There are times when you just have no choice but to stop and bring everything to a halt. All too often, we allow things to spiral out of control because we either take on too much or talk ourselves down with the inner critical voice, judging our ability and setting ourselves up for a fail.
Sometimes, we are slowed down because our overall health has been impacted due to a lack of self-care in it’s truest sense, getting good quality sleep, exercise, nutritious food and “pause” time.
If you meditate, it serves you best when it’s a daily practice rather than becoming a crisis meditator, where you don’t do it until something overwhelming happens.
Hitting the proverbial “pause’ button often, several times throughout the day to take a mindful break, to pay attention to your self-talk and see if you are supporting yourself or judging yourself, allows you to make the necessary changes that will support you to make better choices. If you are being self-critical, the quickest way to turn that around is to praise yourself.
This has been proven by research to lift your mood and raise your happiness levels, even if initially you find it difficult to say good things to yourself. Think of it like you’re strengthening a muscle in the gym by repeating certain exercises, it’s the very same here, but in this case you are strengthening your mental muscles and as your mind learns by repetition, over time it will become stronger and the habit of self-praise will dominate.
Understanding the concept, that your life is your responsibility, offers you a chance to respond to events in your life in a supportive way, to create inner peace and well-being.
Taking responsibility is about becoming a conscious choice maker. It’s about reviewing your life and creating balance, so that there is a flow of joy and happiness that filters into your relationships, career and hobbies, leaving you and everyone who encounters you, feeling a lot better for the privilege.
We are all in a hurry, largely due to the demands on our time and wallets. Torn between making money and making a life, often shortchanging ourselves and our families.
The word responsibility had a whole new meaning for me, when during a workshop many years ago, it was explained, that within the word itself, there are two words, response and ability. So, in essence, responsibility is about having the ability to respond to your life.
This applies to us all. Recognising that we have the ability to turn things around is very empowering. One of the best ways to do this in an instant is to ask yourself, when faced with a challenge or an upset is “Am I willing to look at this situation differently?” or “What do I need to learn from this experience?”
These two questions will immediately put you back in the driver’s seat of your life and elevate you energetically as you take ownership of your life and happiness. You have the power inside you to live your best life and it begins with believing that to be true and then making better choices to determine that.
Throughout history there are men and women who have overcome many devastating circumstances.
One of my favourite stories of triumph over adversity, is the one shared by holocaust survivor Victor Frankl in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he describes in the following passage, how despite horrific circumstances, he and many like him, found the courage to find meaning, while enduring the worst kind of cruelty whilst being held prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp ;
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men and women who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in numbers, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Letting go of the past is possible. Knowing you don’t have to continue living from how you identified yourself previously is liberating. The present moment is more powerful than the past and making healthy choices every moment about who you are now and who you are becoming is your path to emotional freedom.
No matter what happened to you, when you decide that you are responsible for your happiness and inner peace, you have the power to break old mental habits and create a different future.
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