Your Life: Unfinished Business
Chapter 1
What would you give to be happier? Do you have a life that everybody sees as successful and yet you don’t seem to find an inner peace and happiness that you long for?
Everyone, at some point or another, have wished that we were happier than we are. There are many reasons for people to feel unhappy, whether we’re moving too quickly, or stress is becoming overwhelming, even in situations where it doesn’t seem like they would have any reason to be.
Before you begin to transform your life and finally finding happiness and content, it is crucial to accept your current situation. Acceptance doesn’t mean that you need to be completely happy with your current situation in life because you might be in a phase wherein satisfaction isn’t necessary to achieve your goal. After all, if you didn’t make mistakes, you wouldn’t even achieve success.
But, mistakes shouldn’t be viewed negatively but rather as lessons learned so you’ll be skilled at accepting what you have and what you are. Focus on the things you’ve learned while going through that experience. By doing this, you’ll experience less regrets and guilts regarding about the past and more importantly, you will be able to move past from any future mistakes you will experience instead of dwelling on it.
With so many cultural assumptions regarding the mistakes and failures specially the society’s idea of you which is hugely influenced by your past mistakes and failures, it will be difficult to see your mistakes in a positive light overnight and use them to improve your future. The idea of “being ashamed of your mistakes and failures” was taught to you at an early age whether it is directly through your parents’ teachings or indirectly through social media and friends. Combined with inevitability of setbacks as a part of all aspects of life, these embedded thoughts of shame and guilt by the society about your past mistakes and failures explain why most people, probably including you, give up on working to achieve their goals and suffer a silent guilt and regret.
What’s missing in many people’s beliefs is that these setbacks has a vital role in your success because they provide people with unique learnings and experiences that they will be able to apply in every aspect of their life. So, before you can successfully achieve your ultimate goal, you must change your opinion about setbacks and mistakes, start viewing them as your stepping stones to better understanding. See them as a means of learning to get you on the right track to a happier and fulfilled life.
Admitting that you’re wrong is the first steps towards new, positive outlook in life. Denial doesn’t help you solve any problem that you face instead, you suppress it. The moment you suppress these feelings, it will haunt you one day and you cannot control when it will happen or how. To prevent this from happening, it is vital to accept your own inability to change the past and let go of the feelings regarding any mistakes you’ve made, whether you’ve gotten into a fight you have regretted afterwards or offended a close friend. Acceptance is important to moving forward and becoming the happier person you always wanted to be.
Learning to relax and unwind means that you free your mind, body and soul with negativity and toxic feelings regarding your past mistakes. Instead of thinking “What If?” and dwell on that past even that you cannot change anymore, channel your feelings and emotions to a more positive outlook of life.
Practice replacing your unhealthy thoughts with healthy thoughts, until it becomes habit. For example:
“What if” can be replaced with “what can I do now?”
“I shouldn’t have done that” can be replaced with “I will learn from this to make sure it won’t happen again”.
Furthermore, here’s a scientifically proven and suggested ways to help yourself effectively scale back the negative thoughts in your mind and replace them with positive ones. You could write down a list of negative thoughts that you find yourself dwelling on regularly and writing positive thoughts to replace it. You could also wear a snap band on your wrist and gently snap the band when you caught yourself thinking about these negative thoughts, this particular method is suggested by a number of psychologists and therapists.
Training yourself to think positively every time a negative thought crosses your mind, will make you one step closer to being the happier and successful version of you. It won’t certainly happen overnight, it make also take a lot fo effort in your part to consciously replace unhealthy outlooks to a healthier ones but, you will find that it gets easier as time goes by and one day, finally finding yourself as a happier, more positive version of you.
The Pivotal Life Coach 