Short messages on Positive change from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
It’s easy to forget to make time for yourself when things get stressful, so make sure you don’t get so pre-occupied that days can go by without you doing anything for yourself.
Problems are a normal part of life, and we usually feel better when we do something to resolve them rather than just dwell on them. If you can’t solve the problem, change the way you think about it. You can practice acceptance and move on with life in a positive way.
One way to deal with situations you can’t change is to practice acceptance. This means accepting the way things are without insisting that they should be different, and deciding to get on with life in spite of the situation.
Thinking errors are irrational patterns of thinking that can cause you to feel bad and sometimes act in self-defeating ways. If you feel more upset the more you think about a situation, you can learn to think in a different way.
You can’t change your height, your age, most of your physical features, or what has happened in the past. But, you can change the way you deal with how you see yourself, and situations, in the future.
When you’re faced with a difficult situation, ask “What’s the best thing I can do to resolve this problem?” Work through the options one step at a time. Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation that you can’t change, no matter how much you would like things to be different.
Coping strategies might include: challenging your negative self-talk; talking to people who can support you; relaxing and reflecting; and distracting yourself from the problem by getting involved in other enjoyable activities.
When we feel like reacting negatively to someone, they are helping to bring out what we haven’t healed in ourselves. How can there be blame and anger towards those that bring up our shadows? Instead, we could replace our resentment with compassion for ourselves and those who hurt us.
We all have invisible wounds and we’ll do anything to avoid them being touched. If someone else accidentally touches our wounds, we act as if they caused them. But, they didn’t cause them, and they cannot heal them. They are our wounds and we have the power to heal them.
When you develop coping strategies, you’re able to build resilience. You’re able to see things in a better perspective and you’ll feel much better about how you handled a certain situation.