How To Cope With Bad News

Imagine: Your partner cheated on you or walked out on you. You’ve been fired. Your house has been burglarized. You’re been diagnosed with a life changing condition.

Bad news can leave us in a state of dread and despair. It seems like your whole world is falling apart, almost as if we’re being driven into the ground. We fear the very worst and cannot get it out of our mind, or gut. Often there are other emotions mangled in, like anger, guilt, despair, and love.

We all have had it, and we’re all going to get it again.

So How To Cope?

Don’t forget to breathe, it sounds funny but, sometimes when we are in a difficult situation we can actually forget to breathe. It very important to regain control over our emotions. Breathing in deeply through your nose and hold the air in for several seconds. Then gradually let the air out. Do this until you feel more relaxed.

Conntextualization

Try to frame the ad news, to put it into proper context. Think about all the good things in your life. Including those that have been and those that are yet to come. This would be a good time to go look at your latitude journal of the papers in your jar. Remind yourself of all the strengths and resources- the friends and the places you go to that you can draw on in your time of need. Go to your secret place and pray. Imagine things could be much much worse- and how they are for some people. Your house has been burglarized and you lost a few valuables. And it’s all a huge hassle, But you still have your health, your job, your partner. Bad things are bound to hit us now and again. In many cases, they are just the flip side of the good things that we enjoy. You got burglarized because you has a house and valuables. You lose a great relationship, because you had one in the first place. Many a bad thing is no more that the reversal or removal of a good one.

Negative Visualization

Now focus on the bad news itself. What’s the worse thing that can happen, and is that really all that bad? Now that you’ve dealt with the worst, what’s the best possible outcome? I knew a man that was very respectful in our little town, he had gotten a job in healthcare. He had to get his background check done he thought that was done. After working for 6 months taking care of patients. He was called to the bosses office saying there was an issue with his background check. This man was 50 years old. He couldn’t imagine what it was. His boss gave him a number to call and he couldn’t return to work. When he called the number it said his background check came back saying he couldn’t been around anywhere that medication was responded. He was in shock, worried about his reputation, and didn’t understand why.

He worked the state that he’d done the check for 3 weeks, nothing he did help. Finally he had to get 4 references from people in the community and paid to have a different background check. It was because he was pulled over (not arrested) 32 years ago. For being high. This man was a 3rd grade teacher and a pastor of a church. He had turned his life completely around. And, this one time being pulled over had haunted him. It turns out this background check he had for the healthcare facility had put his information in the computer differently that the one that had been for his teaching position. Yes bad thing happen to everyone.

Transformation

Finally, try to transform your bad news into something positive, or into something that has positive aspects. Your bad news may represent learning or strengthening experience, as act as a wake-up call, or force you to reassess your priorities.

God promises to make something Good out of every bad situation that brings devastation to your life.

Romans 8:28

If you have any other strategies for coping with bad news, please share them in to comment section so that others might benefit.

’I Am That I Am’

All that is broken shall be mended;
All that is lost shall be found;
I will bind up every wound
When that which is begun shall be ended.
Not peace I brought among you but a sword To divide the night from the day,
When I send My worlds forth in their battle-array. To die and to live, 
To give and to receive,
Saith the Lord.

Direct Your Attention To The Things That Matter.

We juggle multiple tasks at one time not getting anything done. You lose focus easily and get overwhelmed with so many things to do. Distractions seem to be everywhere and that makes it nearly impossible to accomplish anything.

But we know it, it’s the end of the day and you have not accomplished anything. It can be discouraging.

Time is a very important resource. Once it slips out of your hands, there is no way you can get it back.

We can have all the time in the world, but if our attention is on to many things, we cannot get the results we desire.

Where focus goes, energy goes.

The brain is a powerful thing that is capable of processing loads of information. It controls your behavior depending on how you shape it. It has magnified qualities that are capable of rewiring connections to strengthen new habits and weaken poor behaviors.

It has the vulnerability that can affect your performance and productivity, it very sensitive to interference or being distracted

But the good thing is we can train our brains to do what is necessary to have better results and to become more positive though a few steps.

Observe your thoughts.

Scan for 3 daily positives.

Help others.

Surround yourself with positive people.

Look after your body and mind.

Subconscious re-training and your inner healing.

It is said that the brain can have anywhere from 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day.

Our brains are not designed to create happiness as much as we wish it were so. Our brains we’re evolved to promote survival. It saves the chemicals for opportunities to meet a survival need, and only releases them in short spurts and are quickly metabolized. This motivates us to keep taking steps that stimulate our happy chemicals.

