Reality Check On...Dealing with Life’s Crap Cycle

A sure way to ignite the crap cycle: 

All is good in your world, everything is running smoothly and life, it seems, can only get better.

Career – check

Kids – check

Relationship – check

Friends – check

Money – check  

Clients - check

Nothing bothers you, you love everyone and everyone loves you back, you feel confident that no matter what tomorrow brings, you can handle it. 

And at that point, we have ignition, and

All hell breaks loose …

Most times its like a tidal wave and wipes you out in one shot. Occasionally it is a series of precision military-like strikes that cause your life to unravel chunk by chunk.

Life is kind of like the stock market - a constant cycle of ups and downs, and then a crash.

Then the cycle begins again…up, down, crash and again and again…

It does not seem random, but I also don’t accept the different schools of thought of why the crap cycle keeps happening over and over. 

Here are 3 of the more popular theories:

1. You need to learn some lesson (it is usually something from a past life so good luck trying to figure that one out) and until you get it then the same crap cycle will keep happening.

2. You have self-limiting beliefs that you are blocking you. Personally I don’t believe that experiences you have when you were under the age of  5 years old have the power to dictate your adult life.

3. You keep pissing off the Universe with negative thoughts and the Universe, as we all know, pays back in kind. This one cracks me up because the crap usually hits when things are going really well.

Or perhaps it's simply, as my grandfather was fond of saying “life is a bowl of shit with a single cherry on top” which is a rather depressing way of looking at life but probably has some truth to it.

The worst bit is that when your life is spiralling out of control, you are expected to stay calm, positive, give gratitude for what you have (left?) , understand that you will come out of this stronger than ever, oh and know that there are people who are worse off. 

And to help you stay calm, positive and grateful you will be assaulted with motivational quotes from all the social media platforms. You know the ones I mean – quotes like:

“Our difficulties are golden opportunities to reveal even more potential in this world”

“Let go and Let God”

“You have to be at your strongest, when you are feeling at your weakness’.

“You are the architect of your life”

And be prepared as they will keep coming…relentlessly! Along with the latest mantras, manifestation techniques, LOA teachings: everything you need to be doing in order to achieve that perfect life, which is ironic as you had a good life but just lost it because the crap cycle hit.

My mother believes (and she is dead serious when she tells me this) that we experience the bad shit (she uses another word) in our lives because we don’t pray to God anymore, we don’t go to church anymore and we have abandoned God.

This makes me think of a God with a huge scoreboard with everyone’s name on it and when we are not paying attention to him or visiting him, it pisses him off and he unleashes his wrath on us. Fascinating. 

It's obvious that there is no such thing as going though crap and once you are out on the other side, you get to live happily ever after…if only that were the case!

Because as we already know when you are succeeding in getting your life to a good place, the crap comes charging at you and you are back to ground zero or pretty close to the floor anyway.

The Do's to survive the crap cycle:

Do be horrified and panic.

How did I not see it coming?; Why? Not again? ; What the f**k did I do to deserve this?; Say F**k a lot; and then say it some more. It's very therapeutic. 

Do get sad.

Yes I know in 2014 no one gets sad anymore; we are either depressed or stressed, but being sad is good. It's actually quite liberating to feel sad, who knew? Plus, when I am at the sad stage, I have an awesome pity party – on the couch, complete with bottles of wine/tea/coffee, gallons of ice cream/junk food and watch hours of mindless tv and B list movies.

Do Get Angry

It's ok to get angry. Scream, yell, shout. The tendency today is to accept that everything happens for a reason and for our own good. But sometimes crap just happens and it's is only human to be angry when things don't go the way we want them to. 

Do ride the waves (figuratively,but you knew that). Just to be clear, many times I don’t catch the waves ( I am either not ready, don’t have the energy or just can't be bothered). Sometimes I try to ride the waves but I get hammered. But then that perfect wave comes along and it has enough momentum and speed to get me to the other side. 

Hang Ten, oh yeah! 

I know the crap cycle will always come back, that’s a given… but it still takes me by surprise every time it hits. Truth is, on the up rotation I forget all about the crap cycle. I get so excited that life is finally working out for me, because when life is good, it's awesome. I fall in love with my life all over again. Life is good and I have it all figured out, finally.

But of course that’s the cue for ignition…