Hello, greetings. Do you remember the last time you got in a funk? Great expression.
To get in a funk means that you’re just irritated. You’re just not happy, whatever has happened. And the whole day, it could be a whole week for that matter, you’re just put right off.
Now, couple of things here that I’d like to discuss. Firstly, people such as Sad Girl remind us that I’m in control of my day. When I wake up in the morning, I can decide whether it’s going to be a good day or a bad day.
So let’s say, for instance, I wake up, I haven’t slept very well, I forgot to do some task, my homework or something other like this, and I’m just irritated. I’m just put right off. So at that point, we hear, well, you could make your day great.
I disagree. I disagree totally. Don’t do this because I think free will, right?
I control my life. I think we need good days and we need bad days. These people that are perpetually happy, I don’t trust them because I think it’s just not true.
Some days I do feel bad. I do feel sick, right? So I’m not going to artificially force my attitude on me that I feel great because I don’t.
But I’ve made that decision. I think this is the secret point here. I have decided that this is going to be a bad day.
So when this comes to me and it will come to me sometimes, I cannot win every battle in the war. It would be ridiculous, right? So when a funk, if you will, comes to me, what’s the first thing I must do?
The first thing I must do, I believe, is accept it. It’s going to be a bad day. And then, of course, it’ll magnify.
You’re going to spill your coffee on your notes. Some other, you’re going to forget something just before your lecture. Your pants are not going to get done up properly.
You’re going to realize you haven’t got the proper colors on, et cetera, et cetera. It becomes a really bad day over time, right? I remember waking up one day, actually, it was quite funny.
My phone began to make a sound. It was like nothing and there was a white line across the screen. Nothing.
Couldn’t restart it. Finished. Relatively new phone, which was the added irritant.
Went to the computer. The computer did this one of those one, two, three, shut down. Wouldn’t restart.
Now, I realized that I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to technology, but my God, this was really painful. Now we have no communication, right?
And I reminded myself that what Jim Quick tells us, we better be remembering those phone numbers and et cetera, et cetera, if we’re going to try to function.
So anyhow, in my particular case, I did get the phone to the shop and at the shop, the man went, oh, oh, oh. I said, is that a good oh? He said, no, I’ve never seen this problem in the 10 years I’ve been fixing phones.
Nice to be an original, right? So anyhow, had to buy a new phone, but fortunately didn’t lose all my data. That was a blessing.
And eventually the day restarted. So the first thing I have to do is accept that it’s going to be a bad day.
And the second thing, which I think is really important, otherwise you’ll be giving your bad day to other people, and they’ll be giving it back, perhaps your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend.
If you’re in a funk, train yourself, train yourself to close your mouth. Just don’t say virtually anything. Try to isolate yourself, if possible, from other human beings.
Because if you spread this virus of negativity to other people, it’s going to come back. It’s going to come back and haunt you. So isolate yourself.
Second thing. Third thing, ultimately, I think, is also important, is that you have to realize in your mind, if I’m going to live an adventurous life, not every day can be a good day, as I said before.
And I think we should document these days in our notebook, right? It’s part of the endless journey of me, the great adventure we’ve spoken about before. So my life is an adventure.
And if you take any great, interesting and successful people or person, they had bad days. And sometimes they document them.
Churchill tells us about 10 years in the political wilderness, before he once again became Prime Minister and saved the world in 1940, right? Made his famous speech. We will fight them on the beaches.
We will fight them in the fields. We will fight them on the landing ground. We will never surrender.
And I think we have to be somewhat similar, right? And then I think finally, remember we talked about this before, situation comedy? If you’re really feeling distressed, right?
Which all of us get this way for sure. Find that situation comedy and try to bolster your mood. Now, in an emergency mood, in an emergency, if I have to give a speech, I feel in a funk, wake up in the morning, coffee and all this nonsense.
