Happiness is not really a destination as much as it is a state of mind. A billionaire could be miserable about what they don’t have, while a homeless dude could be happy to score a hot shower and a cooked meal at the local shelter.
Happiness is all about perspective. While goals relating to tangible things like money can prove unsatisfying quests, the search for genuine happiness is one that will help you gain a more fulfilled and serene life.
From business to interpersonal relationships, when you live life with honesty and commitment to ethical values, you’ll find that a rewarding sense of wholeness awaits you. Integrity is a goal that will help you feel like you’re making the world a better place with your presence.
You can plug away at a nine-to-five job until you retire, but chances are that’s not going to make you live life to the fullest. You’ll be one of those faceless people in the crowd who live for the weekend—then trudge back to work.
Instead, reflect on who you are, your strengths, your desires, and act accordingly. Whether it’s learning to find meaning at work, a career path that challenges you, or engaging with some satisfying hobbies, fulfillment in life is a great goal.
Human beings are social creatures, so forging good relationships is the key to thriving and feeling happy. Family, professional, and personal relationships are all crucial components to providing a sense of connectedness with the rest of humanity—so make good friendships and foster existing links with family.
At the same time, relationships do need boundaries, so learning how to create healthy interactions is also crucial for developing your sense of identity.
Nobody can be successful in life if they’re down in the dumps, so fostering a sense of self-worth is an esteemed goal that every person should pursue. There are many simple ways to do this—for example, treating yourself with dignity and respect by wearing clean clothes and practicing good hygiene.
Education is also a key component to developing a sense of worth, because with that knowledge comes better opportunities a sense of security.
How do you build resiliency when your world is coming apart? With everything going on, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the social isolation, and the lack of our normal lives it is hard to keep it together. We are prone to have strong and negative emotions. While you are in the grasp of strong negative emotions it may seem difficult to build any resilience to life’s less pleasurable experiences. It is possible though, and that’s a thought you should bear in mind if you are experiencing excessive negative thoughts.
How come some people give up and cry into a bottle, while others just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and carry on as if nothing happened? They’re called coping skills, and anyone can develop them.
Flexibility and adaptation are undoubtedly two outlooks that help people recover from bad situations. Whereas someone who may feel entrenched in their negative feelings finds it harder to remove themselves from those feelings and change direction, those who are willing to see emotions as things that grip them tighter the more they focus on them, and understand how to let go and change direction quickly, come out on top.
In a way, emotions are like quicksand. They sink and disappear.
By seeing negative events in your life as flexible, short term situations, you can more easily move on. Let’s imagine someone who sees these negative events as a fixed point in space and time (pardon the sci-fi speak, but this does make sense). To them, that disappointment they felt with themselves or that failure they felt, is a fixed point in their life. It’s always there. Nothing they can do will change that fact that there is failure and disappointment in their lives.
Those who view situations as being temporary, will be more likely to see the same situation as a speed bump in Life’s rear view mirror.
So what can you do to help you adopt this outlook?
Ever poured paint into a bucket of water? That’s how negative people think. When one bad thing enters their life, it starts to spread and color everything else. They may well have been the life and soul of the party until that point, but now everything is just a mess!
Try seeing new challenges as crayons that can be laid side-by-side with each other. Don’t dwell on the fact that you didn’t manage to manage your to-do-list today, but appreciate your accomplishments. Don’t let a temporary setback prevent you from trying again the next day.
Just because you don’t get something done the first time doesn’t mean you won’t get it done at another point in the future. No one writes a book, paints a portrait or drives a car the first time they try.
a positive attitude builds resilience
Let’s talk about attitude and what it has to do with your overall chances of being resilient. Having a positive outlook can be a huge help for a variety of reasons. Let’s take a closer look at how positivity can help you reach your goals and work for permanent change.
Having the right attitude helps you stay motivated. Being successful takes work, and that’s just more fun when you’re enjoying what you’re doing. While not every task, and everything that needs to be taken care of, will be your favorite task, having a positive attitude about it will help.
Start by becoming more aware of your moods and outlooks as you go about your day. Make an effort to be grateful and find the good side of things. Over time your positivity will increase, and it will help you stay on track and stay motivated.
Having a good attitude helps you overcome hurdles. It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t go your way or fall through. We all face setbacks. We all make mistakes. How we deal with them is what set’s successful people apart from the rest. Work on your positivity and find a lesson in everything that happens. You’ll come out on the other side stronger and better than before.
