Dealing with set backs

When you are striving for greatness, be it in your studies, a profession, the mastery of a skill or some other endeavour, sometime you will become derailed.

Life is beautifully messy. If you have never been derailed by external forces (or internal battles), you haven’t lived. The foundation of Buddhism (which is far more of a philosophy than a religion) is the ‘4 Nobel truths’.. the first one is that ‘all life is pain and suffering’. Now that may feel a tad extreme.. but if you actually hang out with Buddhist monks.. you’ll know that they are always laughing and joking.. so maybe they are on to something!

We all have a philosophy of life.. how well you articulate that is a separate matter… but we all have one. Personally, my views lean towards an Abdursist/zen philosophy to life, which is partly expressed by one of my fave counter-culture coke-heads below…

In addition, the wonderful Alan Watts often talks about life not being real, and “it’s all a game”… which resonates with me and I find particularly reassuring! In fact, the last thing I whispered to my incredible mum while she passed away was my version of a little passage by Alan Watts.

…and this is where I am getting to; Our philosophy of life helps us deal with shitty things like grief, pandemics, heartache, illness or all the other rubbish things that happen in life..Coping strategies are fine, but our deep beliefs, be they philosophical, intellectual, religious, spiritual or whatever are the foundations of our identity and are the true foundations to coping when shit happens.

So I guess my tip is to know yourself, what you believe, and what you value.. as that makes you strong. The only way of knowing is by testing. If you are a Christian, for example – then your faith will either get smashed or deepen if you question the existence of Jesus, God etc. You can’t shy away from the big questions. The truth of what life is can never be proven, so it is totally relative.. but regardless, you need to believe in something. Nillhism ain’t a good approach to life.

So what next?  how else can we deal with the bad stuff, well, in my experience, I find that understanding and developing my Stoicism, Gratitude, Confidence, Zen and Camu-Esq absurdist ideas have all helped me deal with the not-so-fun stuff. I’ve also found that resilience is a learned skill. I, like many of you, have had some very bad things happen to me.. and have made mistakes in all areas of my life.. but I have learned from them, and more than anything, I refuse to let anything make me cynical about life (which is harder than it used to be with the way the world is today!). It is said that Cynism is the thief of joy. The way I see it… Cultivating Joy and practising gratitude are the two vital ingredients for us all to live a truly great life, help us cope with literally anything and come through the other side of any mental health issues.

While I’m giving unsolicited life advice.. please don’t take yourself too seriously… being alive is weird… as a reminder, watch this…..