Moving Forward

The truth is that the way other people see us isn’t about us—it’s about them and their own struggles, insecurities, and limitations. You don’t have to allow their judgement to become your truth.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown
Maybe someone hurt you physically or emotionally. Maybe you've survived something else traumatic—a natural disaster, a fire, an armed robbery. Or maybe you've just come out of a trying situation, and though you know you'll eventually recover, you still feel pain that seems unbearable.
Whatever the case may be, you've been scarred and you carry it with you through many of your days.
Most of us can relate on some level to that feeling. Even people who excel at taking personal responsibility have at least one story of having been hurt. Though some of us have endured more serious situations, you really can't quantify or compare emotional pain.
To a teenager who just had her heart broken, the pain really seems like the end of the world. In fact, Livestrong estimates that every 100 minutes, a teenager commits suicide—and that the number of suicides in high-income families is the same as in poor families.
Presumably, not all of those teens have suffered incomprehensible tragedies. What they have in common is pain, born from different adversities and circumstances.
When you're hurting some people might tell you to “suck it up and deal,” as if that's a valid solution. They may say “it's all in your head” and assume that reasons away the pain. But none of that will help you heal and find happiness from moment to moment.
Like everyone, I've been hurt, in both profound and trivial ways. I've dealt with it using the following ideas:
1. Define your pain.
It's not always easy to identify and understand what's hurting you. Some people even stay in abusive relationships because it's safer than acknowledging their many layers of pain: the low self-esteem that convinces them they deserve abuse, the shame over being treated with such cruelty, and the feeling of desperation that convinces them there's no real way out.
The first step toward finding happiness after having been hurt is to understand why you were hurt, to get to the root of everything that makes the memories hard.
2. Express that pain.
There's no guarantee that you'll be able to communicate how you feel to the person who hurt you; and if you can, there's no guarantee they'll respond how you want them to. Say what you need to say anyway. Write in your journal. Write a letter and burn it. Get it all out.
This will help you understand why you're hurting and what you'll do in the future to avoid similar pain so you can feel empowered instead of victimized. Research has actually proven that people who focus on lessons learned while journaling find the experience more helpful than people who don't (focus on lessons).
3. Try to stay in the present.
Reliving the past can be addictive. It gives you the opportunity to do it again and respond differently—to fight back instead of submitting, to speak your mind instead of silencing yourself. It also allows you to possibly understand better. What happened? Where did you go wrong? What should you have done?
In other words, it allows you to torture yourself. Regardless of what you shouldhave done, you can't do it now. If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, you may need professional help to avoid revisiting the incident. If you don't, you need sustained effort. Fight the urge to relive the pain. You can't go back and find happiness there. You can only experience that now.
4. Stop telling the story.
It may seem like another way to understand what happened, or maybe it feels helpful to hear someone say you didn't do anything wrong and you don't deserve to hurt. In all reality this just keeps you stuck right where you are: living your life around a memory and giving it power to control you.
No amount of reassurance will change what happened. You can't find happiness by holding onto a painful story, trying to place in new, brighter light. You can only find happiness when you let it go and make room for something better. You don't need another person's permission to let go and feel okay.
5. Forgive yourself.
Maybe you didn't do anything wrong but you blame yourself. Or maybe you played a role in creating your current situation. Regardless of what happened, you need to realize that what you did is not who you are. And even if you feel immense regret, you deserve to start today without carrying that weight. You deserve a break.
You can either punish yourself and submit to misery, or forgive yourself and create the possibility of happiness. It comes down to whether you decide to dwell or move on. Which do you choose: anger with yourself and prolonged pain, or forgiveness and the potential for peace?
6. Stop playing the blame/victim game.
Maybe you were a victim. Maybe someone did horrible things to you, or you fell into an unfortunate set of circumstances through no fault of your own. It still doesn't serve you to sit around feeling bad for yourself, blaming other people. In fact, it only holds you back. You can't feel good if you use this moment to feel bad about another person's actions.
The only way to experience happiness is to take responsibility for creating it, whether other people made it easy for you or not. You're not responsible for what happened to you in the past but you're responsible for your attitude now. Why let someone who hurt you in the past have power over your present?
7. Don't let the pain become your identity.
If everything you do and all your relationships center around something that hurt you, it will be harder to move on.You may even come to appreciate what that identity gives you: attention, the illusion of understanding, or the warmth of compassion, for example.
You have to consider the possibility there's a greater sense of happiness in completely releasing your story.That you'd feel better than you can even imagine if you'd stop letting your pain define you. You can have a sad story in your past without building your present around it.
8. Reconnect with who you were before the pain.
It's not easy to release a pain identity, particularly if you've carried it around for a long time. It may help to remember who you were before that experience—or to consider who you might have become if it hadn't happened.You can still be that person, someone who doesn't feel bitter or angry so frequently.
If you want to feel and be peaceful and happy, start by identifying what that looks like—what you think about, what you feel, what you do, how you interact with people. Odds are this process will remind you both how you want to be and how you don't want to be.
9. Focus on things that bring you joy in the moment.
You don't have to focus on completely letting go of your pain forever; you just have to make room for joy right now. Start simple. What's something you can enjoy in this moment, regardless of what pain you've experienced? Would sitting in the sun bring you joy? Would calling your sister bring you joy?
Don't think about the totality of the rest of your days. That's a massive burden to carry—haven't you hurt enough? Just focus on now, and allow yourself a little peace. You'll be surprised how easily “nows” can add up when you focus on them as they come.
10. Share that joy with other people.
We often isolate ourselves when we're hurting because it feels safer than showing people our vulnerability. What we fail to realize is that we don't have to feel vulnerable all the time. We can choose certain people for support, and then allow ourselves time with others without involving our painful stories.
You can share a meal, a movie, a moment and give yourself a break from your anger or sadness. You don't have to carry it through every moment of your day. Don't worry—if you feel you need to remember it, you'll still be able to recall it later. But as you allow yourself pockets of peace, shared with people you love, you may find you need that story a lot less.
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Everyone deserves to feel happy. Everyone deserves a little peace. One more thing we all have in common: we can only provide those things for ourselves.