Having the right attitude helps you do better work. Think back on the last time you had fun working on a project. It was much easier to get into the flow and time flew by. You enjoyed yourself, and that showed in your work. We tend to work so much better when we’re in a good mood.
It’s also easier to focus on work efficiently when you like what you’re doing. In fact, when you find that groove and that perfect project, it doesn’t feel like work at all. That’s the kind of state you want to work in most of the time.
To make all that happen, you should make an effort to work on positivity. Check your attitude and find the joy in everything you do.
1. Keeping a journal can help, it makes you focus your thoughts. You can look back and see what of the things you did worked and helped you make progress.
2. Create a file of encouragement. Fill it with positive images and motivational quotes. Include proof of your accomplishments. Browse through the file any time you need an extra boost of positivity.
Clutter is so easy to accumulate. The reason that it’s easy for things to get cluttered is because we’re not mindful of what we have. We can have physical clutter and we can have emotional or mental clutter.
This can happen with every area of your life – from your health to your closets to your relationships. You want to get rid of clutter because it hangs onto you, you don’t hang on to it. It clings to you and it’s difficult to get rid of easily.
Let’s face it clutter can make you feel stressed and leave you less free time to enjoy your life. But mindfulness can quickly allow you to cut through the clutter. Most people hold on to clutter because they assign the possession some kind of emotional significance. It means something to them. For example, your friend holds on to a diamond engagement ring from her ex-husband although she divorced him three years ago. It sounds silly, but it is hard to let go sometimes.
A teddy bear might still be in the closet because it was the last toy that your ex-boyfriend gave you. So you associate the teddy bear with love. You then think about him and can’ r let go. Yes, these things happen all the time especially after breakups.
It’s hard to delete the tech clutter too like the thousands of messages you keep on your smartphone. These messages accumulate. The worse part of it is when you buy a cloud service for storage. You start paying for something that you don’t need.
Enough about exes. . .
One of the reasons that so many people struggle to get rid of things, both physical and emotional, is because the decluttering process can be painful and overwhelming – especially when you look at it as a whole.
Mindfulness can help you get rid of clutter because it allows you to maintain your focus on one area or one issue at a time that needs to be dealt with. You’ll be able to simplify your life, keep what needs to be kept and let go of what you need to be free from.
Focus only on what truly matters to you. By using mindfulness to help you clear out the clutter, youíll get rid of stress, too. The things we keep and the emotions we wonít let go of can be reminders of what was.
You might think that if you don’t address them, then you don’t have to deal with these things. But clutter hovers and you sense it undermining you. You sense the clutter will take control. When you let mindfulness help you declutter your life, you’ll be able to maintain a better ability to focus in all areas of your life.
You’ll feel better emotionally when you let go of things. You’ll also be able to find things when you need them instead of searching and getting stressed when you can’t find something.
Plus, you won’t spend as much money buying things that you forgot that you already had. A big benefit with using mindfulness to let go of the clutter is that it does more than give you more room in your home or in your office.
It allows you to let go of the mental and emotional clutter so that you’re able to have a more improved mindfulness, too. For the best results, go through every area of your life one portion at a time and clear out the clutter.
If you’ve always found it too difficult because you think the task is too big, give yourself fifteen minutes a day to focus on the clutter. When you break a task down, you’ll find that it’s easier to do.
Here are five tips:
1: Declutter your space. While people may argue about whether or not violent movies can raise a generation of messed-up, angry kids, let’s just err on the side of caution and declutter the space around us. With less things in our field of vision, we have less garbage to stew over and worry abou freeing up the space in our mind.
2. Declutter your schedule. Another thing that can drive us crazy is the constant rush from one activity to another. Take a look at your schedule and start eliminating things that aren’t necessary. All they’re doing is adding stress to your day and giving you more food to throw into the ever-spiraling mental stew of stress.
3: Unplug from the party. Would you be able to sleep and rest easily if you were attending a party of several thousand people like Times Square on New Year’s Eve? That’s pretty much what’s going on with your smartphone, on chat mode. You might be tapped in as you (probably) are to several social media networks- Tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. The pings, dings, and rings from various contacts, along with the thrill of finding a new message are all adding small but unhealthy doses of stress to your day.
