Last night I met a tired and tired soul at a local charity event. We had a conversation after I helped her pick up some papers that she accidentally dropped on the floor. She said she volunteered for the event and several other fundraisers over the next few weeks because she really didn’t have anywhere else during the holidays. Aside from details, she basically told me that she was struggling with a lack of healthy relationships, a lack of self-confidence, and a lack of meaning in her life.
I comforted her as much as I could during our 10-minute conversation and assured her that the volunteer work she does makes a difference. Then we hugged and I gave her my business card before I left. Hopefully she will reach me because I want to share so much more with her. I know what it’s like to feel tired and tired, feeling down and depressed, and having no one to talk to. I have struggled desperately with anxiety and confidence issues many times in the past.
So I’m writing this short post for you and all of my fellow human beings out there who are tired and tired and struggling to be happy today.
They fight, maybe even with a broken heart, and this state of being is difficult to cope with. It can feel lonely, exhausting and even hopeless at times.
How do you motivate yourself when you feel defeated? How do you heal when you have little hope? How do you connect with others when you don’t have the confidence to stand there?
I know you want answers. And I’m so sorry that you’re fighting and hurting inside. But please know that you are not alone. It may feel like you are, but you are not. For one thing, I am with you because I am thinking of you at this very moment. I am with you because I too have been tormented and hurt in a very similar way. We have shared feelings of exhaustion, insecurity, fear, heartache, loneliness and hopelessness.
Yes, I am deeply connected to you and my heart is full of compassion for you.
And not only do I understand what you are going through – every living, breathing person on this planet has felt similar feelings at some point. We all go through the struggles of life together – we are connected by our common adversities. We may feel alone inside, but we are connected again in our loneliness.
To be honest, the feeling of being broken and alone, cut off from the rest of society, is a delusion. Sure, it’s a deception that feels real. But that’s not it, I assure you.
Questions to turn your day around
While I can’t resolve all of your pain right away, I can offer you some perspective-changing questions and comments that have helped me get through some of the hardest days of my life. Angel and I later used these questions and comments in various coaching exercises to help our course students mentally overcome various forms of suffering.
- What expectations of the past do you hold on to (hopelessly) today?
In general, it’s almost always a good idea to let go of your expectations. If you have few expectations set in stone, you will rarely be devastated by disappointments. Of course, it can be extremely difficult to let go of certain expectations. Since you still expect your personal values to be respected, don’t expect a debilitating illness and you can even expect most people to mean well. The more expectations you can let go of today, the better.
But what happens if one of your expectations is tied to an unchanging event in the past? What happens if you still subconsciously expect a result that never happened and the time and place for it have passed? You are hopelessly stuck, that’s something!
It’s time to let go!
Letting go doesn’t mean being able to forget the past – it’s about having the wisdom and strength to accept the present.
You cannot use past experiences to change past results, but you can use past experiences to change current results. At the moment you have an invaluable opportunity… to practice acceptance, to let go of old expectations and to use this moment in the best possible and positive way.
Knowing when to expect and hope for results – and when to let go and go with the times – is the key challenge to using your limited resources wisely. The solution to this challenge is wisdom, and wisdom doesn’t just fall from the sky. To gain wisdom you need life experience, including negative experiences such as heartache, failure, illness, loneliness and loss. Of course, these are not the life experiences that you are actively looking for. But if they find you unexpectedly, you might as well learn from them and use them to your advantage.
- What could you be positive about now if you really wanted to be positive?
If you are not deeply depressed, sadness is just a feeling. And as with all feelings, you choose it. Yes, you are actually making a decision (conscious or unconscious) to feel the way you do. If you wanted to be positive and smile now, it would be on purpose. And if you wanted to frown, you can go for it.
A smile is indeed a choice, no wonder. And smiling is a choice that actually makes you feel better. The simple smile sends a message to your brain that you are happy, and then your body pumps out all kinds of feel-good endorphins. This response has been studied by dozens of positive psychologists and has been extensively discussed in their field.
But even if you choose to be positive and smile often, sadness is of course still part of life. Although it is a chosen response, it is a natural response to a negative life experience. And, in general, it’s not a bad feeling to have short-term as long as you don’t allow it to consume you. The key is to keep an eye on things and then change your perspective if you have to.
