Do you find yourself waking up every morning and facing a life filled with challenges? Over time, this makes it difficult to keep our spirits up for ourselves, and for our family.
You have a choice. You can keep doing what you’ve been doing and chances are pretty darn good that your life won’t change at all. That means the other choice is that you need to make a change. Stop accepting what life seems to be handing out to you.
Many of the truly happy people I’ve met weren’t always happy. Their stories shared just how desperate or despondent they were at some point in their lives. What they did is they made a decision to change their life and here are a couple of tips to help you do the same with your life:
1. Reframe The Situation. Whatever the situation is, sometimes you can change how you feel about it by reframing or reinterpreting it in a more positive way. Change your self-talk. Change the language you talk to yourself with. Stop saying that things are problems and approach them as a situation to be handled instead. At some point, we said yes to something that brought about the situation in our life.
2. Be Kind To Yourself. I was once coached to look at myself as a five-year-old. Crazy approach, but I did it. Then I was asked how I would treat that child if she encountered a problem. Would I yell at her, berate her, continue to tell her that she was worthless? My response was instantaneous. No! I would encourage, make suggestions on other ways to approach a problem that might provide greater success. Once I began to treat myself with greater kindness, I began to feel a whole lot better about myself. In fact, I felt like I could accomplish anything. My negative self-talk had become my very worst enemy.
3. Embrace Change. Changing the way you look at your world means that your relationships will change as well. Some of your family and friends will be willing to accept the new and improved you. Others will miss the old you. You have another decision to make. To either give in to pressure and return to your old unhappy self. Or continue to make the changes that improve your life and your overall happiness. Sometimes the hardest steps is to steer clear of your old and limiting ideas. Just be watchful.
4. Be Optimistic. Be that “glass half-full” person. Optimistic people report much better satisfaction with life. Optimistic people are naturally more successful. Any chance you get, look at a situation both optimistically and if you are still in the habit, pessimistically. Then make a determined choice which one you want to embrace.
It used to be that you were merely reacting to the events that life threw your way. Now you have a new tool and that is called choice. Choose to save yourself.