Embrace The Suck

You know how it goes. Life is great, everything is trucking along just fine, then shablam….. something happens and suddenly you are feeling like the wind has been taken out of your sails. It could be anything from a new boss at work to a corporate takeover, to a health issue, or anything else that doesn’t suit your current desired state.

We don’t like change, especially if it has a perceived negative impact on our life.

Inevitably you are going to encounter circumstances that you would prefer not to deal with. If you don’t let it in and process it effectively, you are bound to be presented with a similar challenge until you learn the lesson that is before you.

I’d like to offer you a new way of dealing with “The Suck”. Embrace it, allow it in, let yourself feel all the feels that come along with whatever The Suck may be. So often we want to run and hide from our problems to try and lessen the uncomfortableness that comes along with them. Instead, I invite you to lean in and pay attention to how you are feeling. Like it or not; loss, failure, challenge, despair, disappointment – the list goes on, are all opportunities for you to learn a little bit more about yourself. If every time life deals you lemons you do everything in your power to make it go away, you are missing out on a great opportunity to learn a little more about yourself.

When you are experiencing something sucky, you need to understand why it is making you feel out of sorts. What is it doing to you emotionally – why are you reacting the way you are? Did it hit a nerve of an unhealed wound? Does it remind you of a situation you had not dealt with properly in your past?

Another drawback of not dealing with difficulties effectively is that you will inevitably end up dealing with it at some point down the road. Not only will you feel like you are on some twisted merry-go-round having to face the same issues repeatedly, but they also compound and get more difficult to work with each time they rear their head.

I like to think of it as doing a test and knowing that you got some wrong answers, yet not figuring out the correct answers to those questions. How are you supposed to learn if you don’t know where or why things went off track?

It’s not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens is the real game-changer. By embracing adversity as it happens rather than trying to escape it, you will build resilience for when the next curveball comes your way.

My family hates it when I say, “Bring it on!”, but that is my advice to you. Face your “Suck” straight on, your future self will be forever grateful.