I was re-watching The Greatest Showman recently and it inspired me to consider how I pick myself up after a dip in confidence. What it took for Phineas (Hugh Jackman) to pick himself up after the damning newspaper article and the fire that destroyed the circus was remembering all the good things that he had in his life, his family and the opportunity that he had given to the performers he had hired to showcase their talents. This is demonstrated in From Now On. The link is below if you would like to remind yourself!
The lines that stood out to me were
“I saw the sun begin to dim” – because in these situations you can easily forget all the good things in your life and everything seems dark
Also “one remains can only be what’s true” – showing that holding onto the positive things that are never going to change like our achievements and those closest to us can keep us going
I would say that there is no magic, one-size fits all formula for picking yourself up when you have been feeling low as we are all unique and process things differently. Some examples of good things to do that you can do in the short term are going for a walk/getting exercise, distracting yourself with a good book or TV programme or talking to others.
For me, it can be a combination of these but as an introvert, I sometimes need quite a bit of time to myself to process things and consider what I could do to make myself feel happy again (sometimes after a good cry!). Although this can be seen as being lazy and not making enough effort to help myself, it hasn’t always been clear to me right away what my feelings are and how to make things better so it can take me a bit longer to feel better again but that is not necessarily a bad thing (well, what I try and remind myself of that anyway!).
The way I have started to think about it is like the commute to work/uni/school etc. We all start off from our own unique place. We make our own journey to where we want to go using our own preferred methods (bus, train, car, walking, cycling and so forth) and we can take longer or shorter times than others but that doesn’t matter as long as we get to place where we want to go.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you find it helpful. As always, feel free to get in touch with any questions/feedback/thoughts, I always love to hear them. Stay tuned for the next instalment.
Until next time
Kathryn
Having a Giraffe's Approach to Life 