In Difficult Times, What Is One To Do?
I love plain, uncomplicated, straightforward advice. True confession: I don’t like to ask for advice. That is why I am often guided by phrases, adages, proverbs, quotes, sayings that resonate.
Years upon years before I ever even heard of Emily P. Freeman, and years before I read her book, The Next Right Thing, I wrote a blog post where I recounted my own experience with the phrase: “Just do the next thing.”
Quite honestly, in days when I am living through hard times, I often have no idea what the next right thing is! That is why I love not having any pressure knowing whether or not I am doing the right thing when all I can manage is doing the next thing!
There are times, and more than I ever wish there were, when I don’t know there are any straightforward answers to a dilemma I am facing. I have no idea if there is a conclusion I can reach on how to approach how to handle a difficult decision.
That is why at times like those, during hard times, when I have no straightforward answers, I need to just remember to do the next thing. Often, all any of us can manage is to do the next thing, and that is ok.
I love plain, uncomplicated, straightforward answers to complex problems.
Don’t we all? I think we all want simple answers when we have complex problems, but honestly, simple answers rarely fix anything that is complex in life.
So, while I wrestle through a jungle of mixed up emotions, reactions, thoughts, concerns, I often focus on NOT making a big decision that will have long lasting implications for my life. Instead, I step back, and focus on doing the simple things in life. I just do the next thing.
When we are at capacity during difficult times, then we must acknowledge that to ourselves and to the others around us.
When I am at capacity, when life has suddenly become too lifey, I don’t try to bury my head in the sand. I work through processing new truths about my life that I need to accept. I take time. I hang on to what I can do, and all I do is what I can do which generally is doing the next thing. What do these next things look like?
The short do the next thing list may mentally look like this:
Get out of bed.
Make some coffee.
Drink the coffee.
Take a shower.
That might be all that is physically done, but I tell myself that I can now cross those four things off my to do list. When I am done doing all I can do of the next things, I acknowledge that I am moving forward. I have not crumbled in a heap on the floor. I will acknowledge what I am going through, and step by step I will get through what ever it is I have to get through.
When I was only fifteen months into my journey through grief after my daughter’s death in 2010, I asked myself how I would ever keep on this road of heartbreak, grief, and loss.
After a year and a half, it seemed the journey had gone on way too long. I looked down the road that spanned through the rest of my lifetime and asked myself how I would ever go on living if this feeling of having of a hole in my heart never healed. That split in my heart called heartbreak was gaping wide open, swallowing up every bit of my hope for a future that had any joy or comfort in it. The road before me suddenly seemed way too long. The journey of living out all the days of the rest of my life seemed much longer than I had anticipated.
At the two year mark after my daughter’s death, I attended a grief recovery support group. Truly, I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I had no idea how I would keep moving forward.
There Are No Road Maps for Some Journeys in Life.
I think I went to the recovery group looking for a road map.
I wanted a step by step process.
I wanted a guarantee that I would make it through the journey I was on.
A list was handed out at the support group about how to live with grief. The last item on the list after a collection of seven suggestions for how to live with grief was a brief phrase: Just do the next thing. It seemed to me that it was added almost as an afterthought.
At the time, I remember thinking that the phrase certainly didn’t seem like some powerful, life changing adage, but it was for me.
At that moment, the statement just do the next thing did become a simple expression of a general truth on how to continue on my journey through grief. I came away from the meeting feeling renewed and inspired.
During those early days of grief after the death of my daughter, I also began to experience multiple health and medical issues. I had no idea how to address them while I was also dealing with grief. Thankfully, I was seeing a wise and wonderful mental health professional. She said to me,
"Sally, when you are looking at such medical issues as you are, you can't look too far down the road. You must just ask yourself, "What is the next thing? Then do it."
At the time, I was suffering from back and hip pain that would prove to be chronic to this day. The specialist I had recently consulted advised immediate surgery. I knew I was in no shape emotionally for such a surgery.
In fact, I never had that surgery.
My mental health therapist, who was also a certified clinical nurse specialist and a registered nurse with many years of medical background wisely said,
MRIs and X-rays always look worse than the symptoms might be. Have injections and see what happens from there. Take it one day at a time. Just do the next thing.
When I hear the same words, the same adage more than once from different people, I take note. I sense that the message is an important one for me to hear and to heed.
I know that such advice of just doing the next thing is hard for some of us.
It is hard for many of us because in our professional lives, or in our academic lives, we learned a different sort of rules in order to meet the guidelines that we had laid out for us in a job description or in a syllabus.
My therapist told me that I would have to let go of many of the traits that helped me achieve the goals I had for myself when I was working or when I was in school.
She reminded me that in my professional life, I was a planner, one who got things done, one who looked down the road and anticipated what must be done and did it.
Life in general cannot be lived that way,
she said.
We can’t plan for all of life events. Life happens. We suffer loss. We deal with health issues. We get hit with things we never dreamed would cross our path in this life.
She was right. So were all the others who gave me simple advice during those times when I was learning how to live during a heartbreaking, difficult time.
Since that time, more than once, if there is one lesson that I have learned many times over in the last decade and half, years that have been filled with much loss, it is this: Just do the next thing.
This is how you do that:
Take life moment by moment.
Get up in the morning.
Make some coffee.
Pet the dog.
Kiss the spouse, if you have one, and if you feel like kissing him or her.
Take a shower.
Take a walk.
Fix a piece of toast.
Put some butter on it. (Everything is better with butter!)
If that is all you can do, that is ok.
Do what you can.
When you finish, these things, if you can, then do the next thing.
Life, during difficult times, is best lived by taking it one moment at a time.
If you need to cry, cry.
If you need to rest, rest.
Moment by moment fill up the hours and the days a little bit at a time by doing the next thing. Before you know it, you will realize you have found a way to live the next moment by simply doing the next thing.
Remember, don’t try to do all the things during difficult days. Just do the next thing.
Blessings,
Sally
Reading this now (after reading about Amy) I think I am in between the lines. Yet much of what you said mirrors the conversation I had yesterday with two friends as we talked growing older, making choices, seeking answers. Just do the next thing. And "when we are at capacity" we need to share that. Thanks for this one.
Sally, I was right there with you. Beautiful writing with great wisdom. ( Don’t you wish wisdom came less painfully). Keep sharing your insights. It is encouraging.