“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
-Winston Churchill
A question I am often asked is, “How do I stop feeling like I do?”. Put another way, “How do I stop the pain?”. No matter what your situation, whether you’ve been left by your partner, you’ve just lost your job, you have no confidence, you’re jealous, you want revenge and on and on, YOU CAN get beyond the emotions and feelings attached to it.
When things don’t work out the way you would like them to there’s no doubt it will elicit a gamut of emotions and feelings that you have to deal with. It becomes a challenge when you don’t let go of feeling bad about whatever has happened or is happening.
Whether you like it or not, you have to first accept what is. You have no control over what has occurred, wishing things were different isn’t going to make it so. It’s in this resisting of what is and not accepting, that causes pain.
So, how do you get over it? You change your thoughts. You change what you are saying to yourself about the situation. You get in control of your inner dialogue. You control the one thing you can – your view of it; the way you choose to look at any given set of circumstances.
You can apply this to anything you are experiencing. Remember, no matter what you’re experiencing, (job loss, jealousy etc.) it’s what you are telling yourself about this situation that keeps you from moving forward. You have to flip the script!
You are the only one who has control of what you think about any given situation. You can make it good or bad, livable or not by how you present it to your mind. Beating yourself over the head with toxic thoughts will only serve to keep you stuck exactly where you don’t want to be.
It’s all the way you choose to think about it that will make you or break you. So choose your thoughts wisely. It’s 100% your choice as to what you think.
Acceptance is a natural lead-in to letting go. Holding on to an associated pain by accepting that it hurts is certainly acknowledgement of the hurt, yet only by allowing one’s self to release and let go of the associated pain within that awareness is one able to move forward, rather than remaining ‘stuck’ by merely holding on to what actually hurts.
Acknowledge ~ Accept ~ Let it go!
How to let go: releasing an emotiional pain, an anguish, a hurt or feeling is as simple as 1) being aware of the feeling, 2) allowing that feeling to rise to your chest, 3) opening a pretend but visualized door or window in your chest, 4) then allowing that feeling to pass through and watching it dissipate into thin air. In other words, “Let it go”.
Great common sense here. Wish I’d thought of that.