When Everything Feels Like It’s Falling Apart

Start by setting an intention 

Setting an intention and practicing gratitude each morning is easy to do, and helps you stay focused on the steps you need to take to get to the good things in your life.  

Many people like to set an intention for the day before they get out of bed in the morning. 

This is a great way to start your day off on the right foot. In the beginning, you may set smaller intentions that just help you get started and get through the day, like staying dry-eyed at work. As you progress through the transition phases, you can make them bigger intentions.

Surround yourself with positive people 

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to stay positive when you spend time with someone negative for a while? 

What you need right now is a fun-loving group of friends who will support you no matter where you are in your life. Distancing yourself from non-supportive, negative people is vital to your mental health.   Don’t be afraid of letting people go, who bring you down.  It will make room for those who will lift you up.  

You don’t have to cut them out of your life forever, you do however, need to make sure that the time you are with other people is open and loving. 

This is true for social media too! If there are “friends”  on Facebook who always post negative, judgmental memes and comments, simply unfollow them them for a while so that you don’t see their updates on your page. You can still remain friends, you just don’t need to see what they are posting.  Do what you need to do to care for yourself right now. Focus on what you do want, not what you don’t.

Take Charge of What You Can Control

“I never want to be in a codependent relationship again…”  could be changed to …

I want a loving, trustworthy partner who loves me unconditionally. The Universe provides us with more of what we focus our attention on. When we are focused on what we don’t want, we just end up getting more of the same. Start to change your focus onto what you do want so that you can inform the Universe what you want it to manifest in your life. 

Questions your unconscious beliefs 

We all have underlying beliefs about ourselves and our world that we are not aware of on a conscious level. 

They may stem from things we were told, or shown as children or from life experiences we have had along the way. Some common ones are: 

“You have to know the right people to get ahead in business” 

 “No one really loves unconditionally” 

“I’m  not smart enough to do ____” 

“Money is the root of all evil”

Any of those sound familiar? We don’t usually go around saying stuff like that, but deep down, those unquestioned beliefs are impacting our lives and the decisions we make. Spend some time recognizing what your unconscious limiting beliefs are. Discover what your personal emotional blocks are. Once you get them out in the open (to yourself) you can question them and replace them with beliefs that are true and empowering.

Take action 

After being so vulnerable and tender from feelings of losing everything, it can be hard to get back on that horse. I have been where you are, and so have millions of others. No one is suggesting you shouldn’t feel scared about getting out there again. Some people will always stay stuck in their lives because they allow their fear to control them. They never reach for what they really want because they are scared to fail. It’s okay to be scared. In fact, being scared, and taking action with one step at a time, will make you stronger and less fearful.

Find ways to give 

Taking the focus off yourself, by helping others is one of the best ways to take action.  It helps you to understand with greater perspective, how you see your own life.   You may want to, when you are ready, to volunteer, for example, at a women’s abuse shelter if you have gotten out of an abusive relationship yourself.

 It feels amazing to give to others. Practice random acts of kindness, volunteer your time to something that is important to you, help a friend or a stranger. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it. When we are always only stuck in our own heads,it’s easy to lose perspective. Once we start giving back, we might just start to see that we aren’t as badly off as we thought we were. 

Don’t wait to be happy 

You can choose to be happy now. You don’t have to wait until you replace the partner, income or job you lost. You can choose to be happy, even when things aren’t perfect. 

Because they will never be perfect.  

That isn’t the way life works. Everyone has problems.  Talk to  people you know who are happy and have chosen to be, in spite of their difficulties. Start taking notice of the way you are looking at things. How could you choose to be happy in spite of them?

Choose your attitude 

Attitude is everything, even in your current situation. Once you’ve done the grieving and you are feeling stronger, decide how you are going to handle what you are faced with. You can stay stuck in no man?s land wallowing in self-pity or you can be determined to learn the lessons the Universe is offering you. 

 Once you release the baggage that was holding you back from living your best life, you’ll finally discover how awesome life can be.”If ______ had never happened, I wouldn’t have ______ now” 

ike the untold others who have been there, done that. Once you release the baggage that was holding you back from living your best life, you’ll finally discover how awesome life can be.

Play out the worst case scenario

This suggestion might sound counterintuitive, but it works. Why? Because we are great at imaging all types of horrors once our minds get on a roll. Our fear gets us in a panic and we start “what if-ing”

Future thinking puts us in a place of fear.  When we really, truly take a look at what the worst-case scenario could be, it’s usually not as bad as we think it is. 

It’s also important to find out the facts of any situation you are facing.  Facts wipe out fear.  Stripping away the emotions buzzing all around it and working up the courage to look it straight in the face, we can much more easily face our biggest fears.

Recognize what is no longer serving you 

We humans tend to hang onto things way past their ?sell by? date. Somewhere deep inside we know that job, relationship, whatever, isn?t working for us anymore, but we hang onto it because… well, what if nothing better comes along. Isn?t it better to have a crappy job than none? Isn’t it better to have someone than to be alone? When we keep hanging onto things that no longer serve us, we stay stuck, which is when the Universe is often obliged to step in and make changes happen. Start paying more attention to those things in your life that are no longer making you happy. When you recognize them, it’s time to take action to change them.