4: Practice mindfulness. This is the whole point of this blog. Mindfulness is all about engaging with the present in a fully, alive way. There are lots of ways to practice the skill of mindfulness, from meditation to just staring at an object (like a candle) and contemplating its existence. Mindfulness will help you learn how to push relevant concerns out of your conscious thought process, leading to increased concentration and a decluttered mind.
5: Let go. Remember that scene from Titanic where Kate says to Jack, I’ll never let you go? Well, sometimes it’s best to let old memories die. From broken relationships to diabolical bosses (think like the Devil’s Wears Prada), we tend to have a whole lot of backstory spinning in the back of our mind. Just let it all go, and like a computer that suddenly operates faster, you’ll find your mind freeing up RAM and in a much more easy state.
Keep in mind that it may not be that much of a big deal if there’s a small amount of clutter around you, occasionally. However, clutter is a symptom of being unorganized and being unorganized is a habit like rationalizing or making excuses about being too busy.
Here is one of life’s paradoxes. Have you noticed that those people who are the most productive and seem to be able to schedule spare time at short notice?
To relieve yourself from the stress of being disordered, there is a simple solution. Be organized. However, like most things in life, simple does not mean easy. You need to put in the extra effort of getting organized and staying organized, which can eventually reduce stress levels and will make you feel more accomplished and in control.
getting organized
Living in a cluttered environment and being unorganized is circular – each feeds off the other. You can improve both aspects, but you have to break the cycle by forming better habits. Getting rid of all areas of clutter can help you make healthier decisions in life, and also make your relationships easier and more rewarding.
Learn to say no. Setting boundaries for yourself and others is one key to becoming more organized. Knowing you have preset limits can help decrease your stress level. Don’t automatically say “yes” to requests for help from others. Evaluate each request before responding. Protect your time.
Plan ahead. Planning your day ahead of time greatly helps in reducing your stress level. This will alleviate feelings of being rushed all the time. Take time at the end of the day to plan for tomorrow. If you do this, you will feel far more relaxed and in control.
Proactivity is the key. Being proactive with your problems is part of being organized. Unaddressed problems accumulate, and your emotional clutter is probably affecting you more than anything else. Solve the issues that you can, then pay attention to different stressors in your life, and work to manage and eliminate them.
If you’re more organized, you will feel in control, instead of feeling you are being swept along by the events of the day. And any choices made while not under pressure will result in better decision making.
Do you not only want to exercise because it’s good for your health, but for your energy and happiness? To feel that joy and satisfaction from moving your body, you need mindfulness to help you truly appreciate how it makes your body feel.
It might be quite trendy to attend a yoga studio with your friends, but the discipline has been practiced for 5,000 years. Yoga was originally a spiritual practice focused on creating harmony between the mind and the body. Nowadays, we are well aware of its benefits.
You will get better sleep – With yoga you are more likely to regulate your breathing inducing relaxation. You also focus on exercises your body needs, which can help you sleep much better over time.
It helps to reduce your anxiety – You may also notice that you start to enjoy yoga more, and do forms of movement that reduce your anxiety.
You get better strength and flexibility – Exercise is going to help a lot with your strength and flexibility, but yoga has an interesting effect when you follow your body’s cues. You enjoy how it feels, as opposed to how it looks.
How to Practice Yoga with Mindfulness
To practice yoga with mindfulness, you need to be aware of your breath, body, and surroundings. By being mindful you tune into the pace of your breath, which in turn calms the body and the mind. You also become more aware of your physical space.
1. Choose your yoga practice.
It can be easy to just get used to a certain routine, and not think much about it. But with mindfulness, you are much more in tune with your body and your mindset, so you become aware of your limitations and strengths. First, ask your doctor if yoga is right for you. If you are a beginner or know that you’re inflexible, look for the gentler forms of yoga. Attempt to avoid more demanding forms like bikram (hot), ashtanga and power yoga. Second, to practice yoga with mindfulness you should speak to your instructor about any physical limitations to accommodate your needs.
2. Try a gentle warm up
You should also be mindful of your warm-up routine. Try to set aside ten minutes of gentle movements. By warming up to practice yoga with mindfulness, you will stretch your muscles and improve your circulation as you build up your poses.
3. Know your limitations.
Listen to your body. One of the best ways to know your limitations is by running a full body scan. Your body tells you how it feels throughout the day, but if you aren’t paying attention, you will never notice. This is where the full body scan comes in. You become aware of any pains or aches. You learn about your strengths and vulnerabilities.
