Powerlessness

Whether it is that we are influenced by a negative peer group, structural barriers are put in place by organizations to oppress you, or perhaps discrimination this does impact how we view the world. These factors contribute to powerlessness. These negative things we experience in life develop our coping skills and ways of handling situations in life. However, do not confuse theses conditions in your life with the truth about you. Conditions can and do change. When we decide to change things in our life we have to realize that we are going to have to keep trying over and over again until the change is internalized. In time we start to believe in ourselves.

Empowering Ourselves

Having good people who support us is important to our self growth. However, some people can be a negative influence on us trying to achieve our goals and it seems they want to prevent us from changing and improving our lives. Perhaps these people feel threatened and can’t accept you changing one role in your life to another. Perhaps it can be a structural barrier that is actually a barrier put their to prevent you from accessing a certain resource. Regardless we have to empower ourselves to change. We do this by our ability to manage our emotions, gaining knowledge, perseverance and constantly looking at ways to improve ourselves. It’s important to look at the source of the criticism. Is the person qualified to judge me on this topic? What is their motive with this criticism? It’s also important to learn from criticism. What did I do wrong in this situation? What could I do differently next time? This knowledge is important since we have to be aware of the potential barriers that prevent us from being successful. Developing a solid foundation of people that will aid you in achieving your goals and dreams in life is a critical element in the change process.

Don't Give Up

We’ve talked about learned helplessness, anxiety, fear destructive cycles, self imposed limitations, stress and procrastination in the past. To really see problems such as these in our life is important. However, it’s truly important to recognize the fact that we only fail when we give up are dreams of a better life. Honestly, if you don’t give up and you keep evaluating and re-evaluating yourself a door will open in time. The lag of time it took you to get to your goal perhaps was needed in order for you to have enough self worth to walk through the door. Personally, I have experienced this over and over in my life. The key to success is persevering no matter what. Truthfully, eliminate the option to go back to you’re your old patterns in life, then their is no other way to go but self improvement and reaching your potential in life. If I can do this so can you. Have a GREAT DAY!

Negativity

Our life is truly in our hands, however, we must learn to control and deal with our negative thoughts. The negativity distorts our perception of reality and is the cause of our lack of enthusiasm for life. The pessimistic thinking such as “What’s the sense of trying”. ‘I can’t do this! “I feel overwhelmed with all the things I have to do! “I feel really depressed. All I want to do is sleep” These feeling and thoughts are like rolls of film playing back over and over again in our mind. We become a slave to our uncontrolled negative thoughts. In reality we need to force in positive thoughts. Positive thinking can turn negative things into positive things. For example, making mistakes in life is normal and is actually essential to learning and growing. It’s what we do with the mistake. Do we use it as a reason to give up or do we learn from it rearrange and take back control of our lives in order to grow more resilient and rise above adversity. Don’t let pessimistic thinking stop you from accomplishing things and enjoying your life.

Perception and Trauma

How we perceived the terrorism during the Sept. 11 attack on the world trade centre or how we percieve traumatic events in our real lives there are similarities. For example, when we watched the attack on the world trade centre, people were glued to the television set, they tuned out all their filtering mechanisms and tried to absorb meaning and understanding of the event solely through the television. The news media always sensationalizes the news graphically. Everyone had questions and were looking for answers. The point is that people tried to make sense of this event through the television instead of a good parent, a priest, rabbi or other reliable people they could have talked to. Trauma is stored visually in the brain; consequently, the images assert influence on how we perceive the world and other people in it. The media has a great influence on our lives. However, when we talk to other people we educate ourselves, learn to trust other people, and eventually we can process traumatic events. I’m using the terrorism to illustrate trauma, however, no matter what the trauma is whether it be domestic violence, childhood issues, or loss of a loved one, it is essential to have good people to talk to. The benefits are limitless.

