Suffering is not ennobling, recovery is! —Dr. Christen Bernard
As we go through our life, we face ups and downs. In most cases we deal with them as they come and learn from the lessons, dealing with them. In the process we discover ourselves. This is what makes our life meaningful; having conquered the challenges and having overcome the obstacles, becoming a better person in the process. As is said: Life is not about getting and having, but it is about being and becoming!
It is not uncommon to have a few challenges in our lives that are so daunting that they seem insurmountable; their source implacable. Often, too, these troubles seem to come in waves, also non-stop at certain times, and we have to put our “regular” life on hold, just dealing with them as they come. When this happens we often ask ourselves, “why me?”
In my profession as a career and a life coach I routinely come across clients who have faced big challenges and are finding ways to deal with them with all their resources and the new tools that I provide them so that they come on top. They, by and large, are willing to learn from others’ lessons to make them their own to accelerate their learning and to discover something about themselves in the process. This is an effective strategy for learning and for using a professional who has “been there, done that.”
However, sometimes, these clients, having seen the success and a turnaround with sound coaching, send me a friend or someone they know is suffering through their own challenges and is getting deeper in with their difficulties: a job loss followed by long periods of unemployment, followed by an addiction, culminating in an end of their relationship with their partner or their marriage. This list is long, but the pattern of these challenges that these people face is familiar; a spiraling cycle of negative events that deplete them and cause them to lose hope and to go into despair and to eventually face a blind funk that seizes them and paralyzes them!
It is often that I find these clients slowly slipping into martyrdom and making no attempts to recover from their plight, despite a clear path out of it by making a positive change in their lives to turn things around.
Why?
When a series of negative events come by our way, each one being worse than the previous, we feel naturally victimized and singled out in our plight. During such times we often look at our friends and others around us who are ostensibly “doing well” and ask ourselves what we did to deserve this fate. Often, too, our ego gets in the way of asking for a hand from those who can help us or provide us some guidance for moving forward. Our pride prevents us from taking actions that we perceive as condescending and we personalize our plight. What is needed, instead, is taking these challenges personally and moving forward.
What is the difference?
When someone takes a defeat or setback and personalizes them it means that they are finding ways that they could have avoided their fate by previously taking a different course of action, instead of the one that they took. They also indulge in flights of speculation about what particular event must have been the tipping point in their sorry course of action that they are now facing. These speculative flights of fancy are often meaningless and do not provide any actionable way out of your ongoing and exacerbating plight.
Taking such events personally, on the other hand, means taking control of what is happening and forming a course of action to slowly overturn the cycle of events and bringing control back in your life. Since personalizing our plight does not provide any meaningful solution to our getting out of our own troubles, those in this state often resort to becoming a full-time martyr to deal with their situation. A full-time martyr is someone who is going around mouthing their troubles and seeking others’ sympathies—not actionable guidance—for their plight. They are less interested in taking positive action and trying new things, especially when it may entail condescending to lesser employment or doing things that are not “glamorous.”
The other characteristic these martyrs exhibit is that they often go around feeling sorry for themselves and only taking in the negative in any situation that they encounter. This now creates a self-defeating cycle that has only one ( of the two) way out: changing your outlook or becoming a martyr emeritus!
The lessons to be had from our difficulties include learning things that we are not comfortable with and making a change. If the change is not made in a timely way we run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Once we become irrelevant then we run the risk of losing hope of recovering what we lost through our transition, which if handled well, should make us stronger.
So, what is a course of action that one must follow to get out of our martyrdom and our difficulties and to come out on top? Here’s a list:
- Vision and hope: Keeping a clear vision of the success you want to create when you come out of this transition and keeping your hope to achieve that vision are key to staying positive. Sometimes, it takes more effort than anticipated because of the deteriorating economy or other forces. So, staying energized by keeping your vision in sight is important in an uncertain transition.
- Structure: When outside forces such a job loss, an impending negative event such a legal trial or a bankruptcy, or a divorce disrupt your fold of regular life, the best strategy is to bring back structure to your life. For example, your job, marriage, or everyday routine when things are going well provide you a certain structure and a rhythm to your life. When a disruption occurs, the best thing to do is to create a new structure and a new rhythm that helps you keep your life more predictable and managed. This goes a long way in managing yourself in many areas such a physical fitness, weight control, and mental well-being.
- Discipline: When there is a major disruption in your life by external forces merely having a structure will not be enough. A disciplined approach to attending to what must be done is key to progress. There will be temptations from many fronts to avoid doing the right thing and those in martyrdom surrender to “treating themselves” to unhealthy food, bad habits that provide instant gratification, and time wasters that fritter away valuable resources. A simple error in judgment repeated multiple times is what culminates into a state of affairs, which suddenly become beyond control and spiral into a vicious cycle of behaviors. This is why self-discipline is so important when things are in the tank momentarily.
- Self-esteem: When things start going awry, such as a job loss or financial setback, self-esteem is one of the first things that get affected. This spiraling self-esteem now spills into your everyday energy that you carry into your campaign of recovery. Not flogging yourself with your setbacks is a good strategy. Being with positive people in this state is far more conducive than being with “support groups” in which everyone else is in the same boat as you are. There, often, the race becomes between who is facing the most woes! An occasional trip to a support group can be healthy, but watch out from yourself becoming a part of a bunch of diehard martyrs!
- Social events: Being alone when things look gloomy can exacerbate their affect. Getting out with positive people and not dwelling on your woes is a good move. Discussion of positive topics and intellectually stimulating conversations is the best antidote for feeling down and being in a funk. “Introverted” types (INTJs, ISTJs, etc) should make a special effort to become social in tough times.
- Action plan: An action plan that is milestones driven is a good tool to keep in the battlefield. As long as you are able to generate meaningful action you are able to stay positive and hopeful and only you have control over how this is done, every day that you are facing your challenges. Sharing that action plan with another person in your support group can be a healthy habit.
- Volunteering: Working with those less fortunate is always an empowering experience. It keeps your own woes in perspective and the fact that you can help someone even less fortunate can be energizing, just when you need it.
- Taking time out: When things get intense and unbearable, it is often natural for us to try harder to overcome the forces. Often, it is best to just step back and reflect on what is going on and then come back to it with a fresh perspective at another time.
- Celebrating wins: Even in the worst of times you succeed at some thing. Pause, reflect, and celebrate these successes. Nothing is more rewarding and energizing than reassuring yourself that you can still overcome life’s little challenges on your own.
- Staying positive: Positive attitude is critical to coming out a winner through a tough situation. It is difficult to stay positive when things look gloomy and are falling apart for you internally. As is said, A positive attitude may not get you what you want, but it sure will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort!
Good luck!