Start your body scan at the top of your head. Pay attention to each part of your head, face, neck, and shoulders, then work your way down. You want to try to feel each body part as you mentally move down your arms, wrists and hands, your chest, back and torso, your legs, and all the way down to your feet.
Once you are aware focus on your own progress when you practice yoga. If a yoga pose doesn’t feel right or hurts then stop. You should master basic poses first and move on to more difficult ones when your body and mind are ready.
4. Keep an exercise journal
You can start a journal that becomes a list of exercises to do, and others to avoid. Every time you try a new exercise, or discover something new about a workout, write it down in your journal. Write down as many details as you can, including the type of exercise, the environment (like in a gym or outside), who you did the exercise with, the duration, and how you felt afterward. If you didn’t like it, write that down. Don’t try to change your feelings about the exercise. Just notice how you feel in the moment.
Do you constantly find yourself too wrapped up in your imperfections? If so, it could be getting in the way of a happy, fulfilled life.
Acknowledge your imperfections
Each of us has imperfections. However, many fight against their flaws; harshly criticizing themselves for not being perfect. There is much pressure in society today to be a perfect person. Our Instagram feeds show pictures of our acquaintances and celebrities in their stylish homes with manicured lawns and swimming pools. They pose with their filtered faces and advertise products that can enhance our lives. Unfortunately, this just isn’t possible. It isn’t reality therefore we end up feeling like a failure or develop feelings of self-hatred.
Expectations and imperfections Before and After
If you want to learn to love yourself, embracing your imperfections is key. Here, we’ll look at why it’s important to embrace your imperfections and the benefits it can deliver.
Your Positive Imperfections
When you start to embrace your imperfections, you’ll start to see them more positively. There are some positives to imperfections. For example, if you suffer with anxiety, you may beat yourself up for not being able to do certain things that come easy to others. However, a positive of anxiety is that it can make you more empathetic. That is a great trait to have in an often-cruel world.
Flaws can be considered more attractive than you might realize. So, start to look for the positives in your flaws and realize that everyone has them.
Feel Free
When you are caught up on your imperfections, it can make you feel trapped under constant pressure. By embracing them, it helps to set you free. Nothing is more freeing than living your life without the constant weight of your own expectations. Once you accept your flaws, you’ll feel like a weight can be lifted.
Focus on Who You Are
When you are focused on your imperfections, it can stop you being who you truly are. It causes you to chase an ideal that you aren’t ever going to live up to. However, when you let go of your imperfections, your authentic self will start to shine through.
If you feel like you have lost who you wanted to be, start letting go of your need to be perfect.
Living Healthier
Living your life focused on your imperfections isn’t healthy. It impacts your perspective on things, causing you to make choices you wouldn’t necessarily make if you weren’t caught up on your flaws.
Stressing over the things that you are not, can have a negative impact on your health. If you want to improve your overall health and wellbeing, you’ll want to start embracing your imperfections.
These are some of the reasons why you need to learn to embrace your flaws. While it may be difficult, with practice you can start to think more positively about your imperfections. Remember, nobody in life is perfect, not even you and you are never going to be. The sooner you accept this and know that it’s fine, the better your life will become.
Have you ever tried mindful hygge? Hygge, pronounced (Hue-gah) is a Danish word originally derived from an Old Norwegian word meaning well-being and protection from the outside elements. Denmark has notoriously bitter long winters. So, it’s no wonder that the concept of hygge has been used by Danish people to help mentally combat the change in season and fill their homes with comfort and love.
Hygge is a word that is so important to Danish people; it’s often used to describe what their culture is all about. Hygge is not necessarily something specific that you can buy, because it’s more of a feeling than a possession.. Hygge can widely be described as a feeling of coziness, comfort, familiarity, friendship, laughter and mindful enjoyment. It is about the little joys in life that makeup your mindful experience.
Although it it totally possible to achieve hygge any time of the year. You can try maybe lighting up a fire pit in the backyard with or a movie under the stars with family are perfectly good examples of summertime hygge. Hygge is generally associated with the change in season to cooler months because of its ability to uplift spirits especially when you are downtrodden.
