Managing the Peaks and Valleys of Life

We are living in really weird times.

I don’t know about you, but the stability of my mental and emotional health right now comes in waves. I have weeks when I look at my life and think “yeah, I’ve got this!” and then the next week the weight of it all comes crashing down around me, I lose motivation, and struggle to even find a small part of me that was feeling confident the week before. I doubt I’m alone in this feeling.

I’m a person who loves learning about personal development, mindfulness, wellness, self care. Any and all of it. It all fascinates and motivates me and I’ve spent a lot of time learning and playing around with different concepts and tools to help me manage this roller coaster of a life that we are living in right now. This focus on my emotional health has allowed me to show up as the best version of myself on those days when I feel like I’ve got the hang of this weird pandemic life. But probably more importantly, it has also helped me to avoid a potential downward spiral on the days when it all just feels like too much. 

We all have our good days and our bad days, our happy moods and our crummy ones. This was a normal part of life, even pre-pandemic, but it seems so magnified right now.

I used to work in human services, specifically with kids who had been abused or neglected or had experienced the ugly side of life already at their young age. These kids struggled to regulate their emotions and behaviors. Life had not been kind to them and because of that they tended to experience more of the bad days and negative emotions than most of the rest of us. One of the ways that we described the emotional ups and downs of life to these kids was by referring to them as “peaks and valleys”. We would explain to the kids that while they might prefer to always have good days and be in good moods (these would be the peaks) that there will be times when they find themselves in valleys – struggling emotionally, feeling moody, or having a bad day. Peaks and valleys are both normal parts of life. We tried to teach the kids that because we know that we’ll experience both, we can try to be prepared for the valleys instead of letting them take us totally by surprise. Kids are often visual learners, so we would draw a picture of peaks and valleys and label the typical feelings each child might experience during their peaks as well as typical feelings they might experience when they were in valleys. Then we would use those pictures to talk about tools they could use to climb out of a valley or tools they could use to slow the descent if they found themself tumbling down from a peak.

It was almost 20 years ago that I worked with these kids, but I’ve found myself thinking about these peaks and valleys a lot recently. I even drew my own little set of peaks and valleys to label and used my rough sketch to think through some coping skills that might help me handle some of the recent valleys of life.  

With all that’s going on in the world right now our collective emotional valleys are deeper and wider than ever before. And our peaks are looking more like little bunny hills than the majestic mountains they used to be. 

But the peaks and valleys still come and go and if we pay attention we can start to notice the patterns of our emotional ups and downs. We can predict that there will be valleys and we can prepare ourselves for those days. We can remind ourselves that there are preventative things we can do so that our valleys don’t end up being as deep or as wide. And when we do find ourselves in a valley, we can remind ourselves that the valleys don’t last forever and that while they might be uncomfortable, they really are a normal part of life.

Below are a few strategies that you can use to help manage the valleys of life that so many of us are currently finding ourselves in.

Take a breath.

Pause before allowing yourself to wallow in the misery of your valley. Remind yourself that being in a valley is a normal part of life. No, it probably doesn’t feel good, but if life were full of constant peaks, there would be no contrast. We might prefer to spend our time on the peaks, but it’s within the valleys that we do the most learning and growing, where we tend to discover a lot about ourselves and our strength. Instead of resisting the valley or being mad that you are there, know that this is not permanent and get excited to climb towards the next peak.

Monitor Your Mindset.

When I find myself in valleys, it’s really difficult for me to have a positive attitude. When I’m on a peak I can be a glass-half-full-Polly-positivity kind of person. But in a valley – ugh, it’s hard and I struggle. So I try to remember that I always have a choice in how I look at things. I get to decide how I am going to interpret the things that happen to and around me in life. I rarely make it to glass-half-full type of thinking when in a true valley, but here are some of my strategies for managing my mindset during these times:

I ask myself good questions. What can I learn from this? What might this teach me? Who will I be and how will I feel when I get through this? 

I allow myself space, time, and permission to feel all of my feelings. There are a lot of big feelings that come with the valleys of life, and when I try to resist or avoid those feelings, I end up stuck in the valleys for longer than necessary. So instead, I practice allowing the feelings and giving myself permission to feel whatever it is that comes up for me.

I focus only on the things that are in my control. Our natural instinct is often to focus on things outside of our control but this just causes us to suffer more. So I remind myself of this (because I usually need a reminder) and practice placing my focus on things that I can control.

I try to manage my mind. Instead of getting caught up in my negative thoughts, I observe them and try to remember that during these tough times my brain is going to spit out a lot of negative, judgemental, and/or self-defeating thoughts. I practice observing the thoughts I’m having, evaluating them, and then deciding which ones I want to keep and which ones are not serving me. This process is not easy. It takes patience, time, and dedication, but has been life changing for me.

Prevent the deep and wide valleys (and the trap doors at the bottom of them).

There is work that we can be doing all the time – when we are feeling good, bad, or somewhere in between – that can really help to ease the pain of the tough times. Here are a few strategies I like to use:

Monitor your mindset. This could also be referred to as “managing your mind.” I wrote about this above, but I mention it again here for two reasons. First, it’s really important and might be one of the best tools I’ve found for maintaining my own emotional health. Second, the work of managing your mind is not only meant to be done during tough times. This work needs to be a continuous practice and you will find it much easier to learn if you spend time with it during the less challenging times in life. 

Expect the valleys. Know that they’re going to come, know that they are a natural part of life, and know that when they arrive, it doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with you. You’re not broken. It’s just a valley. It will be tough, but you will get through it and find yourself back on a peak eventually. This is the ebb and flow of life.

Take care of your body. My valleys are so much deeper and wider if I’m not taking care of my body. And those trap doors tend to appear if I’ve been eating poorly, not exercising, and /or not sleeping well. They also tend to appear more frequently during times when I am drinking more alcohol. I know this about myself and I so try to pay attention to it. Try is the key word there, but it is important to know that developing healthy habits in your life can prevent most of the valleys you experience from turning into trap doors or from stretching into hot, dry, neverending deserts. 

Develop coping strategies.

That is another term from my time in human services. Coping strategies are tools to help you cope when you are struggling mentally and emotionally. What things help you when you find yourself struggling? Your in-the-valley-brain most likely won’t remember your coping strategies when you actually need them, so give yourself a leg up and take a minute now to identify a list of things that might be helpful when you are struggling. Then have that list available to actually refer to when you need the strategies. Some of my coping strategies are going for a walk or a run outside, listening to a good podcast, taking a nap, or talking with my husband. What are some of yours?

We are always going to experience both the peaks and valleys of life. The good and the bad that we experience are both inevitable, and they both bring quality and richness to our human experience. We might prefer life’s peaks, but with time we can learn to benefit just as much from the valleys that we walk through as we do from the the peaks that we summit.