Life Is Unfair – But Here’s How To Stack The Odds In Your Favour

“I knew I had to snap out of it, to stop feeling sorry for myself. It was only then that I felt I could meet this challenge.”

Mike¹ was reflecting on his journey to recovery after living with M.E./Chronic Fatigue. He was speaking to me and many others like me back in 2006, in his role as an “expert patient”. After regaining his health, he’d returned to the hospital as a star witness, to encourage the rest of us that we could get better too. I’d been ill for two years by then and needed hope to cling to.

To me, Mike’s words were inspiring especially as he was honest with us all about his mental struggle with the condition. However, it was instructive that even after listening to what he had to say, some people returned to talking about how much the illness affected them. Their focus was on the injustice of what had happened and how terrible their experience of it was. 

Take Time To Adjust

When the worst that life has to offer happens, it’s quite normal to take time to recover. In cases of bereavement especially we need time to grieve, to reflect on our loss and begin the process of adjusting to life without our loved one. We are only human after all and it would be highly unlikely if such things didn’t affect us emotionally and mentally.

At this point, it’s important to remember that all life involves suffering. Buddhists discovered this 2,500 years ago and named it as the first of their noble truths. In other words, suffering is not something we can avoid and in the Buddhist tradition, neither should we try to. The challenge for us is how to accept the suffering into our lives and what to do with it once it’s there.

Be Like A Hippo

Perhaps for lesser challenges, one strategy is what the motivational speaker Paul McGee refers to as “hippo time”. This memorable name refers to our human need to feel the pain and “wallow” in our emotions following a setback.

Crucially, Paul makes it clear that there is also a time to stop feeling sorry for yourself, a point at which we must move on. In cases of bereavement many traditions allow for a defined period of mourning. This custom carries the implication that when the time is over, life should begin to return to normal.

However, given the presence of the following two characters in our lives, that can be easier said than done.

Be A Dai, Not A Vic

Let me introduce you to Dai and Vic. They’re a bit like the angel and devil some people say they have sitting on their shoulders. (Wacky) Dai is the person I aspire to be. He

• takes responsibility and initiative
• focuses on what is within his control
• accepts adversity as a part of life
• chooses positive responses to events outside his control

The consequence? He feels good about life and is resilient to its challenges.

Vic (Timm) is the other little person in my life. She

• blames
• complains
• gossips
• refuses to take responsibility

The result? Vic fails to meet her potential, feels bad about life and ensures everyone else feels bad too.

I like to think that Vic doesn’t enter my life too often. However, the reality is perhaps different. How else do I explain my inaction which has led me to write this article on a Friday instead of a Tuesday? If I’m being honest, I have felt a bit sorry for myself this week. I’ve come up with easy excuses for my procrastination:

• “I can’t think what to write.”
• “I went to get my hair cut.”
• “People are interrupting me.”
• “I can’t concentrate.”
• “I’m too stressed.”

So, I’ve allowed myself to abdicate responsibility for not writing on a Tuesday as I planned. I’ve rendered myself powerless by telling myself that outside influences dictate when and if I write. I chose self-pity rather than to be a self-starter.

Control Of Our Lives

The thing is, feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t just stop you making progress with your life or moving on after a setback. It’s also associated with a number of other characteristics. Depression, anger and a belief that our lives are controlled by outside influences all correlate with self-pity².

The feeling that our lives are not in our own control is especially unhelpful when we’re wanting to get back in life’s driving seat. We need to feel powerful not powerless if we are to bounce back or even grow from the challenges that life has laid down at our door.

Powers To Move Mountains

So, how do we move from powerless to powerful?

I’m a passionate believer in the powers we all possess: inner resources which we’ve forgotten about or never realised we had. We take our skills and achievements for granted but admire those of others. We fail to appreciate our experiences of surmounting obstacles are unique to us and all the more valuable for it. We have success strategies which we’ve used many times but don’t realise we can just switch on in our heads.

When we look deep inside we have powers to move mountains.

Despite those resources, we often feel adrift in life and at the mercy of life’s weather. So much of this powerlessness is rooted in our victimhood, our self-pity, when we feel as though life is not within our control. We fail to see the antidote is to take responsibility and look deep within ourselves at our inner resources, our own personal well of powerfulness.

So, How Can I Stop Feeling Sorry For Myself?

Here are six steps you can take to go from self-pity to self-starter.

1. Ask yourself “What Can I Do About It?” (Wacky Dai) and take responsibility for where your life is going to go next. ³
2. If you’re feeling sorry for yourself and think life is not within your control, then you’re probably listening to Vic not to Dai. Ask yourself, “What would Dai do?”
3. Improve your sense of “perceived control” over your situation by focussing your energy on actions only you can influence.⁴
4. List your achievements in life and also how you’ve met your challenges. Add to that list the skills, attributes and knowledge you used to be successful. Ask yourself, “How can I use them now?”
5. Remember that no matter what, there are always things you can be grateful for.⁵ Practise gratitude regularly and you will enjoy increased positivity amongst many other benefits⁶.
6. Practise altruism. There’s no better way to leave behind your own troubles than by helping someone else. Research shows that doing five good deeds in one day will enhance your wellbeing even up to six weeks later.⁷ Try it.

I’ll end with a quotation from the writer Haruki Murakami.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

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1. Name changed.
2. See this research study.
3. In cases of violence, abuse and bullying it’s important not to take the blame for the action of others. Taking responsibility only applies to what happens next.
4. In a famous psychological study, residents of a care home who were allowed to choose their own furniture and look after a pot plant, enjoyed greater perceived control of their lives, a higher sense of wellbeing and ultimately a longer life than a control group.
5. I had a very humbling experience just recently when a client told me that her multiple sclerosis was a positive thing in her life.
6. See this summary of the research for more details.
7. This action had an even better effect on wellbeing than gratitude.