Here are some ways to practice mindful hygge:
1. Warm lighting. In order to achieve a great sense of hygge, be sure to change your light bulbs from bright light to warm. According to MeikeWiking, a hygge expert, the optimal light temperature is 1800K, which is the temperature of sunsets. Warm lightning is essential for an atmospheric glow.
2. Cozy clothing. Put the sweatpants away and try wearing those cozy knit sweaters and woolen socks. Think about the texture of the clothing and how it feels on your body. If it’s loose, cozy, and warm then your are practicing mindful hygge.
3. Spiced drinks. Pumpkin spice frapuccinos might just be a Starbucks thing, but it definitely makes me think of cozy fall days. Apple cider and tea are favorites too. Drinks with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and ginger can warm up your senses. These drinks smell delicious too.
4. Scented candles. Placing scented candles around your home is a wonderful way to add a hint of mindful hygge. The warm glow will make rooms feel cozy and comfortable. Not only do candles look and feel homey, they also smell great. If you have a local candle maker near you, even better. Scents like warm vanilla, cinnamon apple, sugar plum are cozy and invigorating.
5. Heart-felt relationships. Call a friend for a hot cup of coffee and a piece of apple cake. Sweet apple cake with almonds and powdered sugar is a Scandinavian treat. With some heart-felt conversation and empathy your relationship will grow.
6. Pull out the cozy throws. Feel the warmth of a cozy throw; the plushier and softer then the better. Cozy throws are an essential, especially during a chilly morning.
7. Star gaze. Disconnect from your phone and from social media and take a look at the night sky. Fall is the time to look up into the sky and admire the stars. On October 20, look up into the sky to admire the full moon called the Hunter’s Moon. October is the month of two meteor showers, the Draconids and the Orionids.
8. Fall journal writing. Try mindfully journaling about the change in season. Pay attention to the changes in weather, smells, routines and how you feel in the present moment. Be thankful about the connections you have made.
Check out the free digital downloadable mindfulness fall journal below with 12 prompts about the season:
A genuinely decent or ‘nice’ person has always been a blessing to those they come in contact with. It’s an admirable quality that anybody would simply wish to have more access to, especially to balance the spite and hate that can sometimes seem to be predominant.
Terrible news happening every day has never been so widely broadcast. People have never been more divided in what they believe in and in proving themselves right, sometimes reaching a point of violence.
The world could really make use of some altruism and genuine kindness today. The glaring truth is, we would simply live better if there were more good-hearted people around in our midst.
But when you’re a good and decent person who is simply too nice to the point of excess, it can often bring you more harm than good.
This falls into two parts:
there are always others who will take advantage of another’s good nature.
when these ‘nice’ behaviors are manifest for the wrong reasons, it can be an unhealthy barrier to self-growth.
There are apparent risks and hidden dangers of being excessively nice.
Growing resentment that you are unable to express.
Being too available to others and overly generous of yourself and your time can impact your self-worth and confidence. While you’re busy attending to everyone else’s needs, you have most likely forgotten your own, or given them a lower priority.
This may cause you to experience feelings of resentment towards situations and people. But as an overly nice person, you will be unlikely to express how you feel, as you’re afraid to rock the boat. This is a very unhealthy cycle you may find difficulty getting out of. As a result, your self-esteem can suffer.
You can attract the wrong type of people into your life.
People may come to you only when they need and want something, knowing they can easily benefit from you without you expecting anything in return. This is a sad situation to be in, but it is not so uncommon for overly nice people. The result? You end up attracting people who don’t have your best interests at heart or even worse toxic people.
People will not trust and respect you as you expect they should.
For many people, for various reasons, trust and respect are not freely given but must be earned. Sometimes, if you so generously trust others without them earning it, you’ll lose your high value. These people can then disappoint you and disrespect you.
They know that won’t be a problem because you’re too nice even to get mad. In the end, they will keep disrespecting you due to your lack of boundaries. When you are a person who trusts others easily, this can be bewildering and painful.
You develop unrealistic expectations of others.
Being a naturally nice person can bring out the naïveté in us as we may inherently believe that other people have the same regard for our welfare as we would for theirs. The truth is, it does not always work that way.
Sometimes, you will need to be very transparent at communicating your expectations to make some relationships work. If not, you’ll just end up resenting someone because they weren’t properly briefed at the onset.
People will take advantage of you.
