Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How you move through life under ‘normal’ circumstances only magnifies during troubled times. If you tend to have a positive perspective, chances are you’ll adopt that spirit when life throws you a curve ball.
Your perspective influences your bravery. There’s no doubt that facing a difficult time calls for some self-pity and wound liking. Nobody is immune to feeling vulnerable when bad things happen. The difference lies in how long and how deep the negative perspective goes. The sooner you can shift your perspective, the sooner you can expect to feel some relief and sense of bravery. Here are some do’s and don’ts that will help guide you to keeping a good perspective.
- Do Allow yourself to feel all the emotions
- Do Find a community to have support
- Do Something for others despite your situation
- Don’t Allow yourself to become a victim
- Don’t Forget to look for the positives
- Don’t Stop creating new goals and dreams
It’s ok to feel – Being brave doesn’t mean you refuse to cry or feel whatever comes up. Your perspective can live in duality. You can feel the pain of loss simultaneously with the joy of what you didn’t lose. You can feel sad about what has changed while also feeling grateful for what didn’t. Ignoring your feelings because they don’t feel brave or are painful can keep you stuck in a poor perspective.
Do something for someone else – One of the best ways to get out of your own head is to do something for someone else who can do nothing to repay your kindness. No matter what’s happened, if you’ve got breath, you’ve got something to offer. At any given time, someone has it better than us and worse. Doing something for others can shift our perspective from self-focused to others-focused. It can even help give meaning to what you’re going through.
Don’t become a victim – Feeling sorry for yourself is an over-exaggeration of a righteous feeling. It’s honest and accurate to feel horrible if something bad has happened to you but allowing yourself to feel like a victim long-term robs you of the power you have to overcome anything. Even if someone hurt you, you have the ability to move through it and come out the other side whole.
Don’t stop creating a future – Despite what’s happening or what happened, you have a future. It might look different than you expected but that doesn’t negate the value of what’s coming. Setting goals and making plans helps you build hope and reminds you that there is more coming down the line. Your goals may be modified but they still have value and working towards them will help build a bulletproof lifestyle.
How you perceive your life influences your success. Lives that have been impacted by difficult times aren’t over; they’re just on a new course. Create the best perspective possible under your circumstances and you can overcome anything with bravery.
