You know life is challenging when you find yourself reading your own articles to stay inspired. I wrote this article about 4-years ago. At that time in my life, I felt as if I were in a hot skillet with the power burner turned on high. I’m sure some of you can relate.
I hope this article will also inspire you as we progress through these difficult and challenging times.
When things start to warm up, we look for a place of refuge, somewhere cool and refreshing. No one wants to be consistently hot and sticky. No matter where you live, over exposure to heat can cause some serious physical and emotional damage unless you take precautionary measures.
Life is pretty much the same way. Different areas of your life can get pretty hot. The temperatures of your finances, health, marriage, family, and job can all reach an uncomfortable boiling point—a boiling point that is different for each of us. Sometimes the temperature in one area of your life may go haywire, and sometimes everything surges at the same time. Not only does it get very hot, but it is humid too.
You ask yourself, how long can I stand this? How long before I get a break? Where can I go to cool off and refresh? You frantically seek for a way to release the pressure before you explode.
This is the time when nothing you do seems to work and life becomes a literal minute-by-minute existence because you’re too scared to think about tomorrow. You don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. However, you are going to make it because you have a purpose.
I’ve provided a short list of things that you can do to help navigate your downturn:
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Remember, your downturn is temporary. As far as I’m concerned, there is only one way out and that’s up!
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Focus on your purpose and your vision.
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Keep dreaming no matter how discouraged you may feel about focusing on things you haven’t yet obtained. Do not rewrite your dream to accommodate your circumstances.
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Revisit your plan of action—make the necessary adjustments and move on.
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Do a mental replay of your past triumphs. Read them as often as you need to. You will be surprised how blessed you are.
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Visualize your future successes. You must first achieve them in your mind before they can become a reality.
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Examine your thoughts daily. Negative thoughts will affect your attitude and a negative attitude can jeopardize your dream. Not only that, your attitude acts as a thermometer and can determine the comfortability of your current situation.
Finally, your downturn provides an awesome opportunity to develop faith, patience, and perseverance. All great people need these three. Your faith will help you to see beyond the circumstances of life and patience will give you the strength to endure. This doesn’t mean that you should sit around and twiddle your thumbs. According to Webster, persevere means to persist in a purpose, an idea, or task in the face of obstacles or discouragement. So keep moving!
