When Life Feels Overwhelming

Sometimes life can be overwhelming, with no end in sight for release from the situation. But even in these most challenging situations, we have choices that we can make to improve our situation. Even if we just create little reprieves from the problem, our lives will be better.

Transcript

Welcome to the happiness podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Since I've been a teenager,

I've been going to the gym quite consistently.

It's a normal part of my life.

It's a normal part of my routine and I'm there quite often.

Well,

When you go to the gym like I do,

You run into people,

You meet people,

You see people.

Well,

There was one man that I used to see go in there and he was a retired doctor and he worked out pretty often when I was there.

He was usually there.

And then about two years ago,

I stopped seeing him for about a month or two.

He just stopped coming in.

I didn't know what happened.

And then he was back,

But now he was back with a walker.

So clearly he probably had a stroke or heart attack.

I didn't ask.

I just see him and I didn't want to be intrusive.

But over the past two years,

He's been coming in with that walker regularly.

He still uses a walker.

He needs it,

But he still comes to the gym.

So even though he has fairly major health problems that he needs a walker to get around,

He still comes to the gym regularly to take care of himself and work out.

Well,

Because I get up early to go to the gym,

You see the people that are out and about in the morning doing their exercise.

Well,

There's one man that lives in my neighborhood.

I don't know him,

But I see him often,

Usually at least once a week.

And he,

Over the years,

Every day that I see him is out walking and clearly walking quite a distance.

But when I first began to see him,

He was clearly an older man and walked slowly and he was heavy.

And yet he walked.

He walked regularly,

Clearly.

I'm pretty sure every day,

Because some days I'll see him like two or three days in a row.

Well again,

He too,

Something happened.

And now he first started using a cane.

And now when I see him,

He uses a walker and he walks incredibly slowly,

But he still gets out and walks every day.

And I'm sharing these two stories,

Not to encourage everyone to get out and go to the gym or work out.

I mean,

That is good for us,

But I'm looking at the bigger picture.

See in life,

Sometimes we get hits.

We get really tough things that happen to us.

Some of us are born with maladies that are very challenging and we have to struggle to live with them throughout our entire lives.

Others of us,

Life throws things at us and it's challenging.

Sometimes it's accidents.

Sometimes it's illness.

Sometimes it's mental illness.

Some people,

When they turn into their teenage,

They start developing symptoms of schizophrenia or manic depression.

And these are very challenging,

Very serious disorders.

Sometimes because of the way our body changes,

We struggle with keeping our weight off.

Sometimes because we get an injury at work or when we're just out and about,

We now have to live with constant pain.

Sometimes we go through things that emotionally just wipe us out.

Our children and I,

Our best partner and friend ask us for a divorce.

There are a lot of things in life that can hit us and can hit us very hard and even feel overwhelming.

And as you know,

On this podcast,

We're talking about how to have really good lives,

Self-actualized lives,

Where we're really steeping ourselves in a state of peacefulness and happiness on a fairly consistent basis.

But what do we do when we clearly have actual things like a clearly psychological disorder or a physical disorder that no matter what we do,

We're probably going to have to live with for the rest of our lives?

What do we do in these situations,

Dr.

Puff?

Before I answer that,

I want to share another story,

Someone I know quite well.

She grew up in the Midwest like I did,

And she was a superb basketball player.

And it was her life.

She loved it.

She was passionate about it.

She went off to university and played at university level basketball.

So she was very good at it.

Well,

During the summer when she was back visiting her family,

She was out with a friend and they were driving.

And unfortunately,

They were drinking and they got in an accident.

Her friend died and my friend got paralyzed from the waist down and has never been able to walk.

Now you may think,

Wow,

Her life is over.

She'll never play basketball again and she'll be miserable.

But that actually isn't what happened.

She got into playing basketball in a wheelchair and it's been playing now for decades.

She loves it and actually teaches other women how to play basketball in a wheelchair.

She didn't throw in the towel and give up.

She found ways to keep herself active,

Even with a severe disability.

So life sometimes throws us things that are very hard.

And at the time seemed like there's no end in sight.

