LET'S TALK ABOUT: WHY WE FALL

Photo by Marion Michele on Unsplash

Life is hard. It's no secret that we all fall down from time to time. Whether it's stress, pressure, failure, or heartbreak, it can all get a bit too much sometimes. It's important to remember that allowing yourself to crumble into a mess on the floor is okay - what matters is that you get back up again, and fight on. When I can feel aspects of my life taking a turn for the worst, I have a method of getting myself back up on my feet and dancing again. As the Winter months are approaching, whether you are struggling to get through the last month of work before your Christmas break, or whether you're like me and are drowning in essay deadlines, I thought I'd share with you all the few tips that I have learnt on how to pick yourself back up again, dust yourself off, and carry on.

→ Cleanse Your Life Of The Negatives
There is a reason that this is the first tip on my list - for me, it is the most important. Whenever my mind begins to wander into unwanted territory, the first and foremost action that I take is to have a long and hard think about why. Why is my mind wandering where it shouldn't? Why am I feeling unmotivated? What's the reason that I feel this way? From experience, I can tell you that realising all of the negatives in your life is the easiest road to happiness. Whatever it is that is pushing you down - change it. Fix it. Save it. Do whatever it takes. In the past, for me, this has included letting go of the toxic people in my life, speaking to somebody that could offer valuable help, and changing my future to the way that I actually want it to be. Cleansing your life is a difficult process, but it has proved effective for me every single time.

→ Be Productive!
Personally, I'm a much happier person when I have a lot going on in my life. I'll admit, sometimes it can get a bit too much when I have deadlines left, right, and centre, as well as a part-time job, running a blog, trying to be active in the journalist community, and maintaing a decent social life. Despite this, I find that a way to overcome the stress of not having enough time in your day is to simply get up earlier. When you've got the blues, I understand how easy it is to dawdle away in bed until the early hours of the afternoon - but do not fall into this trap! Believe me when I say that this only makes things worse. Obviously everyone loves a long lie in every now and again, but I always find that the earlier I can get myself out of bed, the more productive of a day I'm going to have, and the less time I feel I have wasted.

→ Be Kind To Yourself
This tip is an important one - self love is the helping hand that you need to pick yourself up from the dirty floor. It's easy to get carried away with the stress of life, never allowing yourself a break from it all. But just because it's easy, doesn't mean that it's right. During my A Levels, I pushed myself as hard as I possibly could, knowing that it was the only way that I would achieve my dream of getting into university. I never let myself have a break; I would have 12 hour long revision sessions; and I would scorn myself if I ever chose to see a friend in place of a few hours studying. Looking back now, even though I achieved my goal, this was not healthy. For a happy life, you must first be happy with yourself, and punishing yourself by slaving away and having no fun is not going to get you very far.

→ Share The Love
Something that helps me, personally, is helping other people. When you feel overwhelmed by all of the problems in your life, dealing with somebody else's problems can be a massive relief. Knowing that you've put the light in somebody's eyes, or the bounce in their step, can push your happiness levels further than anything else ever could. Taking a break from your own world and diving into somebody else's can force you to view things in a different perspective - perhaps your problems are a lot more fixable than you'd originally thought.

→ The '10 Things That Matter More' List
When searching Pinterest (cheeky plug, follow me here) for some quotes to use as the photo for this post, I came across this list, entitled '10 Things That Matter More'. The basic idea is pretty self-explanatory - whenever you feel overcome by the worries and stress of your life, write a list of 10 things that matter more. The example list suggests simple things such as "I am breathing", and "there is food in my fridge", and it also suggests more specific things such as "I will be out of there soon enough", and "the world is much bigger than this town". What a wonderful idea! This goes hand in hand with a post I've written recently about gratitude, which you can read here. Something that I often ask myself, is whether my problem will matter in a year. If it won't matter in a year, will it matter in six months? One month? A week? A day?

For anybody that is currently going through a bad time right now, and is really in need of some motivation to stand up and carrying on fighting, I really hope that you could find some solace in this post. There is no shame in feeling sad, or deflated, or fed up - the important thing is that you don't let your problems defeat you. You are bigger than your problems; you are a shining star. Don't let anybody ever tell you otherwise. Don't give up: get up.