Perhaps you stepped on the scale and saw a number that made you want to cry. Maybe your bank account can’t support a food habit, your three best clients quit you, your significant other left you, or some other heart-rending, life-changing event has occurred. Or, maybe NOTHING has happened and that is the problem.

Whatever is making you feel like a crumpled paper towel left at the bottom of the trash can, it’s not a fun way to feel, and once you find yourself in a downward spiral it can be extremely difficult to make necessary changes and get yourself rotating in the right direction. Even thinking about that word, “changes,” can increase the speed of your descent. It’s just so overwhelming.

I’ve found myself in that unhappy spiral, rapidly spinning toward some unseen, terrifying “bottom” more than once. In fact, since I have a pretty active and detail-oriented imagination, it happens almost weekly. I imagine

tripping, stubbing my toe, developing gangrene, having my leg amputated, not being able to exercise, gaining a hundred pounds, developing diabetes and heart disease, not having health insurance, declaring bankruptcy, losing my house and car, and living on the streets until I die in a ditch of a heart attack. Or something like that.

When these scenarios start playing in my mind, they multiply like cobwebs on the ceiling, getting thicker and nastier by the minute. Obviously, since I continue to get out of bed and go on living most days, I’ve figured out how to stop the madness and carry on. Okay, it would be more accurate to say I’ve figured out how to muffle the madness. It never really stops. I won’t lie to you and say that it does.

The first step is to take a shower and put on real clothes. It’s certainly acceptable, maybe even advisable, to spend a day here and there, now and then, just wearing your jammies and laying around. When you grumble because you are being forced to put on pants more than once a week or so, you should probably start forcing yourself to get dressed daily for a while. And if someone mentions that they are a little worried about you because you seem to have stopped brushing your hair, it might be a good idea to take a look in a mirror.

Once you are clean, and dressed, the rest is easy. Just do one tiny thing to improve your situation. When my house is a mess, I sweep the floor. It’s amazing how much difference a swept floor makes. When I feel like my business is failing, I write one blog post, send one email, or make one phone call. Just do one little thing.

Doing one small thing might not fix whatever your problem is, and you might feel like all you are doing is throwing a teaspoon of water on a raging fire, but then again, doing that one thing could make you feel better. When you get right down to it, that’s what you need as you imagine yourself tumbling toward failure – you need to feel better.

Once you feel a tiny bit better, you can go on to choosing a second tiny thing to do, but when you feel crushed by the weight of all those tasks waiting for you, don’t think about them. Just choose one and take care of it. If you can’t do anything else, that’s okay, you can choose another small thing for later, or even for tomorrow. But eventually, you are going to want to do a second small thing, and then – surprise! – you are spinning in the right direction again.

 

 

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Years ago, every time I had to drive I’d get sick. Eventually, I just started riding the bus, walking or

begging someone else to drive me wherever I needed to go. This was before it was a law in TN that all drivers had to be insured, and at a time when purchasing insurance would have meant not eating for our family.

 

Our cars were tricky to drive. Things like brakes that had to be pumped a precise number of times before you wanted to actually stop, toggle switches, gears that shifted from 4th to 1st instead of the normal standard H pattern and doors that only opened from the outside defined our driving experiences.

 

Combine the lack of insurance and operating a barely functional vehicle with a little road construction or rush hour traffic and what you got was a hivey, anxiety-ridden dava, who thought she was going to throw up pretty much all the time.

 

Fear. Everyone feels it is some situations, and sometimes – like driving during my poor college years – it is justifiable and even desirable. Fear can act as a sort of built-in risk mitigator, but if you are running a business and you let fear paralyze you, your income will suffer. The further your income falls, the scarier it is and an ugly downward spiral can ensue.

 

Being a generally worried kind of person who also happens to have a ridiculously vivid imagination, I’m learning to recognize and deal with fear. Usually, I hesitate to talk about being afraid because it can be a little humiliating to publicly announce you are a wienie, but I was inspired by the courage Marian Schembari and her blog post about being proactive.

 

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

1. The first thing is to realize that you are afraid of something. It’s easier to think you are staring listlessly at another hand of solitaire because you are a slacker than it is to admit that you are too afraid to do anything else.

2. It helps to do something unrelated to whatever is scaring you but that is still a personal challenge. Progress towards a goal stiffens the spine. I’ve given myself 30 day challenges, trained for a 5K, and taken on volunteer gigs as a way to gently push myself toward being just a little more courageous.

3. Talk to somebody who is likely to understand why you are afraid. Just reading Marian’s post and the comments on it made me feel better. It’s easier to talk about what’s bothering you than it is to put on a show for your peers and colleagues. Choose someone trustworthy who will listen.

4. Face it head on and deal. This one is hard, but if you set a certain time each day to just suck it up and deal with whatever it is for an hour – or even 10 minutes – you will find it far easier as time goes on. It helps some people to actually put it on the calendar.

5. Write out the absolute worst case scenario, imagining exactly how every little detail would feel. Usually, it’s not as bad as we think. The specter is often much worse than the actuality – not always, but most of the time.

 

That’s all I’ve come up with at this point. How do you handle it when you are afraid?

 

 

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I read an article several years ago about a community that subsisted off of a trash heap.  “Trash heap” doesn’t quite cover it–this was more like a trash mountain.  The people who lived near it collected clothing to resell as rags, aluminum cans, and anything else they could use to make a living.  It was a sad story; I don’t remember the magazine or the name of the country because I couldn’t stand to think about it too much.

Landfills are overwhelming.  The cost to the environment is probably incalculable, and the cost to the people who live near or even in all that garbage cannot be gauged.  Today, I read something that inspired me to think we may be able to conquer and vanquish the landfills.  Human ingenuity is boundless and if enough smart people are working to change the way we deal with waste, particularly if they find a way to profit from that waste, then maybe some good will come of it.

Today Fastcompany.com posted an article called “A New Breed of Eco-Designers Reimagines the Detritus of Our Daily Lives.”  While many of the items featured in the article are too expensive for most people to use daily, (I certainly can’t afford $6.50 per 8 disposable plates-what if you were serving 50 at a party?), they do have the power to impact how we think about the way we use disposable items.

Of course, the best option is to not use disposable items: wash dishes, use refillable pens, compost your pizza boxes, and on and on.  It’s nearly impossible, though, to work, raise kids, run a household, have a social life and make time to wash cloth diapers, use a rotary mower and otherwise avoid Earth-damaging shortcuts.  Convenience has its price, but it’s also, well, convenient.

The items in the article are both convenient and avoid flagrant contribution to the landfills, and, most importantly, are being marketed through avenues that will reach a large population.   There are few people who choose to purchase items that are bad for the planet.  Instead, those decisions are driven by price and (again!) convenience.

I have a friend who always buys styrofoam disposable plates because they are cheaper than paper.  She knows perfectly well that paper plates could be composted but feels she simply cannot afford to spend any extra on what is already a luxury item.  The most recent scourge of the environment, plastic water bottles, are a problem because they are just so darn easy to use.

Designers are making a good start, but now the rest of us have to carry through by making a few simple changes in our habits and in what we put in our shopping carts.  Then, maybe we’ll begin to see the trash mountains of the world shrinking.

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