How to Handle Life Throwing You a Curveball
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How feeling our feelings and shifting our perspective can support us
⋒ What it means when we have to make a pivot in order to give ourselves margin
⋒ All 5 steps to handling the curveballs that life throws at us
You’re just living your peacefully productive life… going about your business and then seemingly out of nowhere:
– Your car gets totaled and you now have to budget to buy a new car
– Your toddler who’s been sleeping through the night for months starts waking up 3 times a night and you haven’t slept well in weeks
– You get a call from your mom telling you that your grandpa was just diagnosed with cancer
– You get let go from your job
– Your partner comes home and tells you they got a promotion but that it requires your family to move across the country
Curveballs come in all shapes and sizes and they don’t discriminate. So how can we stay in the game when life throws a curveball at us?
5 Step to Take When Life Throws You a Curve Ball
Step 01: Feel your feelings
To be honest, I think this is the most important step of them all – letting yourself feel whatever feelings are coming up for you once the curveball has been thrown. I don’t know about you but I grew up burying my feelings..avoiding them/pretending everything was fine and just trying to power through and carry on without processing.
TURNS OUT that is incredibly damaging and that ignoring/burying our feelings leads to:
Physical health issues
Chronic stress from unresolved emotions can lead to a range of physical health issues, including increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, and memory difficulties
Mental health issues
Emotional numbing can lead to feelings of detachment, apathy, and lack of interest in activities that once brought joy
Relationship issues
Hiding your emotions can prevent clear communication and limit relationship-building
(Here is the article from the CALDA Clinic stating this research if you want to dig deeper!)
But speaking from personal experience, anytime I’ve given myself space to feel and process my feelings, I’m able to move forward with more grace for myself and the situation.
I imagine a windshield with a little crack in it. A small rock might’ve hit it and created the crack… doesn’t feel like a big deal so you ignore it. Then you’re driving and a few weeks later another little rock hits the spot where the crack is and the crack crawls farther across the windshield. You still just keep driving and don’t address the crack. A few weeks later, you’re driving and a piece of hail hits the crack and it now stretches the length of your entire windshield… but you let it go and keep going. Then a few weeks later, you’re behind a garbage truck and a piece of something flies out pelts the crack and your windshield shatters.
This is what I imagine happens to our hearts when we ignore stuff instead of taking the time to address it. Little pings keep causing the crack to grow until we break.
Let yourself feel mad.
Let yourself be really sad.
Let yourself feel hurt.
Feelings are not bad. Feelings are indicators that something is going on in our hearts that need our attention.
You can feel your feelings without letting them dictate your behavior. I think that when we let ourselves feel our feelings and we take time to process them, we handle the situation in a healthier way.
So that’s step 1: let yourself feel your feelings.
Step 02: Shift your perspective
Perspective is your point of view. What’s wild to me about perspective is that no matter what circumstances are happening around us, we have the ability to shift our point of view. To change what we are focusing on…and that is powerful.
When I’m in the midst of working through a curveball, I have an affirmation that I cling to: “Peace is a heart posture – it does not come from circumstances. Peace is my perspective.”
Sometimes, you hit a home run when you swing at a curveball – how’s that for a perspective shift?
I was reading a story about a woman who had a son who was born blind. She shared how devastated she was when she found out that he couldn’t see. She said she was focusing so much on what he son’s life should be that she was completely blocking the view of all that his life could be.
That gives me chills!
Good things are gonna happen in your life.
Crappy things are gonna happen in your life.
But you always get to decide how you’re going to perceive everything.
The woman from the story above also shared a question that I want to end this step with: when life throws you a curveball, ask yourself, “Am I focusing on what this should be (loss), instead of seeing it as an opportunity for what could be (gain)?”
And I’ll be honest… sometimes it’s gonna feel tough to find a gain in a particular situation. You might have to dig a few layers deep to find something. I’m not telling you to subscribe to toxic positivity – I’m just encouraging you to harness the power of perspective.
Step 03: Create space in your life.
A lot of the time, when we are working through a curveball, we need to pivot. You need space in order to pivot.
I know some of y’all are out there thinking about the Friends episode where Ross, Chandler, and Rachel are trying to move a couch and they’re on the staircase… Ross is yelling “PIVOT!” but they literally do not have enough room to move the couch around the corner of the staircase.
When our lives are bursting at the seams with to-dos, events, etc. it becomes really difficult to pivot… because we don’t have any wiggle room.