People are people, and even though they may not always have bad intentions at first, many are nevertheless opportunistic. They can easily take you for granted if you do not assert yourself enough. Worse, they’ll take advantage of you because you’re too nice and may even use it against you.
For a person who lacks malice and sees the best in others, it can seem to be a cruel world when your ‘niceness’ is taken advantage of, spurned, or used against you. Sadly, this is a common occurrence – and to the best of people with good intentions.
Before you openly extend yourself so generously to others, make sure you practice self-love first. Being a nice person with a genuine concern for the welfare of others is a very admirable trait, but it also requires a degree of resilience. Be your best self to others, but don’t blindly expect reciprocation.
Always remember to respect and love yourself. Have some boundaries for people to respect. If you do this, being a nice person will better work to your advantage and happiness.
Listen to this brief audio to learn how to take ownership of your actions and feelings:
Self-blame refers to a person’s tendency to consider themselves at fault, especially when things don’t go as well as planned, even if the cause or events were beyond their control. A pattern of self-blame leads a person to feel constantly guilty and inferior.
Although the tendency to self-blame can make a person seem humble and unassuming, it can also inhibit them in becoming more creative and wanting to strive to do better.
People who have a persistent habit of blaming themselves for anything that goes wrong will usually avoid taking the initiative. This is because they prefer to stay inconspicuous so they won’t receive any extra needless attention. In doing so, they hope that others will have similar expectations of their capabilities.
Being self-critical is the act of telling ourselves negative and destructive thoughts, such as being inadequate, shameful, or a failure. We almost all have a tendency to be self-critical to some degree.
However, the problem begins when this becomes a habit; a negative, self-reinforcing loop. This is because constant self-criticism causes a person to become stuck with negative thoughts and emotions about themselves. They feel guilt and shame to the extent that they no longer feel any desire to achieve. If left unaddressed, this inaction can lead to depression or other mental health issues.
Self-criticism deprives an individual of being able to look at their own efforts or abilities objectively. It robs them of being able to engage in healthy self-reflection, which would allow them to be more accepting of any past mistakes.
We can get away with a little bit of self-blame and self-criticism occasionally. However, if we continually beat ourselves up and start to do it more often than not, then we may not be able to stop and do an objective reality check.
Remember, your mind is incredibly powerful. If you continually feed it with self-blaming and self-criticizing words, those words will get louder and more believed and ingrained. In turn this can increase your risk of developing anxiety or depression.
Self-criticism and self blame can be beneficial to some degree
They do help us ‘get real’ about ourselves. Sometimes we may be a little guilty of believing our own press. Some critical self-evaluation allows us to identify and accept our imperfections and take conscious steps to improve them. However, if self-blame and self-criticism become the norm, it can paralyze us into inaction.
Consequently, you will be hindered from achieving your full potential. Therefore, it’s important to keep self-blame and self-criticism within healthy levels. Simply, it should be a feedback mechanism, not a tool for consistent self-deprecation.
But what if being self-critical get out of hand? Could it be possible you hate yourself too much? Self-hatred is more than simply not liking yourself. When you suffer with self-hatred, you’ll constantly put yourself down and feel like you aren’t good at anything.
Here, we’ll look at what self-hatred is, the impact it can have on your life and how you can stop it in its tracks.
Understanding self-hatred
Self-hatred is basically like having a little bully sat inside your head. You will experience constant criticizing thoughts, pointing out your flaws and mistakes. Just some common self-hatred thoughts you might experience include:
You’re a loser
Why did you event try, you knew you would fail
You aren’t good enough
Why can’t you just be normal?
You’ll put yourself down and compare yourself to others frequently. Self-hatred tends to develop over time and is triggered by more than one event.
How can it impact your life?
Although self-doubt is healthy, self-hatred is not. If you struggle with self-hatred, it can have a devastating impact on your life. Often the feelings of self-hatred worsen over time and can lead to destructive behaviors as you try and numb the negative self-talk.
Many people who suffer with self-hatred go on to develop destructive behaviors such as cutting themselves, develop eating disorders or turn to drugs and alcohol. It can impact every aspect of your life including your relationships, your career, and the friends you include in your life. You may also stop caring about the things you used to enjoy and avoid things that make you feel better.
The impact it can have on your life makes it important to treat quickly, rather than ignore it. The question is, how can you eliminate self-hatred?
