The Great Guide to Sadness

22/02/2012

The Great Guide to Sadnes...A recent survey revealed a sadness epidemic amongst women. With so many opportunities and so much choice you'd think we'd be at our happiest but actually it leaves many women feeling overwhelmed. Plus we look around and compare ourselves far too much to others - and how brilliant their lives look from the outside - compounding our sense of sadness.

Here are some key sadness zones and how to tackle them:  

Sadness Zone: Too many choices

Choice is a good thing but not when you feel overwhelmed by it - to the point you can't make a decision. Or when you decide to "spend a few moments researching a holiday" and get bogged down on the Net for an entire weekend looking through the vast choices.

Sadness Solution:

Get ruthless when you have multiple choices. Go with your gut reaction and rule out the least likely first. Then make a “pros and cons list” for the top two choices. Next, stick to a time-limit for making your final choice. Also apply time-limits to other choices like allowing two hours maximum when searching for, e.g., a holiday on the Net.

Sadness Zone: Love-poor

Somehow Mr. Right’s eluded you - you're desperate for love and have had plenty of boyfriends but what's gone wrong? So often it's about passing up the good ones because you think there's something better out there.

Sadness Solution:

Open yourself to new opportunities daily even if it's smiling at a new colleague in the lift at work. Forget going to the same old places - they haven't worked - so enlist a single friend to try some new places. Walk around with good posture and a smile on your face and you’ll look far more confident and approachable.

Sadness Zone: Time-short

There's so much going on in your life that actually you're time-short for many things - including important things like just chilling out. This is about having the time to relax, recharge and simply ‘be’ rather than always ‘doing’.

Sadness Solution:

Get good at saying No to things that eat away at your time with little benefit to your well-being. Apply this to taking on extra work that keeps you in the office out of hours - soul destroying! Invest time looking for long-term shortcuts for things like household chores.

Sadness Zone: Body blues

You're just not happy with your figure - if only you had bigger breasts, smaller thighs, longer legs, etc. then you wouldn't feel sad. You envy so many other women that you think have better figures.

Sadness Solution:

Begin some daily "self appreciation" - take time to look in the mirror with gentle and kind "eyes". Identify your two best physical attributes, e.g., your eyes, smile, legs, etc. Appreciate these! Now think of your two best personality traits – GSOH, easy-going, a great friend, etc. When green with envy over someone's slim-line Kelly Rowland-figure, remember your fab personality will always be there when others have lost their figures.

Sadness Zone: Boyfriend and baby-envy

Your best friend has bagged herself a lovely guy or maybe colleagues, friends, your sister, etc., are starting to have babies and you feel left behind. It feels as if their lives have become grounded while yours is still up in the air.

Sadness Solution:

Try using some "memory highlighting" to counter negative feelings of envy towards them. Remind yourself that she's a great friend and remember the last time she did something nice. Get practical and get her to ask her ‘Mr Handsome’ to bring his single friends over when you're around.

When it comes to that baby-envy try "thought-reversal" and list the five best things about not having a child right now - e.g. freedom, more money to spend, no morning sickness.

Sadness Zone: Celebrity-cravings

Enjoying celebrity stories on the Net and buying celebrity mags can provide light relief. But when you surround yourself with too much celebrity reports you can end up craving the lifestyle. Nothing in your life seems good enough. You want their luxurious A-lister life.

Sadness Solution:

Keep grounded by limiting how much celeb-news you lap up. Get realistic make a point of telling yourself - when glued to their gorgeous photos - that their glossy images are airbrushed to-the-max besides having an army of stylists. Plus their lives are often more troubled than the rest of ours - just look at the divorce and infidelity rate of the average A-lister.

An edited version of this article appeared on MSN UK - the Her Channel