Grieving? Let It All Out With These 3 Tools

This article originally appeared on Yoganonymous.com.

Image via Vogue Archives

We all fake happiness from time to time.

It’s not a foreign topic or one to be ashamed of—but rather, it’s a topic to drag out from under the rug. Unhappiness (and faking happiness) are topics to place out into the sun, to be thawed out, and to then be handled and dealt with in constructive ways.

If and when you fake happiness, the most important thing that you can do is catch yourself faking it. Or catch yourself loathing in your unhappy thoughts. As you catch the situation, work to reverse the habit that sparked the unhappy situation in the first place.

Your life doesn’t have to be perfect, and neither do you. So instead of kicking yourself in the back, or berating others, here are three healthy ways to cope with any situation that drains your levels of joy, without faking happiness.

3 Realistic Ways to Cope with Sadness + Grief

1. Intend to create the best possible outcome

Start with the element of gratitude. Are you thankful for elements hidden the situation? Are you glad that you see a red flag, or that you recognize some element of learning? You don’t make bad choices, and you don’t have bad experiences if you choose to learn something from the rough patches.

Look at the larger picture here—are you in a place of balance? Is there something that you could invite into the situation to even the scales? It’s not about tick for tack. It’s about recognizing the signs and symbols that are pointing to the root cause of the situation. When you take in the underlying message behind the situation, and approach the situation with a fair attitude (being willing to create a win-win), other parties will be more likely to work with you as well.

2. Acknowledge your power

This goes in two different ways—either you are creating the situation, or you are surrendering your personal power to the situation. Take a bird's eye view, look at the situation as if you are on the top of a mountain and the scene is playing out at the foot of the hills.

What attitudes, beliefs, or cultural differences can you let go of? Many times our actions loop back to the way we were raised—rooting deep into your psyche. Don't be afraid to go into the dark spaces where you hide your emotional baggage. Walk into those space with a candle, and work to remove that excess baggage.

By doing this, you open up the space to either take back your personal power and be positively assertive or change the way you are interacting with the situation so that you are only bringing in solution oriented energy into your space. The world is in your hands with this one.

3. Let go of what you think should happen

When you are unhappy it’s most likely because you think something else should be happening—can you let go of your current vision and allow yourself to receive a new one?

Let go of bullheaded tendencies and choose to take it easy. Allow yourself to receive something that may be different—because what you may be receiving might turn out to be way better than you could have even imagined.

Remember: Easy does it. Don’t force anything to happen, just focus on letting go of your internal blocks. When you release your blocks, so does the world around you—giving you more space to breathe, and more space to receive.