Something I have mentioned before is what I learned to be one of the biggest blocks in our life. This is the type of blockage that prevents us from getting ahead. It halts us from having the ability to overcome many of the difficult situations we encounter as we go along this existence.
This block I am talking about here is “a habit.” Of course, we can develop good and bad habits, but in this case, I thought it was important to mention the “bad” habits that create this block.
We need to be aware of the things we are doing, the things that are taking us nowhere. It’s kind of like spinning our wheels unable to move forward.
If you can identify some, if not all, of these within your life, perhaps it’s time to rethink and take a closer look at your mindset. Habits are things we develop from childhood into adulthood. Some are more difficult to overcome than others, but nonetheless, are not impossible to do so.
This time, pay a little extra attention to #7 because this is often one many people overlook, yet it has profound effects in everyone’s life. Let’s, however, dig in a little more into each one, know that there are always things you can do to change them. I have added a few personal tips and resources to help out a little.
Destructive habits people who are generally unhappy are doing.
1. You live to please other people.
This is a devastating habit to possess because you choose to live your life trying to make everyone happy and in turn, fail to make yourself happy. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to figure out what really drives you on a deep emotional level and then do it.
If you continue to live to please other people, you will continue to fall into disappointment, frustration, and even anger.
People will seem to get used to it as well, and this is not necessarily something good for you. There is a parallel line between the people you please and how much you degrade yourself by solely trying to make others happy when you aren’t.
There may be no harm in pleasing others once in a while, but when this is all you do expect unhappiness to start creeping in on you.
2. You have an overwhelming fear of criticism.
From his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill stated that fear of criticism robs a man of his initiative, destroys his power of imagination, limits his individuality, takes away his self-reliance, and does his damage in a hundred other ways.
Most people spend their days worrying about what others think about them and will go to great lengths to look good or save face. The ironic part is that those same people are so consumed worrying about what you think of them, that they aren’t actually thinking about.
Think about it. When other people criticize you for whatever reason, there are two possible ways you can take it:
One, you take it personally. Sometimes so personally that you let it affect how you act and you also suppress the real you and can also be energy-draining. The real you is the core essence of who you are. The people who appreciate the real you will stick around, and the people who don’t like the real you will simply begin to fade away in the distance.
You are bound to experience more happiness by not feeling restrained to express the real you by the cause of other people’s views.
Two, you learn to accept it as the other person’s opinion of you, because after all, this other person has no idea of what you have been through, what you have lived or experienced. So if you think about it, it really is only their opinion. Not to mention that there could be other reasons people could criticize you, such as jealousy and envy.
When you accept it as the other persons’ view, it automatically gets discarded in your personal space within your mindset. This means it won’t stick to you and won’t drain any energy caused by you taking it personally.
3. You engage in negative self-talk.
All actions derive from what we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Unhappy people have the habit of telling themselves things like “I don’t know how,” “It’s too hard,” and “I can’t do it.” The key to change is to begin rephrasing these into positive thoughts. It takes practice, and you’ll catch yourself being negative many times, but if you want to be a happier person, you have to start making those changes.
The most influential person in your life, the person who can make something happen, or halt all your progress into a more fulfilling and joyous life, can be no other than…Yourself.
You have to realize that you can be your biggest roadblock or your biggest motivator. If you don’t figure out a way to make something happen, no one else will do it for you. And even if somebody else figured out a way for you to make it happen-whatever is it that you want to achieve, it would still be up to you to take action and keep a positive mindset to bring it into reality.
Remember that self-talk has a very powerful effect on who you are and how you direct yourself going forwards or backward in life. Start by implementing different modalities to start changing your internal program, it can be challenging to do this, but as you continue to do it, a habit will be created, this will help you go at it more naturally.
As you develop your mindset in this way, you will be on your way to realizing your true potential to create change in your life.
4. You are a glass, half-empty person.
Being a pessimist is the result of negative habits developed over a number of years. This habit is very hard to kick because it becomes so ingrained in your mind that it ís second nature. In any situation, your first thought or reaction is a negative one.
Becoming an optimist will require you to develop new mental skills and retrain your entire thought process to see opportunity instead of struggle. This can be done gradually by consciously looking at your attitude and choosing to see opportunity instead of difficulty.
