Pick Yourself Back Up (7 Simple Steps)

In this blog we will look at how to pick yourself back up when you’re feeling down. It will address how to tell if you’re feeling down, some reasons that may lead to you feeling that way and 7 ways to pick yourself back up from feeling that way.

Pick yourself back up

Some ways to pick yourself back up are:

Focus on the positives
Keep a tab on the good things in life
Reach out and seek support
Know what you can control
Be more active
Indulge in affirmative self talk
Allow yourself to feel

Are you feeling down?

Everybody goes through days when they don’t have the energy to go through the day, or do things that they enjoy. These are days when you can see your phone ringing but don;t have the energy to answer it, when you know there’s take out in the fridge but you can’t muster up the energy to heat and eat it.

Such days when even taking a bath seems like a hurdle. When being able to do your assigned tasks at work seem impossible no matter how much you try. Such days can sometimes occur once in a while, or last for days.

It can happen in reaction to something that happened in your life, or sometimes for no apparent reason due to chemical and hormonal imbalances within your body. The reasons could range from a hard hitting failure, loss of a friend or lover, loss of someone in your life etc.

While feeling down for a day or two in reaction to something traumatic or major happening in your life can be considered a normal reaction to such events, constantly feeling that way can become highly problematic.

When you feel yourself unable to beat the blues, and find yourself indulging in any of the following:

Feeling sad and frustrated throughout the day for a couple of days,
Obsessing over the bad things in life,
Feeling energetic, or unable to be productive,
Isolating yourself from those in your life,
Beating yourself up about things you’re unable to do
Feeling alone and misunderstood
Feeling incapable, or worthless

It is recommended that you seek professional help for the same, and attempt to follow the tips discussed in this article.

Why you could be feeling that way:

The reasons for feeling this way, or feeling down may be variable, and differ from person to person. It is even possible to feel this way without any apparent or particular reason. If this is the case, it could be attributed to chemical or hormonal imbalances within the body.

Some reasons for feeling this way could be in reaction to traumatic or major life events like:

Bereavement or loss of a loved one
Failure at school, or work life
Loss of a friend or loved one
Feeling lonely or misunderstood
Moving to a place where you feel alone or hard to adjust
Personal or social life problems
Feeling anxious or depressed
Feeling like life has lost meaning or purpose

It is important to remember that life is in fact a roller coaster, and ups and downs are a part and parcel of this roller coaster. When dawn breaks, the falling of dusk is inevitable and vice versa. No circumstances are bound to last forever, and neither are your struggles.

Struggling, however, does not equate to having failed at life. It is, often, just a rite of passage to growth, which is unlikely to happen without some suffering. These struggles may play an integral role in shaping your identity, however, they are not your identity in themselves.

Each person may struggle with different things and therefore may need different ways to cope with them. For example – for one person having a pet may be a struggle leading to additional stress whereas for the other it may be a stress buster.

Falling is not equal to failing, and even failing is not the end. It is merely a stepping stone to better and bigger things in life.

7 ways to pick yourself up

While falling down is almost inevitable, it is important to know about ways and strategies to pick yourself back up. Falling down does not mean you can not get back up, you might sometimes need others to help you up, but you are always capable of standing back up. Here are some ways to pick yourself back up!

Focus on the positives

We sometimes get so focussed on our losses, and failures that we forget to focus on our wins. No matter how small or inconsequential they may seem, focussing on and celebrating these small wins can change the way we view our life as well as feel about ourselves. It becomes a motivator to go for bigger wins.

Expressing gratitude for what you do have, instead of focussing on what you lost might be a helpful strategy. When something isn’t going well for us, one mistake we might end up making is generalising it to the entirety of our existence and indulging in catastrophic thinking

Breaking this generalization by shifting your focus onto things that are in fact going well or normally for you might help you change that perspective.

Maracus Aurelius Night time routine

To help you look at the brighter side of things in life, try to consciously adopt the Marcus Aurelius night time routine. It will help you phase out the negativity and fill you with a lot of hope and positivity as the process involves acknowledging and reflecting on your own feelings every single day.

Keep a tab on the good things in life

It is easier to forget and lose sight of the good things because as humans our general tendency is to focus on the negatives. They tend to last longer in our consciousness and take up more space in our head.

However, by consciously shifting our focus from these negatives towards the good things in life might be helpful. One strategy that can enable us to shift this focus is by making a list of everything that is going right.

This list could contain basic things like:

Having food to eat
Having a roof
Having a job
Being healthy
Having clothes to wear etc

Another helpful strategy to keep sight of these good thighs is regularly journalising. Small things that make you happy can surmount to bigger joys if remembered. Everytime we think of a memory, our brain is in fact recreating it.

Thus, keeping a journal where you record things that you were thankful for that day, or did right, and going back to it when you feel like nothing is going right may in fact end up helping in making you feel better about yourself and your day.

Reach out and seek support

This can not be stressed enough, one of the strongest risk factors for most mental illnesses is social withdrawal or isolation. It is important to seek support and reach out to your friends or family. If you feel like your friends or family are unable to understand or support you, reaching out to a mental health professional might also be helpful.

