Do you realise that there will be times when you feel unhappy, lonely or annoyed? How do you react when your carefully laid plans do not follow the path you thought you had established?

Perhaps what I should ask is;
i) what do you do at these times and,
ii) do you have a strategy which will allow you to move through, rather than becoming trapped within your emotions?

It is at this time that I would like to suggest (as did Dr Russ Harris in his book The Happiness Trap) that allowing emotions is usually more helpful than ignoring or resisting them. In fact, as Harris points out, it is often the resistance to a particular emotion that creates a sense of pain.

To understand this better, imagine swimming at the beach. Imagine being enveloped by clear, blue water. Feel the bubbling, white foam as gentle waves dance over your skin and notice the soft, golden sand gracing the shoreline.  The sound of laughter fills your mind and you feel simultaneously relaxed and invigorated. Then, all of a sudden, you sense an unpleasant pull away from the shore and the once friendly waves seem to rise malevolently. They threaten to draw you down into a swirling abyss. Do you realise you have been caught in a rip? Do you know what to do?

Life guards teach us that the safest option is to allow the tide to carry us further out to sea. They warn us that if we resist the straining tide and attempt to swim against it, we will soon tire. If we continue to resist, we may sink beneath the battering waves. However, if we use our energy to stay afloat, swim parallel to the shore and simply allow the water carry us, eventually we will be free of it. True, we may be a considerable distance from where we started (or where we wanted to be), but we will be better equipped (or not as exhausted), to swim back to shore.

Of course to truly survive in this situation, you need faith in your capacity to swim. That is to say, you need faith in yourself and your abilities. With self confidence and a sense of balance, you can feel buoyant and aware. You can understand that once you have ‘ridden out the rip’, you can swim back to shore. Of course you may feel tired, but you will survive.