Ways to eliminate self-hatred from your life
There are many ways to eliminate self-hatred from your life. Learning how to tame your inner bully is a great first step. So, when you notice that inner voice telling you negative things about yourself, switch it around. Stop those negative thoughts in their tracks and turn them into a positive.
So, if your inner bully says, “you aren’t worth anything,” switch it to “I may feel like I am not worthy, but I know that I am.” The more you counteract the negative with positive thoughts, the more positive your mind will become.
You can also make a list of all your strengths. If you struggle to come up with some, ask those closest to you. When you focus on your strengths, you won’t be too caught up in your weaknesses.
Finally, work on building up self-compassion. That is, treat yourself the exact same way you would treat a good friend. Would you beat them up for making a mistake? If not, why do it to yourself?
Overall, self-hatred can be a powerful thing to overcome since it builds up over time. However, the tips above can help you to start quieten your inner bully and develop a little more self-compassion.
Try a mindfulness to be more nonjudgmental.
MindfulnessSteps To Keep Your Self-Blaming and Self-Criticism In Check
Focus your criticism on your behavior.
Behaviors can be changed. This is why when your inner voice starts to be critical, it is time to address your behaviors. Be careful not to criticize your attributes, as you can’t always change them, or need to. Your attributes are a part of your uniqueness.
If you blame yourself for not being super-intelligent, you run the risk of drowning in frustration and depression. If instead you more correctly blame or criticize your habit of spending too much time on your smartphone instead of studying, then chances are you can find ways to rectify the behavior, and therefore change the result.
2. Know the difference between taking responsibility and self-blaming.
Instead of being quick to blame or criticize yourself, try to assess the situation first. It is important that you look into every aspect of yourself, and see how your actions, inactions, and the words you have left unspoken, affected the entire outcome of the situation. Accept your mistakes and come up with ways on how you can improve yourself as well as the situation in the future.
2. Acknowledge your self-critical inner voice.
When your inner voice tells you that you are lazy, not worthy or inadequate, acknowledge these thoughts. Start by creating a journal of the things that you like about yourself, and your strengths. Creating this type of journal will help you appreciate yourself more and criticize yourself less.
If you work on improving yourself, your skills, abilities, and behavior you will find it easier to get rid of your negative self-critical inner voice.
Mindlessness is the opposite of mindfulness. It operates on auto-pilot and happens when you don’t think about anything. You simply go through the motions. The same routine repeats itself and mindlessly. It can happen when you drive to work and think about other things, which don’t involve the here and now. “Did I forget to sign that document? What’s for dinner?” Your thought process becomes random and unfocused on the moment. You can become unaware of your surroundings and the car collision down the road. Another mindless act is eating without thinking. When you munch on a cookie while watching your favorite k-drama, you can become mindless. You become so wrapped up in the drama with your favorite star that you don’t pay attention to what you eat and then blame yourself for gaining weight. Essentially, mindlessness leads to really bad habits.
These bad habits are learned and can lead to further mindlessness. And how did you learn these bad habits? You learn to be mindless as a child. You might have heard from your parents to “suck it up”. This message can become internalized in your brain as “don’t feel anything”. As a child, you learn from this behavior that you can shut down your feeling leading to mindlessness.
How do you turn around mindlessness? You don’t ignore your past or become preoccupied with the future. You use mindfulness by becoming self-aware of the moment. Think about the analogy of an apple. You buy an apple at a farmer’s market and you think about how the apple tree grew in a grove. You think about how it was cared for by kind farmers that watered and fertilized the trees. The seeds of the apple represent the future. But the moment, is now. This is the moment when you take a bite into the apple.
Mindfulness is being aware of the present moment. When you are mindful, you are aware of yourself and your surroundings. In fact, you are acting intentionally with a purposeful action. With mindfulness we start by understanding ourselves, our environment and how we respond to others. Mindfulness can also balance and renew your energy to follow your goals.
While meditation may be the most effective way to achieve mindfulness, there are other options you can try. Maybe you find it difficult to practice the traditional seated contemplation. Maybe you question its value. In meditation we may have upward of three hundred thoughts so it is easy to get frustrated or caught up with perfection. It’s impossible to fail at meditation. Even if you sit for a short time then you are able to carry out a mindfulness exercise. here is no right or wrong way to carry out mindfulness. There’s no special technique for mindfulness. Certainly, you can still find more happiness and peace of mind through a variety of physical and mental practices.
