Every human being is faced with ups and downs in their lives, though the proportion of it may not be the same. Some have more sad days than happy ones and vice versa, while some people have them evenly distributed. There is no one in this life that has a perfect life. We all shuttle between our happy and sad days. And let me burst your bubble, that is how it will be till our last breath. The pains we have make us appreciate the gains better as the nights make us appreciate the presence of the sun.
“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.” –Margaret Mitchell
If you make your research, you will find out that most people don’t really talk about how to live through the happy days. They don’t because it is a state that everyone wants to be in. You see people talking about how to live through the sad days because it is an experience no one wants to stay for long.
The sad days are very tough ones. The mind wanders through many negative thoughts. The energy and motivation level are often low. You suddenly find yourself comparing yourself to other people, even the most successful people do this. It often leads to you not feeling like doing anything and meeting anyone. Sometimes, you loathe yourself and your life. You experience burnout and so many other situations you don’t wish to find yourself in.
If the things in the paragraph above have happened to you before or they are currently happening to you, fret not. You are not the only one experiencing that nor the first to. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world that have been or are currently in your shoe. Like it was said in the opening statement – Every human being is faced with ups and downs in their lives. So, this happening to you shows you are just being human.
I know you would have heard, read, or learnt many ways to live through the sad days. And that’s why I intentionally chose the phrasal verb, “live through”, because we can only live through its visiting period. I chose not the expression, “how to stop having bad days” because we can’t stop it, we can only work on how to reduce its frequency and that’s not what I am here to preach.
Moreso, I also chose not to say “how to end…”, because it is not a situation you can jump out of. You live through it and exit it gradually. You allow yourself to relax through it and don’t expect too much from yourself during the period.
Like you would have heard a lot on how to live through the sad days, I have too and I don’t think there is time to retell you all those things that you have known. I will just focus on one thing that has worked for me and I know will help.
One good way to get ourselves out of our sad days and ease the transition is to be grateful for the blessings we have. Sometimes all you may need to do is to write out the things you are grateful for and the ones you are blessed with. Writing them out and patiently reading them to your hearing will make you realize how favoured you are.
And when I said writing out things you are grateful for, I mean it to the littlest of things that you can imagine like “I am grateful that I can write my name”, “I am grateful to have a new pen”, “I am blessed to have a phone”, “I am blessed for the kind of family I have”, “I am blessed for the kind of parents I have”, “I am grateful that I can cook noodles and boil water”, “I am grateful for the desires to get better”, “I am grateful that I have two pairs of shoe” or any other thing you are blessed with that may sound ridiculous to you. It will be funny to you, at the end of the day, how you may end up writing up to 200 different things that you are grateful for. Not counting our blessings, often prevent us from knowing how blessed we are.
Doing this little exercise makes us get happier with ourselves. And it also in a way defeat the urge to often compare our successes and life with others. You will find yourself smiling wide while you read what you have written. From there you graduate to laughing out loud and finally getting back your happiness and the motivation you need to carry on.
I wish you many happy days more than the sad ones.
Umar Ismaeel writes from Nigeria.
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