The Handbook for Bad Days

by Eveline Helmink

  On the path to a lighter life, at times you will have to be brutally honest with yourself. Anything that isn’t true, pure, loving, or serving you is like the ivy of the soul: a persistent weed with an extensive root system and a tendency to strangle whatever it’s growing on. You will have to cut it out.

  Self-examination requires commitment to who you are, who you want to be, and how you want to live your life. Only you can take responsibility for how you treat yourself and the people around you. Only you will have insight into what you feel and think. Only you will know the stories you’re telling yourself.

  Consider self-examination as cleaning out the cluttered junk drawers inside your head, bringing order to the dusty chaos of stashed knickknacks. Ultimately, self-knowledge will become your center of gravity, your core. Inside you, there’s a place where everything is balanced out, a place to which everything will always return, the calm in the eye of the storm.

  Perhaps you had a wobble toy as a kid. No matter how hard you pushed it, sooner or later the figure would inevitably be standing straight. Like you. The secret is to have confidence. I call this the Law of Soul Gravity. Ultimately, you will find inner peace in the middle, where everything is balanced out. Between heaven and earth, between happiness and… bad days.

  // You Could Call It Soul Hacking

  A pantyhose sock around your vacuum cleaner nozzle to retrieve a golden earring from underneath your sofa. A paperclip to mark the edge of a roll of tape so you never have to waste time endlessly picking around for it again. Sleeping with your feet outside the covers for a better night’s rest. Installing apps that force you to take breaks. Over the last couple of years, the phenomenon of life hacking has become inescapable. These tricks, shortcuts, and other clever ways to live your life as efficiently as possible minimize the time you waste on simple tasks and chores so you have more time left to do what you want.

  It’s a combination of time management and stress management: optimizing your life in such a systematic, practical, and smooth way that there’s increasingly more room for the relaxation and gratification these methods yield.

  Originally, life hacking was something for tech nerds who developed all sorts of apps to make their work faster and more effective. Today, life hacking has also become a way to cope with the avalanche of information and possibilities coming our way. Perhaps it’s because its origin story involves a nest of plugs and cables, or maybe it’s due to the word “effective,” but life hacking is mainly a feast for the left side of the brain, where logic and reason live. The right side of the brain, the home of intuition and emotion, may have received an invitation but is somewhat of a wallflower here.

  Yes, life hacks do indeed make life more straightforward, more logical, less energy draining, and maybe even easier. But often they are uninspiring and detached. Do they also make life easier to understand? Lighter? I’ve never found a life hack that taught me how to mend a broken heart with a safety pin.

  No one has yet told me how to use that pantyhose trick to filter out bad energy. Is gaining time the same as feeling you have more space? Is logical the same as meaningful?

  I prefer not to call the shortcuts in this handbook life hacks, because they are not about effectiveness, reason, or convenience. What feels more apt is the phrase “soul hacks.” Soul hacks are about letting go, flexibility, and self-knowledge.

  Perhaps this is the distinction between the two: Where life hacking is for living efficiently, soul hacking is living to the fullest. Soul hacking offers shortcuts to what really matters: self-love, self-knowledge, and authenticity. It’s a method to more quickly and profoundly get to a place where everything is calmer and more comprehensible, an elephant path to a life of less discomfort. Soul hacks offer tools so you won’t get carried away as easily by misfortunes but can be at ease with the clouds hanging over your head or the storms raging within you. These hacks put things in perspective, offer consolation, and soothe frayed nerves. They show you how much strength and resilience you’re carrying within you already.

  There’s no better teacher than your own soul—it’s a magnet, attracting what it needs and repelling what doesn’t fit.

  Your soul can tell you what will work for you and what won’t, what will give or cost you energy, what belongs to you and what you can let go. It is your inner compass. It is flawless, delicate, and calibrated exactly to you; it guides you on your life path. Out of all the shortcuts in this book, you’ll have to determine for yourself which make your life lighter and which don’t. I’ll tell you to get bored, I’ll tell you to do something. I’ll tell you that you can let go, I’ll tell you to hold on. The shortcuts will give you easy-to-follow pointers on how to be mindful of the sensitivity of your soul.

  You’re not in touch with your soul only when lying on a yoga mat, meditating, or when hiking in a forest or making love. You’re just as much in touch with yourself when you’re angry, hurt, or tormented, when you’re cursing and crying and in a bad mood. You are all parts of yourself equally; bad days give you just as much insight into your needs and who you are at your purest, most unadulterated self.

  The Big Question is: Do I matter? It’s a question that can encourage growth and self-development, but that can taunt us on lesser days: I don’t belong anywhere, nobody loves me, I’m not seen, I don’t have any value, and I have no control over my own life. But regardless, the answer is: You matter. It matters.