Trust

When breaches of trust with other people happen, we can mistakenly think that we can’t trust anyone. Consequently, we become unapproachable and we can come across as cold towards other people. However, the real truth is we can’t distinguish between the people we can trust and the people we can’t trust. The un-resolved hurt and pain is actually a barrier between you and people. In a lot of cases people who have been hurt are confused as to why they treat people the way they do. The real damage is our close relationships with the people we love are effected. It’s the hurt, breaches of trust and trauma that prevent us from having close relationships with them. This information is important to know since sharing being honest about ourselves and making attempts to trust others again will in time heal us from our hurt and pain. Dealing with the pain is extremely hard but worthwhile in the long term. Life is fair in one sense, we can all be happy in life if we have the ability to allow people to be close to us. Breaches of trust, pain and hurt can prevent and be a barrier to a happy in life.

Tackling Depression

Coping strategies of depressed people are avoidance, inactivity, over analyzing and thinking about situations too much. These coping strategies typically reinforce and promote a vicious cycle of depression in a person’s life. These characteristic patterns of behavior prevent people from taking action in their lives to address problems that could ultimately have a positive effect on them. With perseverance and support from other good people, we can develop the courage to break the destructive cycle of depression, inactivity, and helplessness. In time we prove to ourselves that we do have control over our current situation. Consequently, empowerment to a better life has begun.

Don't let fear control your life

Centuries ago an Chinese Philosopher said “To know and not to act is not to know”. Without action awareness and understanding are not enough. It takes a lot of courage in order for us to take our first step to turn our lives around. The real truth is, taking action with a problem, is to take us out of our comfort zone. This creates a new problem fear of the unknown. The greatest barrier to success is fear. When we are moving forward and making progress, it’s okay and normal to feel uncomfortable.
The important thing to remember is don’t let fear control your life.

Attitude and Outlook

Blessed are those that expect nothing, for they shall never be disappointed.
-Alexander Pope

This quote reminds me of Mother Teresa when she walked through the streets of Calcutta. She wasn’t saying “this is awful, there is nothing I can do to help these people”. She was not paralyzed with fear. If she would have thought like this, she would have been unable to help the people that lived their in extreme poverty. The real question is ”Am I thinking positive and see set backs as temporary”. Or do I have a negative way of thinking and see setbacks, helplessness and failure as the norm. Positive thinking is extremely empowering and powerful

Emotions

The road of life has many detours. There is no doubt that our thoughts and emotions if not kept in check can affect our quality of life on a daily basis. It’s when we get locked onto one emotion especially a negative emotion that we get detoured from enjoying our life today. It’s important to view taking on are defects of character as a challenge and not as a threat or a personal attack to our self worth as a person. This is how we empower ourselves to change.

Negative Emotions

Our emotional state can be affected by fear and deep seated anger. It can be really hard to get to the root cause of our hurt that caused the anger and resentment in the first place. It’s easy to blame other people for the hurt, resentment; however, in a lot of cases the truth is just the opposite. In reality the anger, resentment is usually directed toward ourselves. I trusted someone who betrayed me. I didn’t see this coming is an example. This whole scenario creates a destructive cycle that is very hard to break. Awareness is the first step.

Staying in the "moment"

Staying in the moment takes a lot of self discipline. Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of our emotional state. Actually when we learn to discipline ourselves to stay in the moment our emotional state becomes calmer.
As an exercise for today let’s try and focus only on the here and now and look at the past and present as a distraction to staying in the moment. Feedback is welcome.

Attitude

Having issues that affecting our everyday life that control us day to day can actually ruin our quality of life on a daily basis. Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself myself. Are things really as hard as I’m making them out to be? Is there more attached to this problem than their really needs to be? Am I just causing myself to be really upset? Is this the time and place to deal with this upsetting issue?
Perhaps what has happened in your life was meant to be. The event happened for a reason and was meant to teach us something or perhaps it can’t really be explained. However, it happened for a reason. This would lead you to have no choice but to accept it and forget it for now. Recognize what is in your life right now in the moment. See this as reality be present and perhaps in the moment answers start coming to you. If you really discipline to work on this a change process takes place in time. We can develop into a more relaxed and calm person.