Refuse To Be A Victim

Social harmony is achieved when we surround ourselves with people who share our beliefs and values. We say things like, She broke my heart and, He hurt my feelings. We acknowledge, in our language, that emotional pain is real. So why would we need an entirely different part of the brain, a distinct neural network, to help us mind read others and adapt our own behavior accordingly? This can only be an evolutionary function and can only mean that maintaining social ties is very crucial, not only for our happiness but for our very survival. This allows us to cooperate and collaborate with others. In turn, it shapes our own behaviors and choices. Maintaining social harmony is a way of preventing the utter devastation we feel when our most important social ties are severed or even just threatened. Loneliness, for example, has nothing to do with being alone. It is a state of mind which can be crippling for those who suffer from it. But even then, loneliness does not mean the same thing to everyone who suffers it. A child who is struggling to make friends at school is not feeling the same loneliness as a senior whose spouse of 50 years has just died. If you lose someone you love and are in the middle of a bereavement, you may be feeling empty inside, but eventually, your grief will allow you to reconnect with life.

Will Anything Happen?

When chronic feelings of emptiness persist they strip away any sense that life has meaning and that makes it hard to get up and go on each and every day. Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was a Nazi concentration camp survivor who recognized, during his time in the labor camps, the human need to find meaning in life, even during the worst kind of hardships. He went on to develop logotherapy which is named after the Greek word logos meaning finding and having ’meaning’ in your life. And another core idea is that your happiness, ultimately, is your responsibility. Feeling empty can be a sign of serious mental health issues including depression, or addiction, or having borderline personality disorder. Feeling empty when you are in a relationship can be a sign it is time to cut your losses and move on. The real message here is that feeling empty is not a feeling you should just ignore. For example, just by thinking about good things in your life you can turn negative and anxious feelings into positive arousal. Say you have agreed to go to the gym with a friend. When the time comes to meet at the gym, you don’t want to go, but you don’t want to let your friend down. So, you turn up and remember how great you feel when you’ve done a challenging workout. Making ourselves do things we don’t initially want to do can lead to a change in thinking and demonstrates that we can control both our thinking and our behaviors.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Now think about someone who loses their job. The other choice will generate feelings of optimism and positivity, and it will feel easier to find their way back into employment even though the challenge is exactly the same. We know now that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors will follow the path we want them to follow so here is a fantastic tip for reducing stress and anxiety, whatever has triggered these powerful feelings. Make the choice to see things in your life as challenges and your thoughts and feelings will take you in a positive and constructive direction. When you choose to see the challenges that come your way as threats to your health, happiness, or livelihood, your thoughts and feelings will follow in a negative and destructive direction. It really is as simple as that. You have a choice to make and what you choose will either help you master difficult emotions or leave you flailing around at their mercy. You might notice who is around to take extra care of you. But even the most patient of those who care about you will get tired if you don’t begin to place your focus elsewhere. Why did this happen to me? Why does this always happen to me? There is a short answer to these questions which is Why not you? And there you are, back to one of Marisa Peer’s top three erroneous beliefs about yourself. Allow yourself to feel compassion for yourself. It might feel good blaming everyone and everything else for a while but eventually you will have to face the fact life can sometimes be tough.

Moment of Surrender

Refuse to be a victim. It can be quite enjoyable feeling more important for a while because there are people who feel sorry for you, but this is not a strategy for long term happiness or success. Eventually, the people who care about you will tire of the victim persona you have adopted and even start to feel manipulated by you into showing how much they care. Nip this behavior in the bud right now before it becomes addictive, which it will. Understand that your perception shapes your reality. Change your Why questions into How, What, and When questions. So, instead of asking yourself Why me? This is because those parts of the brain that are activated by feelings of shame shut down those parts of the brain that light up ready to learn and facilitate change. You cannot change if you are going to stay stuck with shame. So, how do we get around this conundrum? We practice something called mindfulness which keeps the brain’s learning centres open and paves the way for positive and lasting changes. Every time she followed the instruction to focus on the breath, she found her mind wandering off in a million different directions. Shapiro did not know then what she knows now which is, according to research by scientists at Harvard University, we all have minds that wander and not only that, they wander 47 percent of our waking time.