  Twelve Skills That Make Lesser Days Lighter

  Intuition: alertness to the subtle whispering and deeper knowing of your soul

  Self-knowledge: knowing who you are and what moves you down to the darkest corners of your soul

  Attention: being present to what is, as it is

  Love: experiences of unconditional connection and unity

  Surrender: the art of moving along with the flow of an uncompromising life

  Resilience: a ladder for climbing out of deep wells and muddy pools

  Strength: firm roots that keep you grounded and nourished

  Compassion: love as a verb, love put into practice

  Balance: a center, a core, from which everything originates and to which everything returns

  Inner Peace: a calm soul, even in a tempestuous outside world

  Courage: the ingredient for living a pure and true life through trial and error

  Humor: the capacity not to take yourself and life so bloody seriously

  // A Foray into the Soul

  I promised not to produce a spiritual doorstop, but still I’d like to spend a few moments briefly discussing the notion of “the soul.” In order to keep things somewhat clear, let’s agree on the following: Your soul is who you are, without masks, pretense, or appearances. Ever since the dawn of humankind, we’ve been trying to unravel the mystery of the soul, and there is a startling amount of information on the topic. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s possible to wander the aisles of the library all night for weeks and still bike back home with a giant question mark hovering above your head.

  Language can be so insufficient; the more passionately you want to define the soul, the more elusive it becomes. You can read about it and listen to people talking about it till the cows come home, but to truly learn about the soul, you must shut up and simply be. The words that come closest to describing how I experience “the soul” are from poet Maya Angelou, who spent her whole life embracing the imperfect, accepting hardship, and living love. When asked to define the soul on an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday (see, even Oprah didn’t know the answer), Angelou answered, “The soul is the spirit that longs for all.”

  Unlike the mind, which reasons and explores, the soul is our spiritual seat—pure, direct, and intuitive. It is our essence, our connection to the larger whole, our true nature. And it is the soul that knows, that’s conscious of everything that is, and that has zero interest in conditioning, masks, and role-play. On bad days, you don’t want to navigate using your mind alone; you need to bring your s
oul along.

  And when you consider the fact that the matter that makes up every single human being, including yourself, was formed billions of years ago in the universe and is being reconfigured into new forms over and over again (the notion that it’s recycling itself without any matter ever being added has been well established by science), our inherent connection to the greater universe isn’t so woo-woo or far-fetched at all. On an atomic level, you are part of an inconceivably vast time and space. The universe experiences and manifests itself time and time again. Things converge and things fall apart in an infinite cycle. We are part of a cosmos that is in constant flux. We really are made of stardust.

  That longing for unity, for the balance between body, spirit, and that large whole from which we stem and into which we will vanish again—that places our quotidian struggle in a completely different perspective.

  // Oh, and Don’t Forget Your Body!

  The third indispensable element for living a lighter life is your body. It completes the trio of mind-body-soul. On my own bad days, I take a tour of these three to check the state of affairs: What do my thoughts say? What does my soul whisper? And what does my body tell me?

  If someone gave me a soapbox, I would use it to shout, “Know your body!” Because, jeez, how often it is that we take our body for granted and how skillfully we ignore what it wants to contribute. We make our body work for us, and we submit it to all sorts of things; we train, nourish, dress, and decorate our body. We force it into shapes, and fair is fair, we often look at it in a judgmental way. But do you really work together with your body? As a team of equals?

  To many people’s ears, the term “bodywork” sounds a little too New Agey, but there are vast layers of nuance between dancing around naked and being alert to the signals your body sends. Our body is one big radar system, one big touch screen, and one big vehicle, and grounding ourselves in our physical experience is essential to full self-knowledge.

  We have all kinds of sayings that point to the relationship between our body and our mental well-being. Something being hard to stomach, for example, a weight off your chest, or a heartbreaking situation. There are all kinds of small physical alarm signals that want to point our attention to something: nerves in your gut, anger that burns under your skin, sadness that weighs your heart down. As small children, our responses are still very natural and self-evident: We cry when we fall or cover our eyes when we are afraid, and once it’s over, it’s over. Later, as adults, we will start to ignore those physical cues and associate all kinds of thoughts with them. The latter is especially problematic, for as long as we keep thinking, we fail to feel. In doing too much thinking, we both literally and figuratively lose touch with ourselves.

  Not only can listening to your body alleviate bad days; in some cases, it can even prevent them from occurring at all. Do you know the saying “Nip it in the bud”? It stems from the idea that you should address problems before they blossom. A twinge of pain in your back? Perhaps you should take a listen. An indefinable ennui taking root? Better pay attention. It will save you a lot of hassle.

  Ask someone to locate her mind and she will point to her head. It’s the part of the body we associate with wisdom, and we tend to prioritize our thoughts as safe and rational. But all that thinking can hurt you too—those thousand and one thoughts, tumbling like waves, can drown you. In fact, we often experience stress and discomfort in our head: Migraines, brain fog, pulsing aches—these are common physical symptoms of very real stress. (Tip: If you’re prone to these sensations and want to soothe your head, emphatically lower your shoulders and gently sway your head in a circular motion for a few minutes.)

  There is, however, another part of the body where tensions are commonly felt: the stomach. When we say things like “it makes me sick,” or “it doesn’t sit well,” we usually place our hands somewhere on the lower belly, indicating where those clear insights reside. It’s a different, more intuitive knowing, but one that science has clarified and validated. In fact, it’s so widely accepted that we have a term for it: the mind-gut connection.