There are many ways that you can be mindful throughout your day without ever having to take a break from whatever it is that you’re doing. Knowing this has helped many extremely busy people to be able to get into the habit of practicing mindful activities.
One simple way to practice mindfulness is by brushing your teeth. You do this so often that you probably do it without even thinking about it. Instead of brushing your teeth on autopilot, take the time to focus on the steps involved in this routine.
Feel the bristles of the brush as they cross your teeth and tongue. Pay attention to the thickness of the toothpaste of the flavor of it. While you’re brushing your teeth, pay attention to the process and don’t let your mind think about worries or negative thoughts.
Another way that you can practice mindfulness as you go about your day is through mindful listening. So many times, there are sounds around you and yet you don’t even hear them because you’re not listening with a focus.
Wherever you are, you can take a few seconds to listen to the sounds. You might be able to hear a bird singing, the wind blowing or the distant roll of thunder. You can practice mindful listening with popular music or with instrumentals.
Hear each sound and focus on it for a few seconds while tuning out anything but the sound. Mindfulness can be practiced by focusing on breathing. It doesn’t take long and can be done any time of day and in any place.
As you breathe, focus on the breath that you’re drawing in. Then focus on the breath that you’re exhaling. Keep your mind centered on the movement of your body as you breathe in the air and release it.
Feel the air move within you and tune in to the sensation as you’re going through the exercise. You can practice mindfulness through many other activities including walking, eating, while cooking or cleaning.
Use the following tips for inner mindfulness practices:
Slow down. Moving deliberately promotes mindfulness. Consider the purpose behind your daily activities. Take time to enjoy life instead of rushing from one activity to another.
Focus. Give your full attention to one task at a time. Turn off your phone when you’re having dinner with your family. Listen closely to ordinary conversations and falling rain.
Let go of judgements. Accept your thoughts, feelings, and experiences without guilt or shame. Love yourself for who you are now. Take pleasure in learning and growing. Forgive yourself and others for disappointments and mistakes.
Live in the present. Concentrate on today rather than regretting the past or worrying about the future. Take pleasure in ordinary things like the smell of coffee or the texture of soft cotton sheets.
Free Download:
Download this worksheet on focusing on the present moment with key affirmations and self-reflection questions.
Friends can enrich our lives. They can help us be better people. But having the wrong kind of friends can be detrimental to your emotional well-being. If you choose friends who treat others unkindly, that can create a negative space in your life.
The old saying that birds of a feather flock together means that you will become like the company that you keep.
What you want to have is the kind of friends who will be there for you.
They’ll be happy for you when you have something to celebrate. They’ll hurt with you when something hurts you. They’ll be there for you through the ups as well as the downs of life.
You want friends who enrich or add to your life rather than ones who make it worse and cause a drain on your emotions. By using mindfulness, you can choose the kind of friends that are healthy to have in your life.
These will be people who will be open and honest with communication and there will be freedom between the two of you to speak truthfully. You’ll find that when you choose friends mindfully, you’ll have people in your life that you can engage with and even when you disagree, it will be a positive experience.
Mindfulness can help you attract the right people into your life that can become lifelong friends. It all begins with your focus. Mindfulness teaches you to keep your focus on the positive aspects of other people rather than on their faults.
When you focus on the positive thoughts you can have toward others, you get back positive responses from other people. By keeping your mind on what’s good about other people, it affects how you feel about them, you perceive them in a different way and it shows in your attitude toward them.
Mindfulness teaches you to reject the negative thoughts about others and to keep your mind focused on what you like about the person. Even in the best of friendships, there can be disagreements and hurt feelings.
Mindfulness can help you choose friends wisely and then nurture the relationships once they’re in your life. You’re never going to find a perfect circle of friends. Each person in your friendship circle is going to have traits that will bother you.
They may not react to things in the way that you would. Mindfulness teaches you to release the judgmental thoughts toward others and instead see them just as you are – flawed or imperfect, yet worthy of love and friendship.
Mindfulness can give you the wisdom to help you choose friends that can create a give and take relationship – rather than a one sided friendship where someone does all of the giving while the other person does all of the taking.
When you practice mindfulness, it makes you become the kind of person who attracts good friends, the kind that everyone wants to have.
Here are three top three tips to help you feel satisfied with your life as you make good friends:
My Sky Is The Limit 