How To Cope With Life

By Seamus Anthony

Here’s the secret to how to cope with life: Face up to your problems and take steps to deal with them. You don’t need to know all the answers, but you do need to look your life in the eye and take steps to sort your shit out. That’s the closest thing you will ever get to a solution to all of your problems. Do it, and things will get better, I promise you.

Face up to the depression and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the substance abuse and take steps to deal with it

Face up to your procrastination. Face up to what you are avoiding and take the steps you need to take.

Face up to the work that needs doing to pay the bills and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the money that is getting wasted and take steps to curb spending where you can.

Face up to the poor business model and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the frustration, dissatisfaction and boredom you feel with your work and/or life and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the health issue and take steps to eliminate the cause and/or symptoms.

Face up to the sub-par physical health and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the challenges of relationships and take steps to deal with it.

Face up to the fact that you’re not coping and ASK FOR HELP.

Face up to whatever isn’t working, or could be working better, and take steps to deal with it all.

…And Feel The Weight Lift Off Your Shoulders.

Facing up to ALL of your reality will help you to stop carrying around a great shoulder load of unresolved bullshit that is weighing you down. It’s often the unresolved weight on our shoulders that makes life hard, more so than our issues themselves.

Actions have consequences – deal with that.
Inaction has consequences – deal with that too.

Meet the world – your life – as it is. Be compassionate with yourself, but also be real with yourself. If you don’t take steps to deal with problems they only get worse.

  • If you don’t eat healthy, you won’t get healthier.
  • If you don’t exercise, your body will deteriorate faster and feel worse.
  • If you don’t talk to your wife, you don’t sort shit out and enjoy a better life with her.
  • If you don’t do the work your clients have hired you to do, you soon won’t have any clients.
  • If you don’t focus on building a satisfying career, and put in the hours towards building it, you won’t get a satisfying career.

Taking Steps Does Not Mean Knowing All The Answers

Sometimes we do know the answers and just don’t want to do what needs doing, but sometimes we genuinely don’t know the answers. The solution there is to take steps to discover the answers.

Seek professional help. Talk to your family and friends. Try 999 things until the 1000th thing that works. Take a guess and go for it, but don’t just sit there! Don’t avoid taking action because nothing happens until something moves.

Don’t Second Guess: Progress

Once you come up with a plan – keep at it until you KNOW it won’t work.

  • Not just until you have second thoughts.
  • Not just until you tell someone who screws their nose up at your plan.
  • Not just until your first attempt doesn’t come up to scratch.
  • Not just until your 100th attempt doesn’t come up to scratch.
  • Not just until it gets too hard.
  • Not just until you don’t feel like it.
  • Not just until you get a door slammed in your face.

No. Keep at it until you KNOW it won’t work this way.

Here’s a clue about how you know when it is time to change the plan: it is almost always when you realise you need to throw out some bathwater but not the baby. It’s when you realise you need to make a course adjustment, but not quit the race entirely.

I am not saying there is never a time to quit. But I am saying that a lot of us self-sabotage by quitting too soon and too often. If you’ve been working at something for 5 years and it’s just made you horribly miserable the entire time, then sure, come up with a different plan. But if you’ve started a new project (business, relationship, geographic location, diet, band, whatever) every six months for the last ten years – then the problem was never the plan! It was your lack of persistence. Which always comes back to avoidance. Not facing reality and dealing with it.

Ask for help.

Reach out.

Rest.

Try things.

Do the work.

Face and deal with what needs facing up to and feel the weight lift off your shoulders. Do this and you will progress, and the sun will shine again.

Hi, I'm Seamus Anthony. I am an author, artist and musician from Australia. Here at Rebel Zen, I document my journey as an creative artist and human and in doing so, hopefully help you in your own progress through your life of creativity. Go get your free E-book by me: "Taming The Monkey Mind".

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