments. Smell a chocolate bar. Buy tulips. Write a letter to an old friend. Keep relentlessly trying to find joy. All the joy you can get. Wash yourself in small joys. Drink them up. Get as many as you can, it is okay to be greedy, when seeking joy. Allow yourself to be happy. It is okay to be happy.
The next morning I got up and consciously followed her lead. After all, she had the same affliction as me, and she was happy to enjoy small victories and tiny pleasures, perhaps I could still live and be happy. I thought of her in her tiny garden, planting flowers, but only a few at a time, only weeding a few at a time, because that was all she could do she said. But one foot in front of the other she loved her tiny flower garden.
I thought of that unknown person many times in the last year. I followed that strangers advice, because it was doable. It was one small joy at a time. It worked and I am happier than I have ever been. Even before my illness. I of course still have moments of anxiety, sadness and anger. But I try to be aware of these emotions, and let them slip away as I return to seeking joy. Be kind to yourself my dear. It is possible to change how you view the world. One foot in front of the other. Keep looking for small joys. They are out there waiting for you!
Dear sweet Char,
Thank you for sharing such beautiful, kindhearted thoughts with Emm.
Wishing you all the best!
Andrea
Dear Emm,
Sorry it’s taken me a while to respond. I’ve been off doing other things.
I’m so very sorry to hear that you’ve had such terrible struggles in your life. Sometimes life’s circumstances are cruel and seem as if they may defeat us. At the very least, it wasn’t the way you’d hoped life would be for you.
Yes, there will always be problems, some bigger and more serious than we could ever imagine – the other shoe will always fall. All we can do is try to do our best to find the small joys in life along the way and try not to always be anticipating the the next shoe that falls.
I wish you all the best, Emm.
Andrea
Emm – as someone who has been suicidal since my pre-teen years (now 42 and surviving day by day), and experienced his share of heartbreak and tragedy (I won’t bore you with the details, and it’s not a competition of who had the worse life), I would encourage you to go back and read #2 in this article again. Because life always presents the opportunity of pain in any moment, and guarantees pain at least sometimes, right? So if you were to be able to accept that pain is normal for all living creatures, you might be able to begin to. shift your focus from just the pain itself to seeing the larger context of the patterns that your painful experiences have created in your neurology, and make a conscious choice whether you are going to eventually let go of them or double-down on those painful patterns – because your pain has to mean something, right? isn’t that the lie we tell ourselves to hold onto our pain? – and if you can both acknowledge that you have these patterns, that they were formed for good reasons, and that there are just as many good reasons to form new patterns so that. you start to feel better more often, then you can begin to put the pain of the past into its proper context. for your future life. Of course, if you want to keep holding onto your pain, because it makes you precious, it makes you special, and you are afraid of having to become something new if you could let go of your pain even just a little bit – well… it’s always a choice you have. The one thing no one can ever take away from you is your power to hold on to your pain. And even if you choose to explore what it might be like to. let go of your pain even just a little, you can always rest easy knowing that at any time you can bring your pain back. But in the meantime, you might find that you feel better letting go of it, so that you are in control of exactly how fast and how much you let go of your pain, and if it ever gets too scary to let go of too much too fast, you can always slow down, and let go just little bits at a time, or not at all. So it’s a choice about seeing your patterns and choosing if you want to keep them up, or start new patterns that will eventually replace the old ones.
Thank you for your comments, M. Wishing you all the best and sending lots of healing light your way. XOXOXO
Hey emm,
Trust me, your life isn’t as bad as you make it out to be.
I’ve had to watch my wife go through serious mental health issues shortly after having our first child.
That was terrifying and I don’t wish it upon my worst enemy. In fact, I will tell you, I rather go through a god damn car accident and be physically damaged myself. I rather be shot and killed. Watching your spouse lose their mind in front of you is far worse. Luckily things are looking up and my wife is doing very well, but the hell lasted for almost a year.
And I understand that my situation doesn’t even compare to what some people go through in the world. So I hope you understand that whatever you feel went wrong in your life, pales in comparison to millions of others on this planet.
Jay, I’m sorry that you had to go through so much with your wife.
Even if what each of us is going through pales in comparison to others in the world, it doesn’t make it hurt us any less. Emm’s situation is painful to Emm. The best we can do is to try to support her and hope that our compassion makes a difference to her.
I hope that your wife continues to do well and that you have a beautiful life with her.
Andrea
Your wife has apparently and thankfully recovered. After many years Em apparently has not and is still trying to get her bearings and cope with how her life is now. Comparisons are not helpful at all, apart from anything else we might be better or less able to deal with something than another person given the same circumstances. Your message seems to be not poor Em but poor me and also seems rather dismissive and even unkind. An accident of such magnitude seems a pretty big deal to me, even without knowing details. We all need, patience, kindness and allowances made, no matter who we are or what happened to us. Things can indeed always be worse, no matter how terrible or terrifying but that is not really very useful in a practical sense. I am glad Em got some kind responses because they have helped me too.