As the manager of your own life, it’s your job to create space – or what I like to call, margin.
Margin is intentional, unscheduled, white space on your calendar.
Listen, making room to pivot is part of planning. You can’t book something for every minute of every day. Even if that means that you’ve got to clear a few things off of your plate…no one is giving you an award for spreading yourself too thin. And FYI, sometimes this means saying no to good things. You might have to take your name off the volunteer list at church or your kid’s school for this season – but just think about future you…the you that is living a life that has wiggle room and isn’t bursting at the seams. I know I show up differently when I have wiggle room – I’m more patient, more grounded, and more present.
I’ve shared this before but there is a list of projects that I am SO excited to pursue for Hustle Sanely but I’m saying “not right now” to them in the name of keeping margin in my life. I’d rather take on the projects at a slower pace and keep white space in my life than try to cram everything in at once and not feel like I have any breathing room.
One thing I highly recommend is creating margin in your schedule now, before a curveball comes, so that when one does come, you’re not stuck having to process the curveball and trying to maneuver your schedule around to make space to deal with whatever the curveball is.
Leave some breathing room in your schedule so that when a curveball comes your way, you can take a mental health day without feeling like your whole life is going to come crashing in on itself.
Step 04: Redefine how you’re gonna show up in this season
Say it with me y’all… our schedules and routines are tools, not chains. When life throws you a curveball, you can’t always expect yourself to show up the same as you were before the curveball was thrown.
Instead of getting mad at yourself or being rude to yourself and saying things like, “My life is such a mess.” or “I’m so bad at sticking to routines.” You have to redefine how you’re going to show up – because the way you were showing up before the curveball was thrown might not make sense or support you after the curveball comes.
I like to think of it like this:
You have your “thriving self standard”… how you show up when life is going great.
And you have your “surviving self” standard… how you show up when life’s hard.
So often we only pay attention to the “thriving self” standard and try to show up like that when life is hard and we’ve just been thrown a curveball – which doesn’t make sense! How can you expect yourself to show up the same on the days when you get 8 hours of sleep versus the days you got 4 because your baby kept waking up?
How can you expect yourself to show up the same as you normally do during a time of crisis? It’s not feasible or healthy to have that expectation on yourself.
One of the quotes in the 2024 planners is something along the lines of “Your best looks different every day and that’s okay.”
You need to have a baseline standard…aka how you’re gonna show up when you’re in survival mode – so that you’re still taking care of yourself but in a way that is sustainable for a hard day or hard season.
Step 05: Lean on your community.
You were not created to do life alone. You’re not living alone on a deserted island so stop acting like you are and lean on your community. Talk to your spouse, friends, and family. Let them in on what’s going on in your life. Process with them and ask for support.
When life throws you a curveball, look at the dugout and see who is on your team.
And hey listen, if this is tough for you, I GET IT. I’m not a naturally outgoing person. I’m not the friend who is good at juggling a ton of friendships and checking in with everyone on the regular. I tend to hold things in and keep them to myself for longer than I should to be healthy. Asking for help isn’t my default. I’m not the friend who is great at getting together on a whim. BUT — I know that I am stronger and show up better for my life when I’m not trying to carry everything by myself so I make a point to prioritize my community in a way that works for me.
As an introvert, it’s way too easy for me to isolate myself. What helps me is creating routines that help me intentionally show up for my people. Because when I regularly show up for my community, they know what’s going on in my life and can be there to support me. And vice versa.
Some examples of these routines look like:
~ My husband and I have 2 date nights a month where we get a sitter and spend quality time with each other and can chat about anything on our hearts.
~ I started a recurring monthly girls’ night with my group of girlfriends.
~ My bestie and I go on a walk every Wednesday morning with our girls.
All of these things are woven into my life… I don’t have to think about them. I just get to show up and for an introvert that’s helpful. There’s predictability so I can mentally prepare myself to be social (lol).
That is what I’ve got for y’all today – 5 steps to lean on when life throws you a curveball. Let’s recap them:
Step 01: Feel your feelings.
Step 02: Shift your perspective.
Step 03: Create space in your life.
Step 04: Redefine how you’re gonna show up in this season.
Step 05: Lean on your community.
Be kind to yourself when a curveball comes your way… give yourself time and space to process it instead of pretending that everything is okay or that it isn’t a big deal. You deserve support so don’t be afraid to ask for it!
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