It's the little things you do every day that make a difference

Have you ever decided to make some big change in your life?

Was there something you were not happy with, so you decided to "turn over a new leaf"? Did you spend a huge amount of your time and energy into trying to change that which you didn't like?

For many people, major changes in life begin with a huge rush of enthusiasm. Sometimes this can work.

Too often, once that initial burst of energy being poured into making these monumental life changes slowly drains away. Many people discover that gradually as the focus of energy dissipates, they find themselves sliding back into those same habits and patterns which they are trying to escape from.

This can be an extremely frustrating experience!

In today's fast paced world, most people want "instant" results. Many people believe that any effort put into creating any sort of change needs to show some very fast results or they will lose interest and give up in the despair of "nothing's happening, so why bother?" This usually results in lots of effort and energy expended for little if any lasting result.

The truth is, it's the little things you do every day that will make a big difference.

The most difficult to change habit and the most insurmountable problems are both the inevitable result of the sum of all of your day to day experiences.

Just as the internet is made up of millions of different computers all linked together to form a massive field of information, so to is your life built out of millions of interconnected memories and experiences.

Your life is continuously being built out of tiny pieces of time. One small action connected to the next, and each one of these tiny pieces of your life combine into the whole web of who you are.

Many years ago, a wise man in India who was living in some very troubled times wrote down these words :-

"Carefully watch your THOUGHTS, for they become your WORDS.

Manage and watch your WORDS, for they will become your ACTIONS.

Consider and judge your ACTIONS, for they have become your HABITS.

Acknowledge and watch your HABITS, for they shall become your VALUES.

Understand and embrace your VALUES, for they become YOUR DESTINY."

--Mahatma Gandhi

Each day brings slight and subtle changes. No matter how ingrained are your habits, no matter how deeply entrenched you are in your routines, at the close of every day you will be a little bit different from who you were that morning.

The amazing thing is that you have the power to consciously decide in which direction you want that difference to be moving towards.

One of the best known chinese proverbs says

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

On any given day the changes you make don't have to be huge, earth shaking events. Simply decide what it is that you want, and then take small, conscious steps on a daily basis.

It's one of life's paradoxes that sometimes the fastest way to make major, lasting, changes is to take things slowly. Just a dail series of steps repeated daily towards a conscious direction.

