Week Forty-nine – Highs & Lows!

One minute you are up, then the next you are down; life can be such a roller coaster!

Have you ever got out of bed and felt like you were right on top of the world? Some times we do, we “get out of bed on the right side” and we feel the world is at our feet. Some times we also have important events which we work hard for and when you reach the end result and you’ve done a good job, again you feel on top of the world; what a lovely feeling that is, the “Highs” in our lives.

But on the other side some times we also encounter the “Lows” that brings us right back down and you may even hit “rock bottom”. These events often take place right at the start of our day, and we get that feeling of “getting out of bed on the wrong side” setting us off to have a series of disasters which makes our day get worse and worse. We may even look for the 3^rd event to take place so we can get out of this bad patch; you know, the “things come in three” feeling.

We all go through these feelings and emotions in our lives; it’s part of being a human. But have you ever experienced Highs and Lows on the same day? Yes I am talking about hitting high and low in 24 hours, and I mean very high and then rock bottom! If you’ve never experienced this, it can be emotionally draining and leave you feeling completely disoriented! One moment is good and then it all goes bad! So how do you deal with this? How do you keep your wits about you and survive? Not easy as it all happens too quickly and that feeling of disorientation and dizziness lingers for a long time. I guess it’s what they call in show business “your 15 minutes of fame”; one moment you are the talk of town and then no one wants to know you!

So if think you’ve never experience this before let me give you some examples to help you understand what I am talking about. I guess the most obvious one would be when you get some good news in the morning follow by bad news! You get that phone call from your boss informing you will be getting a pay rise for all your hard work and dedication to the company; you hit a High here. And then you get a call from home to let you know the house is flooded and it’s not covered by your insurance! You’re on a Low now. That would be a real rollercoaster of emotions all in a very short space of time!

We often experience this at work too; I know I have. You’ve been working hard on a piece of work or a project, which you hand in and get praised for the excellent effort. At that moment you feel good, accomplished and ready to take on the world! You are on top of your game and you can’t get enough of it! And then boom! Something goes wrong, you make a mistake, something that should have been done or looked at was not and now you find yourself having to own up to it and fix it! All the “high” from the good work you did is gone and you are scratching the bottom of the barrel trying to get out of the situation you find yourself in! You no longer have the glory but the guilt, no longer the praise but the questions, you now feel emotionally drained because your adrenaline has gone from very high levels of excitement to very high levels of stress and your body can’t take it any more! Talk about a rollercoaster! You have just been on one and you had a front row seat!

But you know what they say? Life is a rollercoaster and you have to ride it. Remember that which does not kill you can only make you stronger! To get through these emotions in one day and come out the other side in one piece you need to stay together and focus on the task ahead. Get off your high ride and focus on your low drive. At the end of the day you only have one option – fix it and move on. Don’t dwell on the past and what you could have done, that’s all gone.  Your passed successes are there to support your mistakes, don’t just ride on the glory days, but drive the tough times too. Everything is a balance, and ok you are now deep down, but surely someone will remember what you did this morning too!

That’s the balance in life; “Highs” and “Lows” are there to help you be better at what you do. Highs remind us of what we can do well and achieve, it is a way to re-charge the batteries and leave evidence that there is something good we have to offer. Lows help us remember we are also human and sometimes things will go wrong, we will make mistakes and we need to learn from them using the experiences to better ourselves. In a way the lows permit us to learn and produce more highs as a result of these experiences, they need to exits for highs to be created. Without one the other does not exist. I guess no one can ride a rollercoaster that only goes up, it will eventually run out of track and then you face a massive drop. I rather have lots of reasonable highs and lows to make it fun and more interesting!

I’m grateful for all the experiences I have in my life. Not only do they help me learn and become better but also they are great sources of inspiration for my writing! This is week forty-nine of my yearly blog challenge, I only have three more to write before I am done, and believe me when you have written forty-eight weeks, it seems that subjects are begging to dry up! Thank goodness for that rollercoaster called life with its Highs and Lows, without it I’d be thinking, “what am I going to write about this week?”