5 Empowering Habits Can Improve Your Life
Life can be tough at times. The downward spiral that descends straight into a hellish, dark place can happen overnight. For me, it happened over the past year. I experienced a spate of rejections and setbacks that took my life on a downward slide.
My life felt out of my control and the setbacks kept coming. As my life started to unravel, I started to tire of it. I felt completely useless. Every day, I was thinking to myself I want to give up. It was an endless descent into darkness. I was sinking deeper into it.
I wanted the emotional pain and confusion that I was experiencing to stop. I felt I could never escape the dark place I was in. I cried frequently. I felt my life had lost all meaning.
There are times in all our lives when we face tough times and challenges. We can become overwhelmed by what’s happening. We know and hear of others facing challenging times and mental health issues. We don’t expect it to happen to us, but, the truth is that it can happen to anyone.
I decided to fight back and climb out of the dark place. There came a point when I became fed up of being stuck in the dark state. I refused to stay there. I changed my perspective. It was hard to do. It seemed impossible, but I did it. You, too, can do this. Anybody and everybody can.
As I consciously shifted my perspective, my way of looking at things started to change. There are days when I still struggle to stay positive. Looking at the positives of life is one of the empowering habits that become more effortless the more you practice.
I reclaimed my life.
Here are the 5 empowering habits that empowered me to do this.
The negativity trap
Negative thinking is a trap that is easy to fall into. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps you trapped until you decide to break free. I got stuck in a whirlpool of negative thinking. I was drowning in negativity until i decided to snap out of it.
I started to consciously watch my thoughts. Each time negative thoughts flooded my mind I shifted my focus and thought about something positive. It was hard. It felt impossible. I felt there was nothing positive to focus on.
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I started to look for positive things I could focus on. Instead of thoughts of the past and past experiences, I consciously dwelled upon the smallest of positive things. At the end of each day, I thought of the positive things that had happened to me during the day.
On some days, I couldn’t think of anything positive to focus upon. On those days, I revisited and relived past experiences from those times when my life had felt good. At first there seemed to be no change in how I felt about things. Gradually, I noticed a change as my perspective shifted and grew more positive.
It becomes easier to find the positives in my days and hold that thought. Whether the circumstances actually change or not, I realized that the shift in the way I was perceiving my experiences made me feel better.
Being grateful for each experience
Setbacks can come back to back. It can feel like being stuck in a phase where it’s nothing but one set back after another. If you set off to find someone who hasn’t lived through phases like this, the truth is it would be hard to find that someone.
Everyone faces setbacks at some point or another. Life is a mixed bag. Sometimes things go your way and at other times it doesn’t. I was desperate to leave the darkness of my thoughts. I wanted to bounce back. I started to practice gratefulness. Trying to feel grateful when all you can feel is, perhaps, anger, at the unfairness of it all can be a challenge. The good times are easy to be grateful for.
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Thinking of losses and hardships as opportunities to grow strong as a person can put things in a different and more positive light. I tried to be grateful for both the experiences I perceived as good experiences and those that caused hurt. I did this every day.
I practiced every opportunity I got. Instead of thinking that life was one set back after another I reminded myself everyday I have a lot to be grateful for.
Let it go
We think we are in control of our lives and circumstances. At least we hope we are. We plan our lives. We have our dreams, hopes and aspirations about how our lives should be so that we can feel and be truly fulfilled and happy.
At times it works out and our life is just as we hope it would be. At other times, things slip through our fingers. What we long and hope for does not materialize for us. Life can be unpredictable. We know this. The hard part is living it when it’s being unpredictable.
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It’s hard to control life and outcomes. Letting go and going with the flow of life can feel scary. It can feel like you can’t trust things to actually work out. Accepting that you can’t always control life eases the process.
Even though you can’t always control situations, you can control how you are going to look at your experiences. When things work out the way you want, it’s one more thing you can be grateful for. The others are opportunities to learn from experiences and grow strong.
Be kind to yourself
You expect things from yourself. You may have a mental image of how you should be and what your capabilities are. Falling short on your own expectations can hit your sense of self-worth if you come down too hard on yourself for things you perceive as failures.
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Being too harsh on yourself can erode your self-esteem and confidence in yourself. You have nothing to gain by berating yourself and questioning your capabilities. If you feel like you have let yourself down or failed in some way, the possibility always exists that at another time things will work out differently.
By being kind to yourself you are giving yourself a safe space to grow and learn from your experiences. Life doesn’t always have to be about expectations and achievements. The journey can also be about living your life and enjoying each moment for what it is.
Free yourself with forgiveness
You can feel emotionally recharged and at peace by practicing forgiveness. It’s a process that enables you to throw off the weights, grudges and negativity that you may be carrying around. These weights hold you down. Shedding these weights lets you experience peace.
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Feelings of resentment, anger, hatred and fear are really dead weights that slow you down and drain you. Forgiveness is not about letting someone get away and get off the hook for something you think of as a wrong deed. It’s a way of freeing yourself and your spirit from blame and negativity.
By forgiving yourself or someone, you can experience peacefulness.
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Rick Sapio
Wow! This could be one of the most useful blogs we have ever come across on the subject. Actually excellent info! Im also an expert in this topic so I can understand your effort.
Regards:
Tony Daniloo
www.essay-for.me/write-my-paper.php
I agree with the author about the forgiveness. Not everyone can forgive. I think that people who can forgive become much stronger.