Coping with adjustments

There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. C.M. Ward

Life rarely goes the way we plan it out and never goes the way we would like it to go. This unpredictability of life is what enriches our living because each day comes with its fresh bouquet of roses and of course each rose comes with a stem of thorns too. While we would all love to have just the rose without getting a prick, and preferably ensure that it remains fresh forever we are reconciled to fact that this can never happen. It becomes easy for us to focus on the beauty of the rose and try to be careful handling it. Despite this if we get pricked, we blame our carelessness and possibly use a vase to put the rose in but rarely do we reject the rose because we get a prick or two. This is an adjustment we do because we would love to enjoy the fragrance, freshness and beauty of the flower. Substitute life for flower and we see that the daily hassles, the sudden upheavals, the occasional calamities that rear its ugly head are but mere small pricks or large pricks but Life itself is wonderful.

In reality, there are many times when the stress and pain are too much to bear. If we pause to study this torturous phenomena carefully, we will realize that the pain and hurt are primarily because we are fighting the irreversible mentally and not accepting the harsh reality. Denial is often the first stage of facing the bitter truth. If we are diagnosed with a major or irreversible illness, we first try to rationalize why the diagnose is possibly incorrect simply because we refuse to accept the reality. Denial can take many forms. Some of us underplay the reality, others mask their emotions, in extreme cases people would pretend to be more cheerful and exuberant outwardly while becoming nervous wrecks internally for the mind and body are in conflict. Once we can accept the reality, we can attempt to tackle the problem and immediately even the problem seems to shrink in size mentally. This is major adjustment that all of us have to constantly keep making.

Self belief is the key to making the right adjustment. Many a time we refuse to adjust because our ego won’t permit us to accept the reality or because we cannot imagine the future in an altered state than what we originally foresaw. When we have self belief we let our personal confidence become the vital ingredient that substitutes for all that we have lost in the altered state. Eg. If a person has lost a limb in an accident accepting that becomes very difficult if one sees themselves as being invalid or dependent. No sooner the person realizes that it is only an inconvenience that one can cope up with, the person has immediately have taken the road to adjustment. Creativity and persistence are the two legs on which most adjustments are successfully made. Any adjustment means a change and alteration and for it to be effective one has to be both creative and persistent. E.g. the first person who made a bicycle and rode it must have fallen quite a few times before managing to balance it. Today the kids do it easily despite falling because they have seen others ride a cycle and so know it can be done. The first person never had that benefit. In life the adjustments we make are like that of the first bicycle rider for we have to find out own way forward for no two individuals would have identical adjustments to be made.

Remember: “Happiness comes from… some curious adjustment to life.” Hugh Walpole

Try these:

Read the brief overview on denial by clicking this link http://www.livestrong.com/article/14731-dealing-with-denial/
Make a plan for the week and very detailed plan for tomorrow. Tomorrow evening review the day and see how many things went as per you plan and how many adjustments you had to make. Also examine which was the most painful or difficult adjustment to make. At the end of the week do a similar review. Also ask yourself if there were roadblocks in your plan that could have been easily avoided if you didn’t let your ego come in the way.

This post is courtesy www.actspot.com