How To Appreciate Struggle

Self-doubt, self-blame, self-criticism are normal and healthy parts of being human. They keep us in check. But for many of us, they get out of hand. Our protective parts become ‘panicked protectors’ and therefore sabotage our plans. When this happens we need to step back, calm the nervous system and practise some mindful reflection. One of the simplest things we can practice is appreciation. This is subtly different from gratitude. Appreciation is to recognise the value of what is present. In this blog, I’ll explain why and how to do this.

Self Doubt
Sometimes the process of therapy, self-development and working on our goals can feel endless, fruitless, pointless and downright exhausting. In these moments we can get filled up with self-doubt.

• - Am I doing the right thing?
• - Am I kidding myself?
• - Is this just a waste of time?
• - Am I even capable of this?
• - What’s wrong with me?!

Negative thinking is normal
This is the beginning of negative and catastrophic thinking, an old friend of mine. It will always be a companion because our brains evolved to seek problems, even when we are OK. In fact ESPECIALLY when we are doing OK. It protects us from becoming complacent and it is millions of years old. It’s primal. You can’t outsmart it. You can work with it though.

It basically wants to know that we are OK. So here is what I do:

1. Appreciate your challenging situation — Investigate the situation and your worries in the WORST case — what would you do if all your worries came to pass?
2. Appreciating your struggles as achievements — especially considering your past personal challenges

Appreciate your challenging situation
I came up with this tool a while ago and I still use it today. It was a realisation I had when I was trying too hard to ‘think positively’ and was just finding myself exhausted and miserable. Then I remembered the backwards law:

‘Needing’ a positive experience is itself a negative experience; Appreciating a negative experience is a positive experience”

WORST tool

• ​W: Worries. What’s the worst that will happen? Play the movies of your fears and feel your body. Breathe.
• O: OK? Would you be OK (i.e survive?). Why would it all be OK? (Even if you die). Play the movie of it being OK.
• R: Recover. Assume it happened. How would you recover? Play the movie of your recovery.
• S: Statistically: How likely is it to happen, really? What %, really?
• T: Tactics: What could you do to reduce the likelihood of this happening. Play the movie of trying varied tactics and notice the % number go down.

When I pause and do this I often feel so much better and I have an action to move forwards, appreciating the negatives are actually OK. So what about a deeper level of appreciation?

Appreciating your struggles as achievements
​Even when we are having a crappy time we can pause and reflect on how the struggle is part of the success. We often forget this. We think it’s hopeless because we don’t take the time to remember our context and just how challenging life is and therefore how well we are doing. This morning I took a moment from my self-critical mind and remembered to celebrate my achievements and milestones more

This week I:

• Let go of my friend’s anger at me in 1 day — a big achievement for a chronic people pleasure that I used to be
• Communicated a vulnerability with my girlfriend today — a huge thing for me, as I’ve been afraid to hurt and worry her with it in the past
• Apologised for double booking and it went well — I’ve become more adept and easy to apologise
• Noticed I was anxious and had a loving chat with myself and let it go yesterday — A great thing because in the past I used to spiral into anxiety for days or weeks.
• Reached out and I got nice responses — this is massive. I’m working on reaching out and asking for help because I’ve lived as a lone wolf for too long.

Intentional living
Living life with purpose can be a weekly or daily occurrence. I like to set a mostly intention and track it each day, particularly in bed before sleeping. I ask myself how I did with this today. It accelerates my progress so much to celebrate small victories. In the past I have got better at so many things with this technique including:

• Being more generous
• Practising self-love and self care more
• More self-discipline in waking up, working out and working on time
• And many more.

My current intention is ‘loving self-discipline and I’m tracking this very simple as you’ll see by the image below. So I’ll leave you with the question — how can you pause and appreciate your challenging situation and your achievements today? Would you like to begin by setting an intention for a small change? What would that be?

Good luck and warm wishes.
Neil Morbey, Mindfulness Coach

It doesn’t have to be sophisticated. Just get it done.