What Does “Feeling Broken” Mean?
Feeling broken is an emotional state where we feel overwhelmed, lost, or mentally exhausted due to difficult life situations. However, with the right mindset and shifts in perspective, it is possible to transform pain into growth, resilience, and inner strength.
How to Stay Positive in Difficult Times
Feeling Broken: Remember Kaleidoscopes! This can help us overcoming challenges and through dark times.
Even though Easter is this weekend, it has been very dark and dreary this last while, and we have experienced some bitter cold. Yet now we are finally coming into full blooming, verdant, wild and wondrous Spring. I am holding the vision that we will come out of the current dark and alarming places — where much is unravelling, breaking or already broken — politically, socially, environmentally — into a just, sustainable, resilient, kinder, saner world.
In the meantime, amidst and in spite of all that seems broken, we can, if we pay attention, find and feel deep awe. We can find and celebrate the good, the beautiful, the kind, the helpful. Our mindset matters mightily, and what we focus on grows.
Perspective Shift: How to Stay Positive When Everything Feels Broken
“When we feel broken, remember that a kaleidoscope is made of broken pieces and when we look in to it, we see something beautiful.”
When I came across this inspirational quote recently, I was quite moved. I find it offers a welcome change in perspective, and a reminder that no matter where we are, or what is going on, there is always beauty, goodness and kindness to notice, appreciate, and share! We can even let ourselves drop into Awe. Here some notes about its benefits. True Life Transformation!
How to Deal with Feeling Broken
If you are going through a difficult phase, here are practical ways to cope and grow:
- Focus on small moments of joy and gratitude
- Shift your attention from negativity to possibility
- Stay connected with people, nature, and meaningful experiences
- Practice mindfulness and awareness
- Accept uncertainty while staying hopeful
Finding Joy and Awe in Difficult Times
What a Wonderful World! In this vein, I offer you this heart opening, soul warming video by Louis Satchmo Armstrong! And one by that old BBC nature veteran, David Attenborough. Incredible, awe-inspiring photography. I was in tears after the first few moments. What a Wonderful World indeed!
And how about this one? 
A friend said it well:
“Creation is so resplendent and birds bring me such joy…I just wanted to share this video with you, with love and gratitude for Life.”
Steps to Overcome Challenges in Life
To survive and thrive through these challenging time, here are some important steps to remember, on our twisty, turn path:
1) Many vital systems of all kinds are breaking down. We are in huge transitions, and we are in them together.
2) There are abundant, accessible, do-able ways through and out of these crises.
3) There is no guarantee we will survive these upheavals… but we can; we can survive, and can even thrive.
4) How we respond matters. What we pay attention to grows.
5) We can be part of, and contribute to an “Upshift”, or ”The Great Turning”
Staying Strong Together
We are in this together, through all the ups and downs — internal, external, national, international, inter-and cross-generational… I love sharing with you, my thoughts, insights, musings, tools, knocks, joys….and I also love hearing your responses, and about what’s going on for you.
Love, joy, resilience, courage, wonder and blessings to you all, and Happy Easter-tide and Spring.
With a warm and cracked-open heart,
Jill
PS Be send me an email if you’d like to be included on my Seasonal Notes list, or if you have names of people you think might enjoy these offerings.
Here are some posts relevant to our theme and times:
The Power of Our Words and Thoughts: in honour of International Women’s Day. It’s powerful to visualize our words and thoughts sending energetic waves out into the world, our world, the whole world, the universe! May we seize the many opportunities to help bend that moral arc toward justice and kindness, compassion and good will — toward ourselves and others, as is possible in our spheres.
Embracing the Unknown: We are inundated by wild, scary, unsettling, as well as heartening, gratifying and fortuitous developments — in our personal lives, affecting all people and our whole planet. Embracing the unknown can ground and help us through these times.
Here is the message in a compelling Ted talk, not from some woo-woo whacko, but from a medical doctor, Dr. Alia Crum.
Change your mindset, change the game. She gives some impressive examples of the how our mindsets matter… actually affect matter. I highly recommend you give it a listen.
And here, in
Psychology Today, a piece with basically the same title. Importantly, in this version of the message, the author makes clear that it is not about blaming people for what happens to them, but describing how this truth, mindset matters, is actually empowering.
Mindset matters also relates to environmental disruption. Here is a relevant article: An antidote for Environmental Despair.
Jill Schroder is the author of BECOMING: Journeying Toward Authenticity. BECOMING is an invitation for self-reflection, and to mine our memorable moments for insights, meaning, and growth. Check the website for a sample chapter, or see the reviews to get a flavor for the volume. Your feedback, forwards, shares, likes are most welcome.