When our brains go negative it can eat away at our productivity, creativity, and decision-making skills.

We have to work to change our brains negatively. We have to constantly bring positive thoughts or actions to our life.

Look for the good, and leave out the bad.

I read something positive every day. I pray daily, I put myself with positive people every day.

A great idea is to get yourself a jar or a bowl and every day write the positive things that happened to you during that day. Then when you’re having a difficult day, go back the read the positive things that has been happening.

We tend to focus more on negative things than positive things. This will teach you to look for the positive things happening in your day.

I still do this practice during Thanksgiving and Christmas. The holidays can be stressful. I feel like I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

It makes for a great time to do with family or friends. I used to do this will a depression support group I was facilitating. We would have a party and everyone would share what they had written and put in their jar the last 2 weeks. It’s a diffanant morale lifter.

Fear is an Emotion

False Evidence Appearing Real.

Fear is an emotion, and as such, is not a physical thing. Therefore, fear is not real. Rather, it is just an illusion that is created by your mind.

These imagined scenarios of the perceived threat and up feeding your fear to the point where it becomes all-consuming. Here’s the kicker: often these scenarios never happen.

How To Overcome Fear And Realize Your Potential

Overcoming fear may sound easier said than done. When you are in the face of fear, it’s hard to see a way out. The goodness is that because you are the root cause of your fears, that means that you are also the solution to them. However, none of this will be possible if you aren’t ready to face your fears.

Identify Your Fears Through Writing

There are times I have felt afraid but didn’t even know why. If you keep your fears inside, you allow your mind to control how you feel. We all know how that turns out! In order to prevent this confusion from happening in the first place, the first step is to identify what your fears are.

What Makes You Feel Afraid?

Instead of thinking about these things, write them down. When you write down your fears on paper and actually question them, it forces you to analyze why you are afraid. Questions are designed to trigger your fears and bring them to the surface. Is this going to be a comfortable process? Probably not.

Deep inner work never is! However, if you continue to keep your feelings in the dark, the scarier they will be, and the more disempowered you will become.

Have you ever been afraid of something and in the end everything turned out good?

Here’s an example:

I lived with the fear of my mother knowing that I was talking about what she did to me growing up. I was so fearful I kept everything locked up inside me. It wasn’t until I decided to tell the counselors what had happened to me as a child that I began healing. I was expecting them to tell me I was wrong or weak because I couldn’t deal with what happened to me. On the contrary, they were shocked I had gone through what I had and hadn’t been hateful to everyone around me, which sometimes I was, or ended up commenting suicide. After many therapy sessions that I began to realize it wasn’t my fault it was my mothers.

Once you identify the experience that you associate with your fears, you become armed with the power to take action to change them. Eventually, your fears become smaller and smaller, and your strength, bigger and bigger.

Practice Gratitude

From Personal experience, I have learned that you cannot experience fear and gratitude at the same time. They are literally on opposite ends of the f the continuum of the human experience.

When you are experiencing difficult times in life, it’s easy to drop into fear. Everything feels overwhelming. In that energetic space, it can be hard to stay grounded.

Get yourself grounded and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.

Bright drops.

I do a lot of reading, meditating, and praying to stay grounded as I can in this crazy world.

Developing a gratitude practice allows you to not drown in fear. It doesn’t mean that you still don’t feel it, but the blow will be lessened, thereby allowing you to see the brighter side of struggle.

When gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. This is positive psychology. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Anyone who experiences fear knows that there is almost always a story attached to whatever it is that you’re fearful of. Regardless of what that story is, the running theme is ”I can’t do something.” Fear loves to hang out with your inner circle and come up with worst-case scenarios about what could happen.

Gratitude helps keep these limiting stories at bay. When you practice gratitude, your brain shifts to what is currently working instead of what isn’t working.

The act of being fearful is a future-oriented process, while gratitude is a present-oriented one. The next time fear tries to creep its way into your head, replace that disempowering thought with a empowering one. It sounds easier said than done, but it works.

Release Control

Are you a control freak? If so your not alone. This is how a lot of people manage their fears, or so they think.

I used to think if I could control everything I wouldn’t be so fearful of what happened. Because knew how things would end. That is not the case.

In actuality, all that happens to people is their masking they’re fears by trying to control everything. If you can relate, it’s time to release control. Trust me when I sag that is a losing battle.

Fear results in controlling behavior and when this behavior does t give us results we’re seeking it further intensifies our fears.

