The first and most important thing is that if anything is going to change then it is pretty much up to you to make that happen.
Try to get a sense of who you are. What kind of person are you, how do you engage with others, what are your common thinking patterns.
Don’t try to focus on what you see as being the problem in your life.
Instead concentrate your attention on working out how to build a world where those problems will no longer exist for you.
The majority of people seem to focus on the resolution of specific issues in their lives.
I actually think that in the majority cases this serves little overall value and there’s nothing to change the situation if you are or maybe in.
There is a very strong possibility that what you experience is a consequence of so many other elements.
So instead of trying to focus on fixing the consequence, or the outcome, it’s more useful to look at what led to that specific set of circumstances and then try and change whatever that is.
One of the main reasons to look at things like this is because for many people what they experience is rarely an isolated event. In part things become overwhelming because they seem to keep happening to us and that in itself is what becomes overwhelming. So the principle here is to change the root cause, do that and the outcomes will take care of themselves.
In Specific examples, people who experience high levels of anxiety will often then focus huge amounts of their attention on what is the underlying cause for the anxiety.
In this instance anxiety is usually a consequence of a whole set of responses and perceptions.
Instead of focusing on the specifics of what the specific triggers are. If you look at the way that you respond to situations, and how you see and perceive situations in your life, then you will very often take away the root cause of the anxiety in the first place. Part of this is the basic principle of cognitive therapy.
- Nothing starts to happen unless you put effort and energy into making it happen.
In some ways this is quite simplistic. If you want to achieve something you have to put the work and effort in first before the results occur. If You want to be a different kind of person, function in a different way, react in different ways, see the world in different ways, you cannot just think yourself to that position. You have to develop and grow to that place. It’s not and never will be a given.
- Get away from the ideas that you need a therapist or counselor to tell you all with this s***. The Person that knows you the best is you however one of the most important things is that you take off your blinkers and start to see you in a very objective and constructive manner. Try to become a little bit dispassionate and step away from yourself in order to examine yourself. For many this is like stepping into a completely alien landscape to begin with. The reality is that most of us are so familiar with living in our world that we rarely if ever stop to think about how we actually inhabit it and what we are and have become in order to do that.
- Start to develop skills to manage how you feel in the present.
If you feel anxiety, there are numerous ways to manage this effectively. If you are angry, learn to step back from it, reduce the intensity. Most emotions do not automatically have to be experienced as high intensity. If they are, then you are doing something that is putting it there. See what this is and once you recognise you are doing it, work towards reducing the way you do that.
- If you have an obvious problem, do something to change the situation, solve the problem, get as far away from a situation as possible.
- Build a life as much as possible.
- Look after your physical health
- Do whatever you can to develop fluid thinking.
Talk to people who will challenge your ideas, ways of thinking, the way you see the world, the manner in which you engage in it. Try different things just for the sake of doing this. Walk a different route to work, try a different type of food. Do anything that brings you closer to a point where you accept that the world has a multitude of perceptions and viewpoints, and learn to accept this as a simple reality.
- Build and develop your resilience skills.
- Go out and learn to recognise good role models.
We are not complete. Just because we are adults and perceive ourselves as grown-ups does not mean that we are whole rounded balanced human beings. To become those we need to continue to grow and develop ourselves throughout our lives. In some ways it is the very perception that you are what you are that prevents us from moving forward.
If you have a belief that you know and understand something there is a very strong possibility that you then close your mind to the possibility of challenging those ideas or beliefs further. There is nothing whatsoever that is absolute. Anything could and should be able to be challenged or refuted or denied.
Sometimes it is only as part of questioning something that we then strengthen our knowledge and awareness but we don’t do that by putting chains and padlocks around things we believe and not allowing anything else to get close. People will often go to remarkable lengths to protect the way they see the world.
If only they would go to the same effort and trouble to actually challenge their own thinking.
Every Time you meet somebody and like what they do, how they are, how they engage and interact, think about what it is about them that demonstrates these qualities and then find ways to bring them into your own life experience.
This is not about becoming another person or copying other people, it is about recognising skills and assets the other people may possess, and which you yourself may be lacking. But just because you don’t possess these, doesn’t mean that you can’t develop them.
Equally valid of course is doing the exact opposite. Seeing negative qualities, and then examining yourself to see if you seem to possess similar qualities without necessarily being aware of it. Every experience we have can create a point of reference and something to compare yourself against. That is one of the beauties of being in a society of people, we are surrounded by references for attitudes, behaviour, life skills, personality etc. They are all around us all the time.
Be wary of comparing yourself negatively to the people. They have had a whole world of wife experiences which have moulded them and taken them to the point where they are at now. There is a very good chance that your life experiences were very dissimilar and therefore took you to a very different place.
There is no point being frustrated or resentful about this, you got what you got, they got one they got, it is what it is.
However, just because you don’t see certain attributes in yourself, doesn’t mean that you cannot start to develop them over time so they can become as much a part of you as they seem to be part of other people.