Have you ever had a time when something happened that took all of the confidence, the energy and positivity that you had out of you? Sometimes life seems to be going ok, great even, but then something comes along that can make you think everything you have worked so hard for has just come crashing down. You wonder if you will ever get what you truly want.
This happened to me recently. It can be work, a relationship, a health problem, or anything else in life in which you felt was going so well, and then it is gone. Sometimes its even more than one thing! Life seems to really enjoy challenging us sometimes and can send many things at once that really test the strength of our character.
If this is you right now, or has been you in the past, believe me, I know exactly how it feels. Pain is designed to force us to grow, so it doesn't feel good. That being said and despite what has happened, it is my genuine belief that all is not lost. Even if it feels like it is.
When something like this happens, we can feel hurt, angry, and down. Often we will attribute these feelings against someone else - because they did something that hurt us. It’s not fair right? It’s not. But I believe they are not the ones hurting you. The only one who can make you feel hurt, angry, and down is you, and believing this is the first step to taking back control.
Boost Confidence
Taking responsibility for yourself is taking back control which directly impacts your confidence! As long as you are letting yourself hurt, or be angry, want revenge, or feel down, you are letting others control your destiny. You are letting them make the decisions for you. In this way you are in effect giving them control over your emotions. Just how long will you let this happen? Because you don’t have too. As soon as you take accountability for how you feel, you begin the next stage in your personal growth to freedom.
Five really simple steps for taking back control in an INSTANT that helped me are:
1. Break Your Pattern
Do something different! - For as long as you do things the same way, you will always feel the same way too. Do something crazy, something unexpected, something that feels really great, something that will shake you out of your current state. When was the last time you danced around naked in the house? When was the last time you went outside and just ran really fast in the rain until you couldn’t run anymore? When was the last time you did something that made you feel alive?
True these won't change your problem, but they will completely change how you are feeling in your mind and body. Breaking your pattern by doing something out of the ordinary, and enjoying it, will break your pattern and start giving you back your control and your confidence.
2. Change your Habit
You don’t need to keep going over it in your mind! STOP! What’s wrong about life is always available to you, but so is what’s right. Replace your thoughts with other things that you care about. Who do you care about? What can you do to show them? Take action. What are you interested in? How can you learn more of what you enjoy? Fill your time and your mind with these and you will have less space left for what upset you!
3. Gratitude
What things in your life have you been really grateful for? Instead of going over how bad you feel, make a list of the things you are truly grateful for. Think about those things and in your own way give thanks for them. When you are grateful, you cannot be angry at the same time! There are psychological opposites. Try it. Try and feel genuinely and honestly grateful for someone, something, or sometime in your life. Go back to it and feel the gratitude in yourself. How thankful are you? And whilst keeping that, feel sad, or angry, or frustrated, or uncertain. You can't feel both at the same time. Gratitude is how you find your way back to feeling good, feeling confident, and getting control back.
4. Music is the Spice Of Life!
Have you ever heard a tune playing and it immediately reminded you of a place or person, or for some reason just make you feel really great? Music creates anchors within us to powerful emotions. So get out those tunes, turn up the volume, and let the music guide you to a better place. Better still, turn it up and get moving. The sound and movement have a direct impact on how you feel.
It's not about pretending problems don't exist. I don't believe there are no weeds in my garden. Obviously there are. But changing things to feel better is how we get into a better state to handle our problems. This is how we get our confidence back. This is how we take control. When we are in a stronger more confident space, then we can ask ourselves what needs to be done. What needs to chance. Asking this when we are in a weak state full of self doubt then we can make poor decisions or even simply run away.
5. Change your Questions.
What you ask drives what you focus on, stop asking why me, why now, why does this always happen, how could they... and instead ask questions that will empower you more, that will give you back control and increase your confidence. What do I want to do next, what do I really want, what can I do today, right now to make a change? Changing something immediately is how we do this. So don't wait until tomorrow, do it now. What do you need to ask yourself to get it done?
You CAN do this! If I can do it so can you. It’s not the situation that makes us fall, it’s our own understanding of it. Change our understanding and we change our lives. DO something different and change how we feel.