So tomorrow as you go through your day, look at every action you do, no matter how small, take a note of every person you come in contact with from parents and children, bosses, workers, shopkeepers, strangers ....everyone. At the end of each encounter ask yourself. "In which direction am I moving? What will be the result of these actions repeated many times?"

For ultimately, at the end of our lives, all we will be left with is the journey. It will be the time spent on becoming what we are that will make up our lives. So make the most of each precious moment, and remember,

It's the little things you do every day that really make a huge difference.

May your life be filled with love, happiness and inspiration

There are 2 sentences that when I hear them I cringe, the first one is: 'Cop Yourself On" and the other one is "Your Wallowing" to me its like scraping your nails on a blackboard!!

So-called “negative” emotions like despair get no respect, and wallowing gets even less. But if you feel rotten, I’m here to tell you that there is one thing even worse than wallowing in that rotten feeling, and that is not wallowing in it.

Here are three good reasons why you shouldn’t always turn that frown upside-down.

Reason #1: You’ll feel better sooner.

Contrary to popular belief, sadness doesn’t become worse or last longer if you give it your full attention. It’s inattention that makes bad feelings worse and prolongs them.

In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan W. Watts said that “pain and the effort to be separate from it are the same thing.”

The more you distract yourself from emotional pain, the longer you’re stuck in it.

When you try not to feel as you do, you’ve got the pain of despair and the misery of struggling against it.

Remember back when you were a teenagerl when you got your heart broken and had to walk around pretending it didn’t matter? Don’t do that to yourself. Admit you’re in pain, at least in the privacy of your own thoughts.

As counter-intuitive as it may be, the fastest way out of emotional pain is through it.

Reason #2: Increased self-confidence

While we’re on the subject of counter-intuitive facts, you might wonder what self-confidence has to do with feeling like crud.

Confidence is not a thing in itself, existing apart from you like something you order online. It’s more like the visible tip of an iceberg, or a flower with roots in the ground.
Confidence has a source.

And no, it’s not having a great body or being an extrovert or driving a cool car that makes you feel genuinely confident.

The source of real confidence is self-acceptance.

Trying to appear as something other than you are (e.g., okay when you’re not okay) undermines self-acceptance. You’re telling yourself, “My feelings are inappropriate/pathetic/unseemly and that’s why I’m hiding them.” Good luck feeling confident when that's going on!

What if you knew for certain that it’s normal to feel despair sometimes?

It is.

What if you knew you were acceptable as a person, no matter how bad you feel?

You are.

By consciously choosing to let yourself experience the blues when they come calling, you’re embracing your humanity as well as those parts of yourself that were banished before.

Wallowing is self-acceptance in action. And self-acceptance breeds confidence.

Don’t take my word for it; please try this at home.

Reason 3: Closer relationships

Are you lonely even when you’re in a relationship? You can’t be closer to anyone than you are to yourself.

Emotional intimacy (i.e., true closeness) is impossible unless you embrace your own emotions.

When you refuse to wallow in despair, it’s like you’re saying to yourself, “I don’t want to be around you if you’re going to be negative.”

Like it or not, the same message will come through when your loved ones are in despair, no matter what you say. You’ll urge them to look on the bright side, or think of the future, or compare their situation to worse ones.

You’ll try to persuade them not to despair. You might even chuckle to lighten the mood.

All these behaviors send a message of disapproval and push the sufferer away, even if that’s not your intent.

Intimacy can’t exist where certain emotions are not allowed.

When you let yourself wallow in your own despair as needed, you’ll feel more comfortable around other people’s. You can remain close, and become even closer, when times are hard.

You can forge bonds that soothe loneliness and keep you warm at night.

How to Wallow

If you’re in despair, just be there. Don’t try to change the feeling; name it instead.

In your heart, let the despair wash over you. Tell yourself things like, “I’m in despair” and “I’m feeling despair right now” and “This is despair.”

Don’t try to shake it off and for Heaven’s sake don’t act on it. Feelings are harmless, but behavior isn’t.

Remember self-compassion. Kindness is the appropriate response to a person in pain.

Don’t worry about getting stuck in despair. Emotional pain itself (as opposed to thoughts or attitudes about the pain) lasts only a minute or two.

Wallow well, and let me know how it goes.