We resolve a million times to stay away from toxic people, situations and relationships and yet slowly find ourselves getting weaker and crawling back into same mess time and again. Sound familiar?
This goes out to all of you who have based your worth over the approval/validation of others and may not even realize it. Mind you, there is no magic formula. These are things which helped me fall in love with the ‘RIGHT ONE‘ and you know who that is? IT’S ME! I know right! There she goes again about the same beaten to death cliche of loving yourself. It is a ‘CLICHE’ because it is a tried and tested success formula to be able to give yourself much more than you deserve.
But the question is HOW DO YOU LOVE YOURSELF? Especially when someone just made you feel unwanted, rejected, less of yourself and unworthy of what you are asking. The hardest thing is to stand up for yourself when no one else does.
Always remember how people treat you says more about them than you. You cannot change them but you can change yourself. Their behavior towards you is by no means a measure of how good or bad you are. Don’t label yourself based on the behavior of others. The more you try various ‘Monkey Tricks’ to get desired behavior from them you lose clarity of your own needs.
At times ‘HOPE is a ‘BITCH”and it makes us want to believe things even when the obvious is glaring right at us! Recognize when you need to put your foot down. Listen to that nagging voice in your head which you suppress because you don’t like the outcome.
Use this entire experience to be a better version of yourself. I know it’s hard, give yourself time, take baby steps each day. Turning into an emotional mess and cribbing until the end of time will get you nowhere and totally ruin your inner peace. Instead, people will want to stay away from a whiny self-pitying person after a certain point. No one likes to be around a cry baby. NOBODY IS GOING TO SAVE YOU! Only you can help yourself.
You are what you attract. It’s like blaming the mirror for the reflection it shows. Sorry folks! The lower you set the bar, that’s the kind of people who are going to walk into your life. They will not help you grow in life, you will find yourself entangled in their messy lives as opposed to you focusing on yours. I am sure you have wondered at some point in your life “Why only a certain type of people walk into my life”? I am not saying they are always not good people but they are not good for you. The only one thing which is common amongst all of these people is ‘YOU’ and that is why you need to look within.
Stop trying to please others. If you are pretending to be someone else, keeping up with it will eventually tire you. As all you are doing is trying to win over that person. But are you getting what you want out of it? The loss is only yours. It is so rewarding, calming, reassuring when someone loves you for who you are. If even ‘YOU’ don’t like yourself, how will anyone else?
“It’s really simple: If they love you, you’ll know. If they don’t, you’ll constantly wonder if they do” ~ Charles J Orlando
When life got rough and people kept disappointing me, I chose to get up and get a hold of my life. Here are some things which pulled me through.
- Somehow we feel that the person who hurt us is feeling the pain we are feeling right now. That makes us hope they will realize their fault and come crawling back and then we will be relieved of this pain. But NO! They did this to you because they wanted to, maybe they did not want to cause you pain but they definitely want you out of their life. Sooner I accepted this fact the faster I healed.
- Letting them know you are suffering, hurting, unable to enjoy anything in life and that your mind is a constant thinking machine working overtime is of no good. Trust me you will get pity in charity. You dusting of this whole thing off your shoulder and moving on is the best answer.
- Don’t pretend to move on just to show others. DO IT FOR YOU! Once you turn a setback into a comeback you will feel powerful and realize how much these people held you back.
- Give yourself a bit of tough love. Don’t ‘PRETEND’ to have self-respect and then secretly be a doormat. We all do this, we say things that people want to hear from us just to shut them up but when we are alone we are back to being spineless
- Keep yourself busy. An empty mind is a devil’s workshop!
- Lean on your close friends, they will be your biggest support
- If you are ‘Spiritually Inclined’ hang on to it with your dear life
- Hit the Gym! A great place to get rid of all the frustration, negativity and anxiety and enjoy the release of happy hormones.
- Learn to ignore or control your worst ENEMY — WhatsApp and Social Media. Believe me, it really frees your mind. A temporary social media detox surely helps you refocus on yourself.
- Steer clear of the same kind of people who made you unhappy.
- Dress up like a ROCK-STAR. Don’t underestimate the power of a good outfit on a bad day. Make the effort to look good, it makes a huge difference. Avoid sitting and sulking at home and make people wonder if you are a rag picker. The way you look on the outside has a huge impact on how you feel within and vice versa
- You might fail but start over. All the successful people in the world have one thing in common and that is — they kept trying.
- Use this time in your life to reflect on why I am in this situation. Self-reflection is by far is the most powerful tool to understand your own self
- Were you unreasonable? Were you demanding? Did you base your opinions solely on assumptions? Did you create your own disappointments by expecting things from people even knowing the truth deep down?
- Concentrate on your thoughts because they invoke your actions and in turn define you. You are what you think and do.When you shed all the burden of what others think of you, you are finally free to love your true self. Everything begins and ends with our thoughts and if we learn to discard and nip negative thoughts in the bud, we are gaining power and control over our lives.
The day you learn to see yourself clearly you can pat yourself on the back! Once you accept things about yourself you can break the pattern from repeating in all your future relationships.
Only one thing is constant — constantly working on yourself. When you are at your best you will have so much more to give, you will be someone who naturally commands the respect of people, you will see more beautiful people walking into your life and your energy and happiness will spill over in the lives of others as well. You owe this journey to yourself, it’s not the easiest but certainly, the most life transforming. You will discover your true potential and do things you never thought you were capable of. If you learn to make yourself happy you can overcome any problem in life.
The day the ‘Earth-Shaking Epiphany’ hit me that everything and everyone around me is my own manifestation — I CELEBRATED! This realization was my biggest breakthrough in life. When you realize that you and only you have the power to change how you feel and react to situations, you rob others of the power to affect you negatively. It is taxing and a lot of work to keep blaming others. I had some very questionable people in my life and I now thank them for all the lessons I learnt the hard way. When I look back I feel I had definitely lost my marbles!
It’s an on-going process forever, some days you will fail miserably and be an insecure and unhappy mess but then you pick yourself up until you overcome it every single time. It’s like polishing a diamond in the rough. Each time you will shine a little more
When you put in all your energy and focus into self-development you will not have time to decode, analyze and solve the self-created puzzles of every move of others. Your mind will be freed of so much unnecessary clutter. You will sleep like a baby on a floating cloud in the most loving arms.
Having the right kind of people in your life makes your life so easy. You will feel warm, fuzzy, protected and brave to deal with anything that life throws at you.
Fall in love with yourself first! CHIN UP! Keep Smiling!
Originally published at thehappinessvault.com on November 6, 2016.
Originally published at medium.com