It Goes Well Until It Feels Like It Stops Going Well
Everyone experiences this and has choices for what to do with it.
Things have, despite a lot of craziness outside of my control, been going well of late. I’ve been in therapy again and getting a lot out of it, feeling good about who I am and where I’m going, and it’s all been feeling like it’s steadily improving.
Today, I hit a wall.
To be fair, there were some extenuating circumstances. Yesterday morning I stepped on the scale for the first time in a while – and disliked what it showed me. We had an awkward, uncomfortable family get-together. My wife had to immediately go away for work. I got home late after driving through some wicked nasty weather – which means I both went to bed and got up late. Fencing practice last night was both great and not great.
Despite getting some very necessary housework done this morning – I find myself feeling stuck, stalled, irritable, and out of sorts.
Hence why I’m saying it goes well until it feels like it stops going well.
Every day is unique in its own, various ways. There are always going to be good and bad days. While today isn’t a bad day, per se – it’s obviously not good, either.
Hence – what can I do about this to shift how it’s going?
Recognition, acceptance, and forgiving
The first step is to recognize that I’m feeling off. What’s more, I must recognize what form feeling off is taking.
Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual? All the above? Some combination of more than one of these? Step one is to recognize this.
After recognition comes the hard part. Acceptance.
It is especially hard to accept feeling this way. Particularly when it’s been going well and feels – all of a sudden – like it’s not.
But resisting how I’m feeling disempowers me. Why? Because if I resist the feelings I’m having – I disassociate myself from them. That doesn’t exactly help me to do anything with these feelings, since disconnecting or disassociating from them doesn’t address them.
Recognition and acceptance do, however. And that’s empowering.
Then comes the biggest challenge of this. Forgiving myself.
When it’s been going well and that stops, I tend to get annoyed with myself about this. What the hell? I thought things were going well. So – how did I muck this up?
I didn’t. It just happens. But one of my known issues is that I tend to get down on myself – and blame myself – when things cease going well.
Recognizing this – I must actively, mindfully work on forgiving myself. I didn’t screw up or do something wrong – it just is. That’s how the universe works – recognize, acknowledge, forgive.
And now – apply mindfulness to move on.
Mindfulness when it’s going well or not-so-well
Applied mindfulness is active conscious awareness.
Conscious awareness is being aware – here and now – of who, what, why, how, and where you are. It’s the employment of your conscious mind, which is your mindset/headspace/psyche self.
This can, however, become passive. Think of it like driving a long distance. You’re aware of the road, the cars around you, the music on the radio, and anyone else in the car with you – but not actively. Not unless you’re singing along to the radio, braking because traffic is slowing down, or conversing with your passengers.
Active conscious awareness comes about through mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of inquiry to ascertain – in the present, right now – what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, and what you are or aren’t doing.
That is how you know your conscious thoughts and feelings. This in turn helps you recognize when the ego or subconscious are doing too much of the driving.
The ego and the subconscious
The subconscious is where your beliefs, values, and habits live. It tends to be deeply rooted, and because it’s tied to habit it frequently manifests as rote and routine.
Allowing yourself to live on autopilot – by rote, routine, and habit – can overtake your conscious awareness, leaving you feeling like you haven’t control of your life. When it stops going well, sometimes you don’t realize that’s how you’re feeling – until you’re living more subconsciously.
The ego, as I view it, is a construct created by the conscious mind from its understanding and knowledge of the subconscious mind at some point in the past (recent or distant). Ego, as such, is an artifice that’s sort of a snapshot from a then that’s not now.
Ego is how you project yourself to the world – but also reflect back to yourself. It’s who you think and feel you are, in the now – ish. Because the trouble is –ego is not a product of the now.
Hence why the ego tends to resist and cause you to blame yourself when it feels like it stops going well. Then, the ego hopes, you’ll return to the familiar and comfortable.
This is a reflection of how – when it feels like it’s stopped going well – this tends to connect to mindfulness, conscious reality creation, and Pathwalking to choose your own life’s adventures.
Going well or going poorly always comes down to choices
Life is a constant, unending stream of choices.
This, FYI, ties directly to the truth that the one and only constant in the Universe is change. That also drives the need and desire for choice.
Some choices are tiny and seemingly mundane. Others, of course, are huge and potentially massively consequential.
Either way – choices are a constant, frequent, regular occurrence. From getting out of bed or hitting snooze; to what, when, and where to eat lunch; to asking someone out or applying for that loan – choices are constant and come in every size, shape, color, and any other variable you can imagine.
Sometimes all the choices can become overwhelming. When that happens, resorting to rote, routine, and habit can be temporarily comforting.
When you spend too much time subconsciously living, however – you become discontented.
That’s part of how I can tell that it goes well until it feels like it stops going well. Making more choices feels like more work than I desire to do. I just want to coast and not have to give it all so much thought.
That, too, is a choice. And while I can take a break and be passive for a time – I must remain mindful of this, lest I become complacent and ultimately find that I lose my path.
Everyone experiences this. Nobody has it perfect, let alone seemingly perfect all the time. Frustration happens, outside forces fuck with us, and things don’t go how we intend.
Then, it feels like it stops going well.
Remembering this, I must be kinder and more compassionate towards myself – and actively mindful to get past this episode and get back on track. Even if that means finding a new track.
Then, finally, there’s this:
It always goes
The sun rises and sets. People are born, grow to be adults, and eventually die. Trees develop buds in the spring, green leaves in the summer, and colorful leaves in the autumn – which fall away to nothing in winter. This is all inevitable. And it’s the truth of the universe that it’s always in action.
Because change can be deeply uncertain, it frightens people. What’s more, in a society built on artificial egoic constructs, change frequently becomes the “other” and the enemy. Rather than recognize and accept that it always goes and keeps going – some want to go back.
That, however, is impossible. You can’t undo, redo, or change what has come and gone. You can only be present here and now – and use that to make choices and decisions for what you do in the present to build the future.
Sometimes, it feels as if it stops going. But the truth is that it’s always going. You might choose to pause – but it’s only ever a pause. You can’t and don’t stop for as long as you live.
Some rue and lament that. But I see it as open, endless, likely limitless potential and possibility.
There are endless new paths available – when I choose to find and/or create them.
That’s where I need to place my focus and attention. Especially when it goes well until it feels like it stops going well. Because it doesn’t stop – it feels that way, but it’s only a pause, and it’s all about my impression of it.
Mindfulness empowers me to choose, here and now, what comes next.
You are similarly empowered by mindfulness.
What do you do when it goes well until it feels like it stops going well?
This is the six-hundred and first (601) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
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