Peaks and Troughs - How to Bounce Back

It's incredible that something I wrote with my own fingers just a few days ago can be exactly what I needed to read this morning. Then again, perhaps it's not so incredible after all. As someone who read The Screwtape Letters a long time ago, and heard it quoted in Elder's Quorum even longer ago, I barely remember a concept that C.S. Lewis shared about peaks and troughs. As we go throughout our daily lives, our spirituality naturally waxes and wanes. We have peaks, when we feel very spiritual, strongly committed to righteousness, and richly blessed, and then we have troughs, when we feel less spiritual, less committed, and less blessed. There are times when we're doing better, and times when we're doing worse.

This isn't a terrible thing, just like it isn't a terrible thing that the tides come in and go out. Waves come and go. The tides rise and fall. But the ocean's overall sea level stays mostly the same. Being in a trough doesn't indicate a permanent loss of spirituality any more than a low tide indicates a permanent loss of sea water. You'll bounce back. The true question is how quickly you'll bounce back, and I've learned a trick to help with that.

In addition to the basic tricks that can improve your spirituality whether it's low or high (reading scriptures, praying, singing hymns, etc), you can set a sort of anchor or bookmark on one of your spiritual peaks. By writing spiritual things on my blog when I'm on a peak, and reading them back to myself when I'm in a trough, I can pull myself out of the trough and back toward the peak where I was a few days ago. I can essentially remind myself of how I felt when I was feeling good and what caused me to feel that way. So when I felt slightly less spiritual and less positive, I was able to pick myself back up. And it gets even better.

If a person keeps pulling themselves out of their troughs sooner and sooner, their overall spirituality will improve. As their low moments become shorter and less low, and their high moments remain just as high and long, their average level of spirituality will grow higher. You can even build on your peaks to make your best moments even better, which will also help to improve your average.

Sometimes, people just endure their low moments. Sometimes they feel okay, and sometimes they don't, and that's just the way life is. But it doesn't have to be that way! Yes, bad things have to happen in life. There's always going to be stress and opposition, but it doesn't have to bring you down. Not far, and not for long. There are things that we can do to maintain or regain our spirituality, no matter what is going on in our lives.

So, in case you're having a bad day, or even just an okay day, know that you can make it better. And once you're feeling better, or if you're feeling good right now, find a way to hold on to that feeling or to record it so you can get it back when you need to. There are still going to be ups and downs, but with a little effort, you can make your up moments even better and your down moments not so bad. I promise that you'll be glad that you did.