But I’ve got to teach a class and be positive or give a speech and be positive. I really believe in the exercise of promoting your natural opiates, your endorphins.
Breathe in, hold for four, breathe out, hold for four, and do it again four times, the four times four. And it will elevate your mood over time. It’s short lived, unfortunately, isn’t it?
Right? But we hear these stories, you know, in history of people being perpetually angry, like a boss. I worked for a man literally that all he did was scream.
Screamed at his employees, and employees were extremely well paid in this given profession. So they tolerated this screaming. They didn’t scream at me, I don’t know why really, but he screamed at everybody else.
My God, it was terrible to watch, right? Abusive screaming.
I thought to myself at the time as well that, wow, that poor soul inside his heart has got to be really suffering, because I think people like that, people that are in a perpetual state of anxiety or frustration, always finding problems, whatever it
is, it’s not healthy. And you know, we’re told as quote unquote positive human beings that we need positive friends and we need positive experiences, not every day for sure, but on an ongoing basis we do have to seek the positive aspects of life,
because positive ism, if I can put it in with a small p, right, is actually like the cream on top of the milk. We want to rise to the best, because we’re going to have some really terrible situations in life, right?
And are we going to respond and get out of our funk in a positive way? Are we just going to give up, become a victim? And the minute we are a victim, the door is open.
What tragedy can befall us really? And we invite, I really believe this, we invite the negativity at this point. This is not a funk.
This is something more serious for sure. We’re inviting the negativity of the world to descend upon us. And it will.
You ever notice people that are angry or frustrated or these kinds of people invite the problems? They’re always sick, there’s always some tragedy, they’re losing their girlfriend, losing their money. Just goes on, right?
Avoid this, avoid this, because my consciousness, once again, is my own, isn’t it? I determine, and yes, we have the givens, I am a man, I am sort of white, and all of those things, right? But the rest is up to me.
It really is, and constantly we hear this from successful people. I overcame whatever it was, right? I was reading an article the other day on a woman who survived one of the death camps.
Psychiatrist, she was in a death camp for four years. Four years, I thought to myself, wow, where was I four years ago? Four years ago, I was in India for a vacation.
I was in Poland, I was in Canada, right? I was in Europe. You know, I wasn’t enslaved, being ground to death, work to death in a quote unquote death camp, which is only mission is to exact the maximum amount of energy out of me and then kill me.
I never had that experience and no fortunately did you, God willing, right? So when you have a bad day, when you are quote unquote in a funk, remember, recognize it. It does exist.
Don’t pass it on. Realize it’s probably a temporary state and in a state of crisis. Once again, you can go and look for situation comedy and do the four times four, right?
Promote yourself. Why not? And enjoy this experience called life.
Everyone will have things that they will do differently given another life, but you don’t. You don’t have another life. You have this life, this life.
And in this life, there can be no regrets. No regrets, only lessons. The people that you’ve hurt, the people that you’ve insulted, the bad things you have done, which I’m sure all of us have done things that we consider bad, right?
So just to end, I’ll leave you with a thought.
Carl Jung says as we age, because obviously I’m an older man, Carl Jung says we need essentially four things. The first thing we need is we have to become thoughtful, introspective people, right?
Secondly, we have to remember that we are on a mission, probably a new mission, but never retire, right? Thirdly, we have to face our shadow, the dark side that we all have and overcome that, right?
Overcome, whatever it is, the concept of lessons, not regrets. And finally, we have to accept that this is a mortal life, a magnificent life, very, very, very, very long, but a mortal life, right?
And if we do these four things, we have individuation, as he describes it, we are becoming essentially an integrated person, which is our role in life, isn’t it?
So once we leave here, our being, however you interpret this, can end up in the unconscious, right? The unconscious of the universe, and we can find our own way, right? Why am I here?
What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here?
So think of your funk, kind of fun, and you know what they say, you know what they say, critical thinking is everything, especially if you’re going to overcome your funk, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless.
Bye bye.