Short messages on Mental health, stress and anxiety issues from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
Instead of spending time criticising yourself, try to take an objective approach to understanding your personal journey. Performing a SWOT Analysis (Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats) is a great way to retrain the way you think about yourself.
Constructive feedback and a critical eye are great, but many of us spend too much time beating ourselves up over our faults. Concerning ourselves only with weaknesses breeds more weakness. Compulsive fault-finding is not an efficient self-improvement strategy.
When you speak to an older person about their life, ask if they would do things differently or exactly the same. Understand that right now YOU are the one living the life you will speak of when you are older. Make your actions count.
You can practice feeling life from the vantage point of someone else by reading a book or watching a movie that is told by an older person. What would they do today if they were in your shoes? Try acting as this person would if they could switch to your younger body.
You can release your stories whenever you decide you’re tired of believing them. Are you ready to believe and do things differently?
It doesn’t take immense bravery, strength, or vision to change the trajectory of your life. It takes one tiny step in a new direction, backed by belief not in the destination, but in the journey and yourself.
When you see yourself as the hero of your own story, you radically transform how you perceive and treat yourself, how you view and meet challenges, and what you believe you deserve and can achieve in life.
Whether you’re looking to transform your professional life or your personal life, no matter how old you are or what you’ve experienced, you can be proactive, empowered, and committed to growth and forward momentum – not a passive audience member watching life go by.
If we choose to foster a sense of inner peace, challenge our perceptions and interpretations when our emotions could use some schooling, and learn to take responsibility for our joy, we can not only minimise pain; we can choose to be a source of pleasure, for ourselves and the people around us.
Living with perspective means always looking at your life from the 10,000 foot level, and when you train yourself to pull back and view yourself from this height, things begin to look different. More often than not, they begin to look much better.