Tag: self talk

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Overcoming the “Dark Night of the Soul” Series — Part Six — How To Encourage Yourself To Take On New Activities/Challenges

Almost everyone gets a sense of nervousness when they take on a new activity or challenge; some may see it as more a sense of excitement, while others see it as more a sense of anxiety or dread. This latter group may attempt to avoid new activities or challenges as much as possible but doing that will hinder this group in its ability to achieve the greatness they can truly achieve because it prevents them from attaining new skills, new experiences, and a new sense of self-esteem and self-confidence from taking on that activity or challenge. Therefore, if you are part of that latter group and try to avoid taking on new activities or challenges, how do you encourage yourself to do so so that you can grow as an individual and achieve your greatest potential?

One thing you can do is to take a deep breath and relax. Don’t fret over the new activity or challenge and think that you must do it perfectly or else something bad is going to happen. Most mistakes are forgivable, especially when you are trying something new and have never done such an activity before. Mistakes can and should be considered as “learning tools” that enable you to learn more about yourself, gain new skills and experience, and essentially help you move closer to achieving your best potential possible.

The second thing you can do is to look upon the new activity or challenge as something fun to test yourself, sort of like a competition. See how well you do the activity or challenge, then reward yourself afterward for the effort you put in, even if you didn’t do the activity or challenge perfectly or as well as you expected. By going through the experience, you will grow as an individual and enable yourself to reach your greatest potential possible.

The third thing you can do is to see the new activity or challenge as a “break” from the norm. You know you can do specific things in your field/industry well; now, you get to see what you can do with tasks or activities that are not in your everyday activities. See the new activity or challenge as a “vacation” from the ordinary, everyday activities and enjoy the experience. By seeing this new activity or challenge as a “vacation” or respite from the usual, you’ll enjoy the experience more, want to take on more activities or challenges more often, and be able to grow more as an individual and reach your best potential and greatness.

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Overcoming the “Dark Night of the Soul” Series — Part Five — How To Keep A Positive Frame Of Mind

Keeping a positive frame of mind is key to doing your best work and overcoming life’s difficult periods when things don’t go as well as planned or some unexpected challenge pops up during our lives. However, it’s not always easy to keep that positive frame of mind in the most difficult of times. Learn how you can keep a positive frame of mind below.

Keeping a positive frame of mind means thinking positively, even when things don’t go as planned or when things seem to be at their worst possible outcome. It’s the “glass half-full” versus “glass half-empty” that many people seem to look at when it comes to various aspects of life. For instance, a person with a positive frame of mind may look upon losing his/her house to a fire as where he/she and his/her family were fortunate because they all survived and can rebuild. A person with a negative frame of mind may look upon losing his/her house to a fire as an unrecoverable disaster because all his/her possessions are gone and that starting over is “too hard.”

It’s really one’s frame of mind that influences one’s outlook of events, as the example above shows. However, even the most positive person can suffer periods where he/she is in despair because everything in a situation turns out for the worst and/or a bunch of negative circumstances occur repeatedly right after another.

For even the most positive person to overcome such difficult periods in life, he/she needs to step back from the situation, take a deep breath, and recall earlier instances in his/her life where everything seems to turn out wrong or for the worst. Then he/she needs to recall that things did eventually turn around and that he/she survived that hard period. Recalling that sequence of events can calm the person and show that that same pattern will occur again, that this current hard period of events will also turn around for the positive; the person just needs to be strong enough to “weather the storm” and work toward a more positive period of events.

Therefore, it’s important to always keep a positive frame of mind, but that can be difficult for even the most positive person when many negative events occur at one time in a person’s life. It’s important for a person to step back, take a deep breath, realize that even these dark periods in life turn around for the better, then work toward bringing around that happier period as soon as possible.

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Overcoming the “Dark Night of the Soul” Series — Part Four — How Fear Stops You From Achieving Greatness

To achieve greatness, you must be willing to grow as an individual and improve yourself. To grow as an individual and improve yourself, you must be willing to expand your skill set and be willing to have many experiences that can improve this skill set. This means that you cannot be afraid to challenge yourself, take reasonable risks, and stepping outside of your “comfort zone.” If you are fearful, you will not reach the greatness you can achieve.

Many people are fearful and hesitant to step outside of their “comfort zones,” preferring to do things that they are familiar with. They prefer to do activities and stay in fields that they are comfortable in, that they know they do well in. Few people prefer to step outside of those zones to try something new, handle new, etc. for a few reasons. One reason is because they fear they will not do well with the new activity or challenge. A second reason is fear of embarrassment because other people may see them struggle with this new activity or challenge. A third reason is that they fear ridicule from people because they struggle with this new activity or challenge.

Fearing taking on new challenges or activities for any of the above reasons or any similar reasons only keeps you from achieving the greatness you can achieve. By not challenging yourself with new tasks and challenges, you will be unable to grow as an individual because you will not learn any new skills to add your skill set. You will continue to excel and be productive in the skills you know, but you won’t expand your skill set to grow as an individual and possibly be even more productive and capable than you currently realize. This is a key reason why you won’t achieve the greatness you are capable of; you won’t even know if you’ll find a better skill you can use to achieve greater goals and accomplishments if you don’t take on new tasks and challenges.

Therefore, fear can stop you from achieving greatness because it hinders your growth as an individual and prevents you from learning more about yourself and increasing your skill set and abilities to handle various tasks and challenges. By being willing to overcome that fear and challenging yourself with new tasks and challenges that get you out of your “comfort zone,” you can grow as an individual and be able to achieve the greatness you can achieve.

Thank you for reading.

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Overcoming the “Dark Night of the Soul” Series

Part One – How Learning From Successes Can Boost Your Self-Esteem

This is Part One of a Ten Part series on how to overcome the depressing “Dark Night of the Soul” that some writers and others experience.

Learning from successes can boost your self-esteem because you can learn more about yourself and your strengths.  Virtually everyone excels in at least one area (often more than one area); this can help you to learn where your best skills lie and to do more activities that enable you to take advantage of these advanced skills more often.

When you do something well, you feel a sense of accomplishment, pride, and confidence surge in you because you were able to achieve something that either helped yourself and/or helped others.  In many cases, you were the best person for the task and were more easily able to achieve it than other people would have.  Therefore, other people will look up to you because you were able to complete the task and/or achieve the feat so quickly and easily as compared to others. 

When you are having a difficult time or struggling with challenges, it is important to look back upon your successes and realize that you have the capability of doing great things and succeeding at whatever you are doing.  Sometimes, life “throws us a curveball” that makes us uncomfortable and causes us to struggle a bit with tasks that we are not used to completing and have a hard time completing at a high level. 

The key is that we must remember that even during these difficult times, we have the capability to adapt and succeed.  Reflect back on those times when you’ve had successes, especially those tasks that others struggled and they called upon you to do them.  Whether it was an issue with a computer or electronic device, an item at home that needed repairing, or just offering helpful advice to someone dealing with a situation you dealt with before, you were able to succeed where others couldn’t or would have a harder time succeeding.

By reflecting on your past successes and realizing you have the capability to adapt and do many tasks well, you will realize that whatever present challenge you’re facing can be overcome as well.  You just have to focus on the task at hand, utilize the lessons you’ve learned from having past successes, and put the work in to overcome the present challenge.  By taking time to reflect and learn from your past successes, you can keep your self-esteem during times of great difficulty and be able to overcome virtually any challenge that comes your way.

Thank you for reading