A third party perspective can be refreshing. Asking a friend to help you out when you’re struggling may enable them to actually be there for you, as without reaching out, people might not even be aware of what you are going through.

Talking to someone may end up bringing into your sights the good things in life you have forgotten about. They might help by bringing into focus the blessings that you’ve not been able to recognize because your eyes were clouded by everything that was not okay.

If someone reaches out to you, be mindful of conserving your energy and not taking care of someone’s mental health at the cost of your own.

Know what you can control

Often the downward spiral in our lives starts because we feel out of control of our life and everything seems to be going wrong. All the plans you had made seem to be failing you.

In such moments, it might help to take a few minutes and think about your situation. Think of the things that you can in fact control, no matter how tiny these things are. While you cannot control the bigger stressors in life, you can control the directions that your life is taking.

You may in fact be able to control the smaller things that add up and lead up to the bigger stressor. Feeling in charge ends up relieving some of the pressure that you have been feeling.

For example:

If the issue is related to not being able to adjust in a new location, although you cannot control where you move to as your job requires it, you can however control what you do in that new location.

If the issue is about not being able to lose weight due to a medical condition, you can in fact change your lifestyle into a more healthy one so weight does not become a problem for your health.

Be more active

Although we can not control what might end up happening in our life sometimes, we can however control how we choose to lead our life to a great extent.

Being more active in terms of indulging in exercise, maintaining a healthier lifestyle, eating balanced and nutritious meals that give you the energy to go through your daily activities are smalle examples ofs uch choices that can change the way we lead our lives.

exercise has multiple benefits. It can release endorphins, which are basically ‘feel good’ hormones. This can help you start your day on a good note. further, exercise can increase your blood flow throughout the day giving more energy to go through the tasks that you have set for the day.

Another way of staying active is playing a sport. sports can help you vent out the frustrations and aggression and become cathartic. Furthermore, most sports are played in company which can ultimately and inevitably make you feel like a part of a team.

Indulge in affirmative self talk

Sometimes when you cannot change your situation it might help to change your perception of that situation. changing your perception about how you view your life and yourself can revolutionize the way you lead your life.

One significant part of this is changing the way that you talk to yourself. when we indulge in negative self-talk, we end up harming our own self esteem and image that we hold of ourselves. it perpetuates a vicious cycle where a low self-esteem makes your mental health poorer and a bad mental health further deteriorates your self image.

When we talk to ourselves kindly, we may end up changing our self-image and self esteem and internalise notions of self- worth. This can have a positive impact on our mental health.

Further, when we talk to ourselves in an affirmative and kind manner, it acts as a motivator to go through tasks our poor self- esteem made us too afraid of. If we are kinder to ourselves even in the face of failure and indulge in self- dialogue that isn’t harming to our self- image, it can significantly improve our mental health.

Self- affirmations help us remind ourselves that we are in fact worthy of the good things, and we truly deserve to feel happiness.

Allow yourself to feel

One thing that becomes a blockage to not feeling okay, is actually not giving ourselves the liberty to feel negative emotions. We burden ourselves with the misconception that happiness means never experiencing negative emotions, when in fact happiness means a balance between the two and staying hopeful even in the worst situations.

Letting yourself feel the brunt of sadness, can in fact end up being cathartic as it ends up venting out these feelings and being done with them. Consciously repressing these feelings may end up causing more harm than good.

It may subconsciously alter the way we look at our life and ourselves and destroy our ability to be able to enjoy our happiness. If you are feeling a lot of stress at work, get a doctor’s note to sign off for stress and make time for self-care.

Conclusion

In this article we discussed 7 strategies to pick yourself back up when you are feeling down. We started by discussing what it is like to feel down, why you might feel so, and then discussed in some detail some ways to deal with these feelings.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Pick yourself back up

How do you mentally pick yourself back up?

Some packages that can be effective in making you mentally strong are focusing on the moment, exercising your mind, challenging yourself, building resilience, responding more positively, living in the moment, embracing adversity, etc.

How do I bring myself back to life?

Discussed as follows are things that can be helpful: let go of the need to please everyone around you, talk to yourself more kindly, build a Healthy lifestyle, focus on what you can in fact control.

How do I build myself up again?

To do so you need to visualise yourself as you want to be, give yourself affirmation, do things that challenge you, question your inner critic and be more kind to yourself, set yourself up to win and care for yourself.

How do I stop mentally beating myself up?

We need to realise that failure is a part of life and in fact inevitable. We need to learn from past mistakes but not Dwell on it.

How to accept my mistakes and move on?

5 ways to accept your mistakes are acknowledging the errors, asking yourself questions, making a plan that is more foolproof, allowing yourself to learn from your mistakes, and being more mindful of the choices that you make.

Why do I put myself down so much?

One reason you might put yourself down so much is because of your insecurity of being unworthy. when you talk to yourself more positively and believe that you are in fact worthy of having a better life you start working harder to achieve it.