What's the first thing you want to do when it seems like your world is crashing all around you? For some, we feel the need to crawl into bed, pull the covers over our head and cry ourselves to sleep. For others, we may turn to bad habits like getting blackout drunk, firing up the Tinder app, or shutting out the world...including our closest friends and family just hoping it will all go away. If one thing is certain in life, it's that we can't expect everything to always go perfect. Someone is always going to hurt you. There will be more time where things don't go according to plan or we are faced with the results that are less than satisfactory than we would care to admit. And at the end of the day we will be forced to ask ourselves, "How are we going to handle this?" For those that hide from the world or drink their misfortune away, that question has subconsciously already been answered for them...and the answer is to bury and hide it from entering their reality. Unfortunately, allowing our subconscious to dictate our behavior in response to heartache is a habit that provokes a cycle of self destruction. The pattern repeats. Every. Single. Time.
You may now be asking yourself, "Well, if the answer has already been decided for me, how do I change it?" The answer to that is as realistic as it is simple...change your mind and you can change everything! Mental strength isn't an attribute that some are born with and others envy. Mental strength, resiliency, and a positive and disciplined mindset are at the fingertips of every one of you and it's time you found the switch to skyrocket your mental strength to a 10! We aren't born with it; however, some of us have spent more time than others putting habits into place and taking daily steps to improve our awareness and our ability to think a different way than we are programmed to.
The first step is being mentally prepared to face challenges head on. Knowing your habits and tendencies when things go wrong is crucial...whether that's eatting a family size bag of ruffles or ignoring texts and phone calls for three days. When you know your trigger response, the awareness you need to turn that switch is activated. The next step is putting healthy habits in place fo the ones that you comfortabily partake in. What does your happy place look like? Is it lifting weights in the gym, getting dressed up and grabbing a bite to eat with some friends, or walking an empty trail with your fur baby? For me, my happy place centers around new experiences, traveling, and spending time with positive and fun friends. My tendency when things go wrong is to withdraw from everyone and everything. The toughest thing for me is to drag myself out of bed, put on real clothes, and head out the door to make whaver plans I had set with people prior to any unfortunate events. It took my a long time to realize that not only was I making things worse for the situation by hididng out and feeling pathetic, But once I finally felt confident enough to emerge I realizedI had bailed on friends that weren't too happy with me and I felt like I was so behind on everything else in my life that I became overwhelmed and frusterated. And then I would fail at something and the cycle would repeat.
We don't realize how important it is to be prepared to face life and it's obstacles square in the face consistently and confidently until it's too late and we are sitting back and watching our life continue on with what seems to be a never ending repeat button. You have everything in you to shut your subconscious answer down and overcome those hurdles no matter how scary and awful they are. Is it okay to eat that pint of ice cream? Is it okay to take 24 hours to cry and watch Desperate Housewives two seasons in a row? Of course it is. Because sometimes we just need to cry. But once you've licked that spoon clean and you've hit pause on Wisteria Lane...it's what you do to face that challenge and make your life just a little better that's going to beuild that strength up
You have everything inside of you that you need to overcome. Believe in yourself pretty girl and keep that chin up!