If life isn’t going the way you want it to feel like you have nothing at all. But that’s not correct. Our ego’s desires often conflict with the realities of life. Find your balance between planning and presence – between expectation and acceptance. Work for what you want, but don’t look for something better every second. You have to be ready to relax the planned life so that you can accept the life that is waiting for you at this moment. It may not be everything you want, but it is everything you need. Experience it and find the positive.
A recent scientific study discussed in The Happiness Advantage has shown that physicians who are in a positive mood prior to diagnosis consistently significantly improve their intellectual skills compared to physicians in a neutral state. This enables them to make accurate diagnoses almost 20% faster. The same study then switched to other professions and found that positive-thinking salespeople outperform their pessimistic counterparts by over 50%. Students who were prepared to feel positive and happy before taking exams significantly outperformed their neutral counterparts. So it turns out that our minds are literally hardwired to do their best, not when it’s negative or even neutral, but when it’s positive.
Treat yourself to this gift today. Put yourself in a more positive mood so that you can bring your best foot forward. (Angel and I build practical, mood-changing daily rituals with our students in the “Goals and Growth” module of Getting Back to Happy.)
- What importance have you attached to your current challenges?
Even if you are positive, you still face challenges – you cannot avoid this reality. But how you feel in your life has little to do with the challenges or with what happened (or didn’t happen) to you. The importance you assign to these challenges determines the quality of your life. And you may not even know how often your subconscious mind assigns a negative meaning to every little inconvenience. So check in with yourself …
When something happens that interferes with your life (an illness, an injury, a loss, etc.), do you tend to think that this is the end or the beginning?
When someone confronts you, does that person insult you, coach you, or try to take care of you?
Does a problem mean that God is punishing or challenging you? Or is it possible that this problem is not a problem at all, but an opportunity?
If we change the meaning we assign to our challenges, there is no limit to what life can be. A change in focus and a shift in meaning can literally change our biochemistry and the course of our lives in a few seconds.
Take a deep breath and remember: meaning is emotion and emotion is strength. Choose wisely. Learn to redesign your challenges. Find positive, empowering meaning in every event, and the best way forward is always yours. (Angel and I look at the reformulation in more detail at our annual Think Better, Live Better conference. The next one will take place from February 18-19, 2017. Get a discounted early bird ticket while it’s valid. Note: You can briefly watch clips from our 2016 event here and here.)
- What do you NOT want others to know about you today?
This question sums up your uncertainties. Let us remind you that problems, shortcomings and challenges are part of everyone’s life. Do not be ashamed. Don’t worry about being judged or rejected.
What others think about you doesn’t define you. Get rid of their judgment. What they see in you is their opinion and a reflection of what they see in the world. Some people may find you smart, funny, and talented, while others think you are average or even undesirable at best. For some you may look beautiful, for others you may look too fat or thin. No matter what others think about you, it’s about their standards of beauty, intelligence, or awareness, and it really has very little to do with YOU.
But too often we let the rejections we experience determine each of our steps. We literally don’t know that we are better than what an opinionless, uninformed person told us. The truth is, rejection doesn’t mean we’re not good enough – it just means that, under certain circumstances, a person doesn’t match what we have to offer.
Rejections don’t matter.
Let them go and focus your attention back on what’s important.
What matters is how you see yourself.
Always make a habit of staying 100% true to your values and beliefs, regardless of what others think. Never be ashamed of doing what feels right.
To help you implement this positive habit, first list 5-10 things that are important to you if you want to build your character and live your life. For example:
honesty
reliability
Self-esteem
Self-discipline
compassion
Progress
Positivity
etc.
Having a short list like this for your reference gives you the ability to consciously call and maintain your handpicked traits and behaviors, rather than doing something accidental just for external validation. While it sounds too simplistic, most people never take the time to actually decide what is important to them when it comes to their self-image – they let others decide for them, especially in difficult times. (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of 1,000 little things that make happy, successful people different.)
Final thoughts (to turn the day)
Aside from all the details, the best key to turning your day when you’re on the radio is to concentrate ONLY TODAY – just the immediate steps you need to take. Because no matter what happens, everyone can fight the battles one day imaginatively. It is only when you add the battles of these two abysmal eternities, the past and the future, that life gets overwhelmingly out of control.
So keep in mind that it is not today’s experience that is holding you back, but the regret and resentment of something that happened yesterday, or the fear and dread of what tomorrow could bring. So it is necessary to live only one day at a time – only today.
Be here now
And just do the best you can.
It’s your turn…
We’d love to hear from you.
So let’s take a look at the second question I asked above:
What could you see positively now if you really wanted to be positive?
Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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