Friends, your Free Life Coach is here with a dispatch from the caverns of existential despair.
Here’s what’s great about being a free life coach, it’s free, so I don’t have to sell you a bill of goods about life. No promises of eternal bliss, no assurance that you will get everything you want, no laws of attraction or appeals to abundance. No photos of me with a beatific smile, sitting lotus in a sunbeam.
Instead, you just get testimony and actual tips from a guy who has learned a thing or two bus is right next to you on the bus, feeling every bump. We are companions on this planet. Life is a gift that sometimes feels like a booby prize.
That’s your first word of the day.
booby prize
noun
An award given to the one who performs worst in a game or contest.
So let’s get to it. We know, science has proven and practice has shown me, that an ‘attitude of gratitude’ can make a huge difference in the way I feel. When I’m down, I can take a little inventory of all the blessings in my life. But, when I have a bout of depression that hits me like the mental flu, all the gratitude list does for me is show me that I have no real reason to feel despair. And yet, I do! Like a petulant child pouting in the corner of my own birthday party.
Exercise would help. It always does. But try telling a guy who can’t get out of bed to go for a run. Good luck!
Talking to friends helps. Trying to be a nice guy helps. I get a lot out of holding open doors, smiling at strangers, and being kind at work. In the meantime, I wait for the darkness to pass like a storm that stuck around too long.
I’m not a sailor, but I love the word “becalmed.” It’s when a ship way out at sea runs out of wind. The air becomes calm, and the sailors are stranded with no locomotion. They are becalmed.
becalmed
adjective
(of a sailing ship) unable to move due to lack of wind.
Rendered motionless for lack of wind.
It sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? To be calm. Just sitting there. But the supply of fresh water dwindles, the food runs out, and the sun shines down on you with no hint of when it may end. The difference between freedom and imprisonment is the ability to move, no matter how pleasant your circumstances.
But there’s a gust of wind, there always is. I just had to wait for it. I feel the hint of a breeze and my sails are beginning to flutter. Enough, at least, to put fingertips to keyboard and wish you, my fellow travelers, well.
Hoping you don’t have the spiritual sniffles, I am, with great enthusiasm,
Your Free Life Coach,
Sean Sakamoto
It's been helpful to tell myself to wait it out instead of panicking because somehow I know it will pass, just not right now.
This too shall pass....ride it out and wait for it to pass. Sit with it. So challenging when I’m afraid because I don’t know how long it will be or how low you’ll go. My catastrophizing mind feeds off this state.