Recognizing Struggle

Negative feelings and emotions are part of the human experience. As often as we are up, we are down. Much of the time we’re in a bad mood, however, we’re unaware of it. Something’s off, but we don’t realize it. And when we’re oblivious to our temperament, we certainly can’t address the problem.

The first step in alleviating a negative state of mind is awareness. We must consciously recognize that we are struggling. Identify proxies in your life that may indicate this like grinding teeth, brain fog, or becoming clumsier than usual. Notice patterns that indicate struggle, and acknowledge this current disposition.

Recognizing struggle, however, is not the difficult part. Once we’ve named our experience, we must accept it. It’s okay to feel this way. Whatever is going on, it’s telling us something. Sit with your experience, welcome it in, and hear what it has to say. We evolved to feel struggle for a reason–it indicates that something external or internal needs to change. Without humans' capacity to feel and react to struggle, we wouldn’t have been able to adapt to rapidly changing environments. Your experience has been lived thousands of times before; take comfort in the community of people who feel and have felt the same things you do, and accept that this is just a part of what it means to be human.

Struggle comes in many forms. Once we’ve recognized and accepted it, we can analyze it further. Is it pressing or just nagging? Is it painful or uncomfortable? Is it a struggle that I need to change my internal environment for? External? Only after we’ve identified its shape can we effectively alleviate it.