I believe in these situations,

We have two choices.

We can throw in the towel.

What do I mean by that?

Well,

Don't we all know people who had something tragic happen to them and they just metaphorically threw in the towel.

That means they gave up.

Maybe they turned to prescription drugs that were not good for them,

Painkillers.

Maybe they started drinking.

Maybe they just stayed home for the rest of their lives and never went out and just watched television all day.

Maybe they've ended up homeless and gone down that path.

I mean,

We all know people that had tragedies happen to them,

Tough things happen to them.

And we're not negating that,

But they just gave up.

Now we can do that.

I think a lot of people do.

And it's very tempting to do that because when life is overwhelming,

We just want to crawl into a hole,

Tuck our head and have it go away.

The problem with it is it's not going away.

We can somewhat numb it through the things we're doing,

But the problems when we numb them get worse.

They don't get better.

Or we can do this.

Yes,

We can admit that what we have may not be going away for a while,

Perhaps for the rest of our lives,

But we can still do things that are good for us,

That improve us to make us better physically being active.

Like the three examples I gave,

We can make sure that a lot of things that we're learning here in the Happiness Podcast,

Like being around positive people,

Watching positive shows,

Listening to things that are positive and uplifting,

That we do these things.

We can eat healthy to make sure our bodies are doing their best to help us through this tough time.

There's just so many things we can do that are good for us,

Even though it may make only incremental differences,

But these incremental differences are worth it.

Because if we don't do that and we numb ourselves,

That's just a very sad life.

And I don't believe we're here to have a sad life.

I know some of us,

Trust me,

I've worked with many that have very hard lives,

But we can't give up.

We're here to do our best,

No matter what life throws us.

And that may mean that the things we do only give us temporary relief from what we're suffering with.

I know that,

But that temporary relief is a relief.

It's a pause from the constant suffering that we're going through.

And we need those pauses.

As long as we're given a little bit of hope along the way,

We can do well.

And hope is important.

If we give up hope and we stop trying to make little improvements,

Maybe they're not going to make a huge one.

Maybe even with doing them,

We're still going to be in physical pain or going to be in psychological pain,

But we still do them because that's our job.

I believe we're here to do the best that we can do.

And some of us are dealt very difficult deck of cards when it comes to life.

They're challenging things that they have to try to overcome and possibly never overcome.

So in these situations,

It's doing our best,

Living with that which we cannot overcome.

It's like my doctor friend at the gym.

He still goes to the gym.

He could have said,

I had a stroke.

Why even try anymore?

I'm giving up on the gym.

This is ridiculous.

I'm never going to be in shape again.

But he's there and he's not moving very quickly and he's not lifting heavy weights,

But he's there.

And I believe that our purpose is not necessarily to understand why our lives have turned out the way they have,

But to do the best with what we've been given.

And throughout history,

Life has been really hard.

If you go back,

People's lives were awful,

Putrid.

And yet there are many of them that had exquisite lives.

Yes,

They were hard,

But they did really well with life.

And I want to share something that you may not have heard of,

But it's true.

You can study it.

There's a term called asceticism.

It's based on the spiritual practice of living an ascetic life,

Which basically means it's a rigorous self-denial,

Whether it be physical or even psychological,

In order to grow spiritually.

So for example,

I'm sure you've heard of St.

Francis of Assisi.

He's a very famous Christian mystic who lived a life of asceticism and he lived a short life because he really pushed his body hard.

But in the process of doing that,

He's one of the most evolved people that have ever lived.

Within the Christian community,

Many people consider him second only to Jesus in regards to how he lived his life.

If you've ever been to India,

You'll see men walking around,

Sometimes completely naked,

Sometimes holding an arm up,

Sometimes standing on one leg for days,

Months,

Even years doing things like this.

And we may think that's crazy,

But they're doing that to overcome the physical pain in order to achieve spiritual enhancement.

I'm not encouraging anyone to do the things that I'm talking about here,

But I am demonstrating or at least showing that there are people choosing to have very difficult lives in order to hopefully grow spiritually.

Now we may not agree with this,

But even now,

Have you ever seen the video where people actually sit in or dive into extremely ice cold water?