A very good resource I recommend when re-wiring your mindset into a more positive and especially when it comes to being more optimistic is none other than Christian D. Larson’s Optimist’s Creed. As you can see, this will give you an idea of some of the key things you will want to pay attention to.
Make it then into a habit. Start by reading these optimistic lines as affirmations that you can start to deliver into your mind. You will see that after doing this, it will become second nature as well, but this time the tables will be turned around with something that is way more productive and also has the potential to change the way you think in a more positive way.
5. You let the past dictate your future.
If you happen to have a past riddled with negativity and bad experiences, chances are your personality mirrors this. You can’t change your past, and allowing yourself to stay attached to it will only drag you down.
Learn to let go of things out of your control and focus on today. What can you accomplish today?
There are many ways to deal with your past, of course, professional counseling and therapy such as hypnosis can help. But when your resources are scarce, or for whatever reason, you don’t have access to these resources as other people.
You can try this helpful technique for letting go of the past that still affects you today as it could work for you also, or you can start looking at what I have personally found to be one of the best methods to heal past negative experiences as mentioned in my Self-Empowering Awakening collection.
In any case, learning to accept your past and then be at peace with it will be the way to start healing it. A lot of times, these are also a type of block that can halt your progress, dwelling in a past that caused harm, hurt, or emotional damage could be a form of reliving it every day of your life today.
Remember that the past is in the past, it has no basis in reality, but it is simply an old “tape player” that keeps playing the same movie in your head over and over. It’s time to let it go and allow that space in your mindset to be cleared for better and more productive things.
6. You cannot forgive and forget.
Harboring ill feelings towards someone or something is like carrying a 10-pound weight in your pocket. We all have had bad experiences that have left a sour taste in our mouth. Forgiveness is the solution and is an incredibly powerful concept. Maybe you have been wronged or made a terrible decision in your life. Learn from it and move on.
Forgiving is easier said than done, especially if it involved experiences that caused deep hurt, anger, depression, anxiety, hate, or resentment. These are the types of experiences that can lead us to either become more destructive or becoming more spiritual in general.
Obviously, I think the latter is preferred. Somehow deep emotional experiences severely affect our psyche, thereby opening another area of our mind and even heart. This new area can be used to store more negative feelings or positive and uplifting ones that create wisdom and hear-intelligence.
A great sign that you have learned to let go of hurtful experiences is when you actually have a deep feeling of peace. Thinking about the experience no longer causes any negative emotions or triggers.
Remember that forgiveness is something that you do more for yourself than the person you are directing your feelings of forgiveness to. It will allow you to move on in your life.
7. You define yourself by your job.
It is said that more than 70% of us don’t like our jobs. In a society where we tend to view ourselves by what we do for a living rather than who we actually are, it’s a fundamental problem and leads to the inability to separate ourselves from our professions.
I can’t even begin to describe how much this affects our lives. This calls for a very deep explanation needed to fully understand the extent of how this affects us in every way. But for purposes of this article, I will keep things short.
Know that you have many great capabilities, think of it as you being a creator or destroyer…as simple as that. You can think, imagine, build stuff, generate new ideas, innovate.
But if all you are doing is trying to work to earn a living with something you hate doing, much of the previously mentioned things are but a haze in the distance, so you are not creating but merely existing, and as you continue this path you may actually start destroying your true essence as many areas of your life can start to deteriorate.
Many jobs, unfortunately, can contain a lot of the elements that suppress our natural creative abilities, a lot of times you are told to do something, stick to it, and don’t ask questions. If you continue in a job like this long enough, you will start to forget the creative part of you and start behaving more like a programmed robot.
As a by-product, this could start to affect your relationship, your health, and just about every other aspect of your life. The suppression of our imaginative and creative abilities could be so damaging that many actually land in a depressive state of being unable to identify their purpose in life.
Know that your job is not who you really are! It is simply a means for you to advance to the next step in your life’s journey. This is exactly how you should look at it, especially when there is no immediate alternative.
As you find the means, however, you should, at very minimum, pursue something you actually enjoy doing. Believe me, this will not only be better for you but also for your family, and even for the boss.
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