The Boomerang Effect

Life can be mucky business. I call this the muck-factor. The muck-factor is what makes you feel like you're bogged down in the dirty, dank trenches of life. You will undoubtedly be most familiar with the muck-factor. It's the reason that you don't feel bright and cheery sometimes. It's also at play when you experience unpleasant things like messy emotions, negative thoughts, painful memories, and difficult circumstances. When the world starts feeling like one big, stinky muck and mire to you – when awful experiences and troubling emotions and thoughts stop you from feeling as positive as you'd like to be – it means the muck-factor is getting in your way.

Admittedly, the muck is a most disagreeable place to be. Even a little bit of it can feel like too much. Don't even mention how bad it can feel when there's an overwhelming amount of it in your life. When the muck-factor is in overload, the experience can feel like being tightly squished into an overstuffed, potentially explosive chest of waste products. So no, you won't be too fond of the muck-factor. But unfortunately, there's just so much of it around, that you can easily find yourself stuck-in-the-muck of life.

Stuck-in-the-Muck

There are many levels to the muck-factor experience, starting from mildly unpleasant and progressing to brutally awful. Feeling totally stuck-in-the-muck is the worst of them (that's the really, really awful category). These are the times when it can get so burdensome that you'll feel like you're totally bogged down in it, like the weight of the world is bearing down on your life. This will prevent you from experiencing all that is not the muck and mire, the pleasant things like joy, calm, and quiet. It's a mucky environment when you see the world as a lackluster place, and you feel like you are surrounded by darkness and dreariness. You are truly stuck-in-the-muck when you're drowning in the swamp and bog – the quagmire – of life's negativity. All you want to do is find a way to get out of this dreadful place.

But despite your desire and best efforts to escape the muck-factor, it just isn't happening. You aren't able to break away from it, and your difficult situations (perhaps a challenging personal relationship), disagreeable past and present experiences (e.g., things and people that hurt you), painful emotions (like sadness and anxiety), and negative thoughts (e.g. “I’m not good enough”) overwhelm you. It’s as if you have no control or power over your emotions, thoughts, and situations, heck your whole darn life. These mucky factors are taking over your existence. They are controlling you. You feel powerless and helpless. When you feel like this, you are up to your eyeballs in the muck.

I have just described the worst-case scenario of what it feels like to have the muck-factor take over your life. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that it’s not a place anyone wants to visit. But don’t be fooled: you don’t have to be that deeply bogged down in the muck-factor for it to mess up your life. Its harm is not only measured by how much it can negatively consume or dominate you. Being up to your waist in the muck is also unpleasant. This is when it’s not completely taking over your life, but it sure is taking a toll on you.

It feels like you’re waist-deep in the quagmire when you can’t quite escape the muck-factor. It’s always hovering around somewhere, waiting to pounce on you when you least expect it, like the predator in the jungle. Carrying around this general uneasiness prevents you from really enjoying life. Your unpleasant and disruptive memories (e.g. being betrayed or hurt), situations (say a horrible boss), thoughts (e.g. “I’m such a loser”), and feelings (like fear and hurt), hang around just too frequently. They intrude on your life, like the unwanted relative. Though you aren’t totally up to your eyeballs in the muck, you are hyper-aware of its presence, and you are carrying it around like a monkey on your back. This makes you overprotective and anxious. You feel unable to move and grow or take risks. There is no sense of safety. In simple terms, the muck-factor is getting in your way and stopping you from experiencing the joys of life.

Yet, even when you’re not that steeped in it, the muck-factor can be unpleasant to experience. You might only be up to your knees in the muck, which you rationalize as better than being up to your eyeballs or waist in it, but it still ain’t no bed of roses. When it’s like this, you know contentment, but there is still enough mucky stuff around to get in the way of your feeling positive and bright. Heavy emotions (like anger or worry) or bothersome situations (say work) prevent you from feeling good for periods of time.
When you are up to your knees in the muck, the muck-factor is not exactly overwhelming your life, but it’s still preventing you from enjoying parts of it. Though you may view your life as being pretty good, certain areas of it are challenging, and when you don’t watch it, they can really bring you down. They often get in your way and prevent you from moving forward in specific areas. You make one-step forward out of the muck and mire, then two steps backwards into it. It is not uncommon to find yourself getting stuck-in-a-particular-brand-of-muck, like thinking that you’re just not good enough and feeling angry.

The muck-factor is not always as disruptive as I’ve just described. Your life might be positive and uplifting for the most part. You don’t feel you have that much to complain about. But you can’t deny that it does rear its ugly head sometimes. Perhaps it turns up as a repetitive problem feeling (like insecurity) or as a difficult person you have to deal with (say a pressuring parent). So it’s more like you’re ankle deep in the muck, rather than really stuck-in-the-muck. When you’re not that entrenched in the muck-factor, you might be able to ignore, deny, rationalize, or even dismiss the negative ways that it affects your life. You’re able to do this because it’s not always around.

But the messy emotions, thoughts, and situations caused by the muck-factor’s onerous presence don’t need to be all-pervasive and up in your face to disrupt your life. The muck-factor does not have to be a huge problem to get in the way of happiness or peace. Let’s say, then, that you have occasional but repetitive feelings of anxiety or inadequacy. But you dismiss or ignore this particular brand of muck because the problem is isolated to one area of your life (like feeling insecure about your attractiveness). But this muck does get in the way of feeling good inside of you. You get down on yourself sometimes, and it prevents you from achieving what you want. Even if you’re only up to your ankles in the muck and mire, it will still negatively affect you....

Essentially, then, the muck-factor is anything that makes your life stink, and no, it doesn’t matter if the muck and mire you encounter is really foul or just a little bit stinky. It will still have a negative impact on you and get in the way of your feeling good or moving forward in your life. Whether it is as minor as feeling unsettled and dissatisfied or as severe as being unable to find a happy or calm place inside of you, you will need to look at the muck-factor at some point or another in your life. Certainly, you will always encounter it. You can’t get away from the reality that the muck-factor creates problems. This means that you will forever be faced with the daunting task of figuring out how to manage or cope with life’s muck and mire. So you need to know how to deal with it, and this is where the Way of the Sidestep comes in.