Don’t rush into it…

You don’t want to take any action. You don’t want just a job or just a relationship. You want one that will make you feel blessed every day. You want the right job or relationship or situation.  That’s what the Universe has been trying to tell you – that there’s something much better for you waiting for you. The trouble is that most people will never do that until they are moved out of their comfort zone. And if you don’t do that voluntarily, the universe will still move you along. Look at all the options before taking action.

Realize that your thoughts are only thoughts 

Thoughts can feel real, all right, but they really are just your thoughts.  They are often stories we tell ourselves, that once practiced often, become our identity.   They are not truths, nor are they often anything to do with reality. They are mental formations you can choose to believe or not, immerse yourself into or not. When you find yourself getting swept off by your thoughts, when they are building up to dramatic proportions, come back to feelings. Come back to the sensation of being alive in your body. Come back to the present moment. Thoughts only have power if you chose to continue to entertain them, so take them off the guest list.

Find a support system to help you grow 

At some point, you will be ready to start rebuilding your new, shiny life. That is the time to seek out those places, people and things that can support your personal growth. You may find classes, a life coach like me, books, a mentor or a therapist is just what you need to help you discover the possibilities now available to you and begin to learn new things.

Set small goals 

When you begin feeling like you have gained some perspective, and are starting to see the possibility of a bright future, set some small goals. And not a lot at once. When you stop feeling so overwhelmed by negative emotions, you might have the urge to make big changes immediately, setting many large goals for yourself. Instead, I want you to continue to treat yourself kindly and take baby steps to a better life. You don’t need to do everything at once. Decide what the most important one or two tasks are that need to be completed and work on those first. 

Be aware of your perception

What makes up our “reality”, is really just our perception of a given situation. At some point in this transition process, you need to get to a place where your perception is positive. You want to arrive at a place where you see possibilities instead of dead-ends or have the mindset that nothing will ever work. Yes, your life isn’t the same anymore, but is that really a bad thing? Think back to all the things you would like to have changed, and then make it happen. Grieve, yes. Allow yourself the time and space you need to heal and question your beliefs about yourself and your world. But then, move out into the sunshine and look for ways that you can change your life for the better now that you are no longer encumbered.

Accept that it’s going to take time 

You probably lived years in that comfort zone life you once had. Let’s face it.  You didn’t get here overnight.  It’s going to take a while to get to a place where the changes necessary feel like an adventure rather than a burden. Give yourself that time. The last thing you want to do is rush the process, skipping steps to recovery. If you do that, you will give up and end up right back where you started. 

You probably know someone who has done just that. Rushed right back into the fray, into the “same” type of job, bad relationship, bad habits or whatever that put them in the difficult, life-altering situation to begin with. They weren’t willing to take the time to work through their limiting beliefs or to practice self care seriously. Please, don’t be that person! Learn the lessons you were meant to learn so that you don’t have to go through it all over again.

Look for inspiration 

You might not feel ready to do this until you’ve moved through some of the pain and grief, and that’s fine. Once you are ready, start looking for inspiring stories of people who went through it and made it out the other side. You can find stories on the Internet, in an online forum, in a support group or in books or your life coach. Hope, as they say, springs eternal, and what you need is a bit of hope that you really will be happy again.

Understand this…

We humans believe, for some reason, that we should always have everything all figured out. Logic rules, or so they say, and if we think smart enough, work hard enough and are perfect enough, we will have our stuff together and everything will turn out great. But that’s not how life is meant to work. We are here to learn lessons, and some of those lessons require us to have no idea where we are going, much less; how to get there. And that’s okay. 

Being okay with not knowing isn’t comfortable most of the time. But when we are in the in-between phase of life, we are able to gain a perspective that is usually hidden from us. We realize that no one really has it all together. No one truly has a life that is really perfect. We all just show the best to the outside world. Life is never a “for sure” thing. In the blink of an eye, the most perfect, wonderful person you know can lose it all. Nothing is permanent. That might sound super scary. But it’s also liberating. While you are in this state of not-knowing, you have the opportunity to see a world of possibilities that you weren’t able to see inside your comfort zone.

Let me end with this…

Life is full of change. When lots of changes happen all at once, it can feel like your whole life is falling apart! Hopefully, you find comfort in the fact that it happens to all of us at one time or another… and we all make it through to the other side.

When you look back, you may see the subtle (and not-so-subtle) signs the Universe was giving you that you needed to make a change. It may not feel like it right at this moment, but the Universe knows what’s best for us and is always guiding us towards our bliss. When we don’t take the hints, the universe gives us, it has to shake us up and force us out of our comfort zone. 

The important thing to remember in all of this is that the Universe always has our back and that everything is impermanent. The fear and loss you feel now won’t last forever. In fact, many people who go through a huge transition later say it was the best thing that could have ever happened to them. That once they let go of the soul-killing job, co-dependent, negative, or abusive relationship, etc. they were able to make the changes in their thoughts, words and actions, in other words, in their lives, that lead them directly to exciting, new possibilities that would have never been possible in their “old life”

So, take hope! You can be happy and fulfilled again. Give it time and use the tips and techniques outlined here to reduce your suffering and open yourself up to the multitude of blessings coming your way!

None of these tips should be a one-time thing. You will need to continue to practice gratitude and letting go, for example. One journal entry is not going to solve all your problems. Transitions take time; there’s no one fix that will make your world bright again. Instead, you must learn the lessons and grow into your new life.

Caterina Barregar

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