  It appears that our intestines contain neurons that, like neurons in the brain, receive, process, and react to impressions. An interesting thought, isn’t it—your gut as a sort of second brain? And then to think that the gut is also deemed to be the epicenter of imaginative power, vitality, and creativity… As the adage goes, “follow your gut” and you may find that it’s easier to navigate your Forest of Uncomfortable Feelings. This isn’t to say that gut feelings are the holy grail; they might very well be based on old stories and past experiences. Even so, they still deserve your attention.

  And no, your body isn’t always right. Or, rather, you don’t always have to agree with your body. Perhaps it’s nothing more than an old insecurity reminding you that you are running a risk or an old ache that wants to be heard. Sometimes I will engage in a conversation with my body:

  Thank you, insecurity; I feel you, and yes, there is a chance of failure, but I’m going to dare to take the risk. Hey there, old ache; yes, I know, we made a mistake at this point before, didn’t we? I’ll try do to it another way this time around—but thank you for pointing it out to me anyway.

  Help Me

  While it’s up to you to discover what your mind, body, and soul are saying to you on bad days, this doesn’t mean that you will be forced to languish in bottomless pools of misery on your own. I learned the hard way that it’s okay to ask for help. It isn’t easy to accept an extended hand, let alone ask for one yourself; we are all tired and busy and wiped out. Still, dropping my “I’ll be all right!” armor every now and then has done me a lot of good.

  My support troops aren’t standing at my side twenty-four seven. They aren’t there when I splash a full pan of pasta sauce on the floor, they aren’t in the passenger seat when I’m stuck in traffic for three hours, and they aren’t lying beside me when I wake up on a gray Sunday morning while the rain lashes against my windows. But they’re there when I call them.

  Every now and then, you will need someone. That is normal. That is healthy. That is human. When you do, say the following: Help me. Help is always there, in one form or another. Search for it. Ask for it. Accept it. Remember, you may be doing another person a favor by showing your vulnerability: It may mean that they will also learn to ask for help.

  F*CK WHAT MENTALLY STRONG PEOPLE DO

  // But Actually, F*ck It

  Life constantly puts us to the test. No matter how well you think you have things under control, you’ll reach a point when things start to go against you. There are unwelcome changes at your work, your love life isn’t all rosy, a friendship breaks down, your body fails—the universe tends to have its own agenda.

  There are lots of sources online with tips on how to deal with unwelcome life situations. Popular among these are lists of what “mentally strong people” do. If you were to follow such tips, you would be darting and diving through the obstacle course of life like a ninja. Because that is what “mentally strong” people seem to do: They beat life wearing a suit of armor that protects them from all pain and discomfort. Bad days, however, don’t test your mental strength. They demand things from the whole shebang—not only your mental discipline but also your physical energy and your spiritual strength.

  Mind, body, and soul. A three-legged stool is only strong if all the legs are the same height, and focusing on just your mental ability puts you out of balance. Lists for mentally strong people lean on only one leg: control, power, command, and discipline. They totally miss out on chaos, weakness, letting go, and giving up. So whatever “they” (these so-called mentally strong people) do, f*ck it.

  Seven Adages about Mentally Strong People You Can Forget about from Now On

  1. They keep going, no matter what, and don’t waste any time on remorse, worries, or self-doubts.

  That’s right: onward! How inefficient to waste valuable time on feeling what needs to be felt… right? Well, I for one think you should be abl
e to have a good cry from time to time. If you intend to keep forging ahead, you first need to look around to see what you’re dragging behind you, and sometimes you need to let go of the need to keep pressing onward in order to take time to feel what’s there. Untangle the knots. Learn from your emotions and doubts. Adjust your goals. Breathe in, and then it’s time to move on.

  2. They never lose sight of the big picture; they are in control and won’t let go of it.

  Holding the reins of your life in your hands is commendable, but mentally strong people must have very sore hands. At some point in their lives, everyone will lose some control or will have to let go. Maybe you get ill, your partner leaves you, or a loved one dies. Even the most mundane things are largely out of your control: It’s pouring when you go camping, the trains aren’t running when you’re in a hurry, the avocados aren’t ripe when you want to eat them. Life is one big exercise in letting go of control. People who never loosen the reins are generally not the best people to be around. When you can’t share your power or strength or play with it, you become rigid.

  The secret isn’t keeping control, but learning how to gain it. When you clench a fist full of fine sand, some of it will run through your fingers. But if you hold your hand open, the sand will rest in your palm.

  3. They embrace change and welcome new challenges.

  People don’t like change. We aren’t wired that way—it’s an ancient, ingrained habit of our species. Change is uncertain; uncertainty equals danger. You might be thinking, Well I handle change well! I travel across the world. I can sleep anywhere, work for a new employer every week! That may be so! You can get used to change; you can learn to cope with it, and you can even yearn for it. Change isn’t nice or exciting per se, however. Change can also lead to insecurity, pain, and discomfort. In many cases, embracing change is a bit of a stretch. So is embracing challenges. Replace “embrace” and “welcome” with words such as “accept” and “flow with”; those are already a lot to handle, especially on a bad day. You don’t have to treat every unwanted plot twist that comes along to tea and biscuits.