Stop doing things that make you feel miserable
Don’t indulge in watching negative television programs, negative self-talk, excessive negative news-watching, complaining or negative conversations with others. Avoid binging on food, alcohol, television, social media, suppressive or mind-numbing technology, mood-numbing drugs etc. Stop procrastinating on taking daily action in the direction of manifesting your dreams and then complaining or feeling frustrated that nothing is changing. Don’t judge, criticise or gossip about other people. Don’t give your energy away to people, places and things that you find draining.
While it is important to try to avoid activities that make us feel miserable, it’s also important not to feel guilty about doing some of them from time to time. This is part of being human, and we need to accept that we are perfectly imperfect! Sometimes we all do things that aren’t as life-affirming as they could be. This is an aspect of human nature which is highly encouraged in western societies, as you realise if you just turn on daytime television! Many of us can become slightly obsessive or addicted to hanging out in a negative way or feeling.
Journaling can help you bring awareness to your day, to seeing when you are engaging in activities that aren’t helpful in creating the changes you want in your life. It is really important to focus on self-love. Berating yourself and feeling guilty are not going to help you let go of doing these things. Sometimes you just need to bring awareness to the unskilful behaviour, and then you can re-set your intention to engage in more positive activities. Sometimes you may overindulge in negative behaviour: for example, getting lost in social media trawling, excessive TV watching, food, alcohol etc which might make you feel bad, but this can then give you the motivation to stop doing it again.
When recovering addicts work on a 12 step program, one of their brilliant mottos is to take their recovery one day at a time. Don’t beat yourself up for what you did or didn’t do yesterday, just refocus on what you want to do today.
From a very young age we are fed the idea that one day in the future we will have our lives sorted out and only then can we then lead a perfect happy life. We look around at others, especially the rich and famous, imagining they have perfect lives. But we are all human beings, with human minds full of internal chatter. We are all on personal and frequently challenging journeys. We may be exceptionally gifted or skilled in some aspects of our lives, but human perfection doesn’t exist. So don’t give yourself a hard time for not being perfect!
We are all learning, expanding and facing challenges, both internal and external. We can only live today, in the present moment, not in some projected fantasy of the future, with the idea that when everything is sorted, only then can we be happy. You can attain happiness today by changing your internal world, by accepting your current circumstances and making the decision right now to choose to be happy.
Remember: you can’t feel good if you are having negative thoughts, and you can’t be feeling low or miserable if you are having positive thoughts.
Watch your thoughts. Don’t focus on the negative ones: notice, observe and acknowledge them, but don’t indulge or expand upon them. Keep your concentration on the good and positive things in your life and how you can improve your emotional state. This is really important. If you ever notice you’ve started to slip into not feeling so good, recall your most recent trains of thought. Whenever I do this, I always notice some (or lots of) negative inner chatter. It might be that someone has mentioned something that triggers a negative reaction in me or an old negative belief, for example, anger or anxiety and then my mind goes into negative overdrive and my well-being drops. Once I become aware of this, I then remind myself to refocus and shift my attention to gratitude and refocus my intent on the direction I wish to be heading. You may wish to re-refer to, and act upon, some of the activities that help raise your vibration and your mood-boosters list.
‘The meaning of life is actually very simple. We come here to enjoy life and love in a human body on this planet as fully as possible, while simultaneously bringing unconditional pure love into the world.’ Blake D Bauer, author and spiritual leader.