And not for just a second or two,

But for a while in order to enhance their experience and deal with that intense pain.

But they do it for experiences.

Now we may,

Again,

Not agree with it,

But we know people that do that.

Or how about a marathon runner?

I mean,

My goodness,

Could you imagine running 26 miles in one day?

I did it once and I was wiped out for a month afterwards.

And yet people choose to do these things to not let their body win.

And I think the key of life is when we face challenges,

We're not going to let them win.

We're going to overcome them.

Again,

We're not going to defeat them,

But then we're not going to let them control our lives or make our lives miserable.

We're going to say,

I know I may have to live with this.

I don't know how long,

If we've lost a limb,

It may be for the rest of our lives.

But whatever we're struggling with,

We're not going to let it defeat us.

We're going to work towards taking care of ourselves,

Doing healthy things,

Exposing ourselves to healthy things like this happiness podcast so that we improve our lives.

And yes,

We may only get pockets,

Truly just pockets of relief from our suffering,

But that's what we do.

We embrace those pockets.

We're thankful for them.

And when the pain returns,

When the suffering comes back,

We say this too will pass because at some point,

No matter how much we suffer,

There is an end to everyone's life.

I talked about that recently.

And so we live well one day at a time.

And sometimes when it's tough,

One breath at a time.

And that's what we do.

We keep moving forward.

We keep doing things that create some goodness in our life,

Some relief.

We don't throw in the towel and just give up.

We keep doing our part.

If we are moving one 50th of what we used to do,

We still move like the man in my neighborhood.

I mean,

You won't believe how slowly he walks with his Walker,

But he still walks every day.

That's what we do.

We don't give up.

We say,

Okay,

Life.

Okay.

God,

You've given me this challenge.

I'm not going to let it overcome me.

I'm going to do my part.

That's all I can do.

I hope someday they come up with a cure to get me better,

But until they do,

I'm not going to give up.

And that's your mantra.

We're not going to give up.

We're going to do things throughout the day to make sure we're healthy,

As best we can be physically,

Psychologically,

Again,

Being around people that are loving,

Supportive,

Being especially careful what we watch,

What we listen to all day long.

What are we watching on our phones?

What are we looking at on YouTube?

These things matter.

Are they supportive?

Are they uplifting?

Are they dark?

Are they negative?

Are we spending a lot of time on the news?

Are we doing things that are really making our experience of life worse?

Because everything that we expose ourselves to matters.

And then one last thing,

Please be careful not to compare yourself to your past self or other people.

That's the path of suffering.

When we say,

Well,

They have so much more,

Or I used to be able to do this.

I wasn't in pain like this before.

That's the path of suffering.

Just focus on doing what you can do now to be better.

That's your focus in the present moment,

Here and now.

That's how we make our lives better.

Again,

I know when we're overwhelmed,

When it's really tough,

And when there may be no end in sight,

It can be very challenging.

So that's where focusing on the here and now,

Keeping ourselves in the present,

And doing everything that we can do to make our lives a little bit better is worth it.

Just sending love to all the listeners right now who are truly overwhelmed.

I know it's hard.

I send you much love,

And I'll continue to produce,

Hopefully,

Podcasts that will be helpful for you in making each and every day a little bit better.

Peace.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is love.

Reviews

Thank you😊✨️

Needed this, thank you❤️🙏🏽

Amazing thank you & many blessings to you.

Really inspiring talk. The emphasis on both staying present and not letting our adversities win were really empowering. This is a great reminder to remain resilient through it all.

Thank you for this powerful talk. Life is what we make it.

Your talks truly do help. Thank you.

🙏🏾😊💕

Don’t give up. St. Francis’ focus on the present moment: https://www.oblates.org/updates/the-present-moment

It inspired me to keep doing what I am doing 🧘🏻‍♀️❤️🧘🏻‍♀️

Consistency in making life better, yes. Dr. Puff empowers us. Thank you, sir.

That was amazing, I’m in there. I see myself. I fell again two days ago !!
My Walker is coming out more. Bless you for your inspirational podcast.