If you attempt to control fear, you actually become a victim of it. This fear and control cycle leaves a .ot of people feeling defeated. The reality is that there will always be things that are beyond your control. That’s just how life works.

The only thing that you have control over is your inner world and how you choose to respond to your external environment. The next time that you catch yourself trying to control everything, step back and ask yourself what are you afraid of.

Start to get serious about what thoughts are he generating your fear. Curiosity and fear cannot co-exist. Once you let go of one, you invite the other in. True freedom comes from fully releasing control. When you are able to do this, you being the process of releasing your fears as well.

Ask yourself if you have any control over the situation at hand, can you change the situation? No, then don’t try it will only stress you and cause more fear. Yes, then do something about the situation push through the fear and make the change.

I love this verse. It explains everything.

What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for me, who can be against me. The Lord is with me like a fearsome warrior.

Romans 8: 31

Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You

Living in the comfort zone will get you nowhere in life. In my experience, not doing the thing’s that scare you will only increase the likelihood that your fears will grow and inevitably, take over every decision that you make in life.

Is it really better to get out of your comfort zone? The answer is always yes.

I want to encourage you to do one thing every day that scares you. It can be something small. All that matters is that you take action. Make it a habit to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Nobody likes to do this, but if you want to achieve success, you’ve got to be willing to try.

Putting yourself in new and uncomfortable situations triggers a unique part of your brain that releases dopamine, nature’s happy chemical. It’s the only way you can grow stronger and start healing from anything in life.

When you condition yourself to do something every day that scares you, your fear fades away and your courage grows. Think about it…when you face your fears, how can you fear them again? Soon enough, your confidence will skyrocket.

Final Thoughts

The next time that you feel threatened by fear, I encourage you to pull upon one or more of the above strategies. Change your relationship with fear. Instead of letting it knock you down, use it as motivation to grow and achieve more.

Once you realize that fear is not real, the obstacles that appear to stand in your way will be removed, and you will feel empowered to take action.

Fear has two meanings- forget everything and run or face everything and rise. The House is yours. The face of the matter is that there is nothing of nobody standing in your way of greatness.

Your potential in life is limited by only one factor- you. Are you ready to change fear into action?

The Will and Ways of Hope

Talent, skill, ability- whatever you want to call it- will not get you there. Sure, it helps. But a wealth of psychological research over the decades shows loud and clear that it’s the psychological vehicles that get you there. You can have the best engine in the world, but if you can’t be bothered to drive it, you won’t get anywhere.

Conscientiousness, self-efficacy, optimism, passion., inspiration, etc. They are all important. One is particularly undervalued and underappreciated. Thats hope.

Hope often gets a bad rap. For some, it brings up images of a naive man pushing up against a wall with a big smile on his face.

Hope is not a brand new concept. Hope consists of agency and pathways. A person who has hope has the will and determination that goals will be achieved, and a set of different strategies at their disposal to reach their goals. Put simply: hope involves the will to get there, and different ways to get there.

Why is hope important? Life is difficult. There are many obstacles. Have goals is not enough. You have to keep getting closer to those goals, among all tbs inevitable twists and turns of life. Hope allows people to approach problems with a mindset and strategy-set suitable for success, thereby increasing the chances they will actually accomplish their goals.

Hope is not a feel-good emotion, but a dynamic cognitive motivational system. Under the concept of hope, emotions follow conditions, not the other way around. Hope related conditions are important. Hope leads to learning goals, which are conducive to growth and improvement. People with learning goals, which are actively engaged in their learning, constantly planning strategies to meet their goals and positively related to success across a wide swatch of human life from academic achievement to sports to arts and science to business.

Those lacking hope, on the other hand, tend to adopt mastery goals. People with mastery goals choose easy tasks that don’t offer a challenge or opportunity for growth. When they fail, they quit. People with mastery goals act helpless and feel a lack of control over their environment. They don’t believe in their capacity to obtain the kind of future they want. They have no hope.

Whether measured as a trait or a sate, hope is related to positive outcomes. There was a study done on the impact of hope on a college student. With hope related to a higher GPA. High hope students, we’re relatively compared to low hope students we’re also more likely to have Brady and we’re less likely to be dismissed from school due to bad grades.

The link between hope and divergent thinking makes sense, considering divergent thinkers are good at coming up with lots of different ideas and hope involves coming up with a number of different strategies for obtaining a goal.

And your life will be brighter than the noonday; its darkness will be like the morning. And you will feel secure, because there is hope; you will look around and take your rest in security.

Job 11; 17-19