A Simple Reminder for When Life Goes Off the Rails

“Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness.”
~ Deborah Day

I’m not going to lie, I got knocked off my foundation 12 days ago. It’s why I didn’t post last week, and why this week’s post feels like a tough one, but it also feels necessary. When your life goes off the rails, do you square your shoulders and ignore your own needs, or do you pause and admit you’re human, and give yourself what you need? I hope it’s the latter.

Life happens, and sometimes it sucks, so when it does, accept your humanness and take care of you first. That’s what I did.

Watch the video to below to learn why I’ve been derailed (and tips that have helped me that may help you), or read the transcript that follows.

Let’s face it, every now and then life has the capacity to go off the rails. Things don’t happen the way you expect them to. You’re met with sudden emergencies, or tragedies, or difficult things that happen in your life and that was certainly the case for me just over a week ago. I think that my overwhelm was probably building in the months leading up to what happened last week, which probably didn’t help me, but all I can say is that’s life.

Last week I didn’t create a new video. In fact, I didn’t even post a blog because early in the morning of last Friday before I was heading off to do a speech in Kelowna, our dog took a turn with her health and unexpectedly passed away. Which for anybody that has had a pet, knows the difficulty of that. And, I had to give myself a big old break. I had to present the next morning and then I had to come home and deal with the tragedy of losing our beloved pet … and I certainly didn’t mean to get emotional right now, but that is the way it goes when loved ones leave you.

I didn’t have the capacity last week to create a new blog post or even to share. I mean it’s questionable whether I do now, but it’s a good reminder that when life hits you with these curve balls that you stop and give yourself what you need. My husband and I had already planned a trip away, which felt like a blessing because we were able to be out of our house where our little fur companion wasn’t … because the house was really quiet. We were able to take some time away to talk, to relax, to sleep, to golf, to have some fun and to reset. It’s going to take awhile to get over this one, but that was certainly a helpful start and it reminded me that when life does go off the rails, it’s important to give yourself what you need.

So many of us will say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.” We’ll square our shoulders and we will keep on keeping on. If I had done that I wouldn’t have been any good to myself, to my husband and to our recovery. So because all of us have those times in our life where things go off the rails, where ‘shit hits the fan’ if you will, I’m going to share what I talked to one of my coaching clients about last week. She was busy and stressed and things are going a bit chaotically in her own life and she says, “I haven’t even had time to pee.” And so we came up with three words, tea, pee and breathe.

Sometimes self care can be as simple as taking the time to take a bathroom break, taking the time to make yourself a cup of tea, taking the time to stop and breathe; to take it in, to slow down, to give yourself a little bit of kindness and nourishment physically, mentally, and emotionally. My husband and I took four days away to start the recovery process of mourning our beloved Lilly-dog (that’s her in the picture above), and the last few days I’ve been out at Kananaskis taking some time to focus on my writing because it’s something that I feel like I need to get done despite all the other work that I have to do.

This week as you are pondering the curve balls that life throws your way, what are the small things that you can do for yourself to maintain a little bit of self care? It could be as simple as tea, pee and breathe. Or it could be a little bit more involved: Getting some exercise for yourself, taking time to journal, to talk about the things that are challenging, to get counseling, to do the things that you know you need to do to make sure that you are there for yourself and for the people that depend on you most. We only get one chance to do this life and I say spend a little time nurturing when necessary so you can dare to live it big and dare to live it with as much gusto and enthusiasm as is possible. Until next time. I’ve got to breathe in some of this beauty.

Michelle Cederberg, CSP, MKin, BA Psyc
CEP, CPCC, ORSC

Empowering today’s dreamers, leaders and go-getters to create the life and career they want.

www.michellecederberg.com
403-850-5589