Does Your Past Hold You Back? What Keeps You Trapped?

Your expectations may be flawed

When you have experienced a serious setback or life-changing event, it is natural to feel vulnerable, fearful, angry and hurt. You may be thinking, Why has this happened to me? Why did he do this to me? I did not deserve this. It should not have happened. A loving God would not have allowed it.

Hidden within such questions are expectations that are not necessarily realistic. For example, that life and people are always fair, that anybody is exempt from hardship and strife, that there is always an obvious reason for why things happen. And as for God... who knows what he/she would or wouldn't do?

Poisoned by blame

Seeking someone or something to blame is a common response to difficult events. But blame keeps you focused on the past. It keeps you in a state of helpless anger. It may also serve as justification for not getting on with life. Even if your hardships were due to other people's faults, meanness or carelessness, don't let it trap you into hate and thoughts of revenge. Hard as it may be, the past has to be accepted as a fact. This does not excuse or minimise what happened but only by taking responsibility for yourself from now on, do you have a chance of becoming free.

Stuck in analysis paralysis

The question 'why' is so seductive that we often get stuck searching for an explanation. But sometimes it is simply not possible to find one. Many events are so random that it defies explanation. You may have been born into difficult circumstances. Perhaps you were at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people? If you can't find a satisfactory explanation for past events, accept the uncertainty, let the past be the past and turn to the future.

Tripped up by hindsight

I should have known better... I should have seen it coming... Speculating about what you should or could have done in the past is a form of self-sabotage. Clairvoyants may have the ability to look into the future and foresee other people's actions. But usually people do the best they can with what they've got at the time. Speculative hindsight only keeps you focused on the problem rather than looking for solutions to your predicament.

Stinkin' thinkin'

Anticipating a terrible future, catastrophising, black-and-white thinking, 'shoulda, woulda, coulda', are very convincing thoughts and seem so true. However, most of the time they are unrealistic, over-dramatic, fear-based or simply wrong. They also close you off from seeing new options and stepping forward. Replace stinkin' thinkin' with thoughts that are realistic, life-affirming and helping you find a way forward.

Resisting or denying your pain

When pain gets too overwhelming, it's common to seek relief and avoid feeling it: Ignoring or numbing it with alcohol, drugs (legal and illegal), sex, workaholism, excessive use of technology etc. However, until you honestly look at your pain, it will hold you in its grip. The only way to resolve painful feelings is to feel and acknowledge them, understand their context and accept them as a wound from the past that no longer needs to hold you back. Then you can take positive steps to heal.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Does-Your-Past-Hold-You-Back?-What-Keeps-You-Trapped?&id=9718974

The Pain And Gain of Self Discipline

In life, no attribute, trait or ability is more critical in accomplishing anything than personal discipline. A broad sweep of history and the modern era reveals that the most accomplished in every field had one thing in common: discipline. Whether you're looking at the most renowned philosophers, scientists, politicians, and sportsmen, from Aristotle, Einstein, George Washington, to Babe Ruth, the one thing they had in common was discipline, sometimes called self-mastery.

No matter what you know, if you do not exercise the discipline to do, execute or implement what you do know, you'll accomplish very little. Here are some of the things that discipline can help you accomplish:

Holding yourself accountable: 

Holding yourself accountable means knowing and understanding that your destiny is in your own hands. You can decide to blame the government, you can decide to blame the unfair system, you can decide to blame everything under the sun, but ultimately, the capacity to surmount all the odds and triumph requires holding yourself accountable. Babe Ruth once said, "you just can't beat the person who never gives up."

Focus: 

Focus means pursuing your dream, vision, and passion until it becomes mission accomplished. Only discipline can help you do that. Without discipline, you look for excuses to give up at the slightest setback. Les Brown said "it's not over until you win."

Being ethical: 

Being ethical is at the centre of our character and integrity. It's about what you do when no one is watching. It's about being true to yourself. Needless to say, without discipline, it's near impossible to follow the straight and narrow path for overcoming temptations.

Being faithful: 

Whether you are looking at being faithful to a cause, or being faithful to your marital vows, nothing in the world prepares you more than self-discipline.

Being incorruptible: 

As a leader, you're assailed by all manners of temptation. You're tempted to be partial, you're tempted to cut corners, you're tempted to reap where you didn't sow. But with iron clad discipline, you can overcome and leave a legacy worthy of emulation.

Learning new things: 

Whether you're looking at learning a new language, whether you're learning to start afresh after a massive setback or learning something as mundane as operating a personal computer, you require discipline.

Reading a book: 

Charlie "Tremendous" Jones is quoted as saying, "The two things that will have the greatest impact on your life are the books you read and the people you meet." When you read a book, you mastermind with hundreds of people, if not thousands. Imagine reading three books in a month, in a year you would have read 36 books and in ten years three hundred and sixty. While reading may not necessarily make you richer, it will certainly make you wiser.

Time management: 

Time is the essence of life. The most accomplished in life are those that manage their time well and channel their efforts towards worthwhile endeavours. Managing time is not something abstract but it's the one discipline that separates those who came, saw, and conquered, from all others.

There you are. First you suffer the pain and after you enjoy the gain of discipline. Archimedes said, "give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Only self-discipline can lead to the accomplishment of such tall orders. If you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want to leave your footprints on the sands of time, discipline yourself, discipline your mind and with the self-mastery, you'll gain the world.

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Pain-And-Gain-of-Self-Discipline&id=9528312

Get Back on Your Feet and Recover From a Serious Setback

Most of us experience setbacks at some point in our lives. As a child we may have been taught to handle some rejection and disappointment by our parents or teachers. We may have been required to share toys, time, other people's attention and have, as a consequence discovered that not everything goes our way all of the time. We will have hopefully learned not to take those knocks too personally, to bounce back, to be resilient and recover, accepting this as a part of life and of co-existing successfully with other people.

But some setbacks can seriously affect children and as such their coping strategies become compromised by the need to protect themselves from future harm. Not being picked for the school team, falling out with friends from their class or neighbourhood or being criticised and called hurtful names may seem minor but those experiences, compounded with subsequent hurts can significantly impact on a person's confidence and self-esteem.

Even adults who appear to be well-balanced and confident, who may have enjoyed a happy, supportive childhood may find that setbacks leave them feeling unable to cope, make rational decisions and recover. The problem is these negative experiences often affect our thinking, making us feel incredibly vulnerable and exposed. Yet the times when setbacks occur are often the very times that require us to be focussed and engage in serious consideration of our options with good decision-making abilities.

Those times may need us to be receptive to external advice and guidance; we may need therapy to help us heal old wounds and recover our self-esteem, composure and confidence. We may need to seek help with legal or financial matters to support decisions that need to be made.

Let's look at some ways to help you get back on your feet and recover from a serious setback. Divorce, redundancy, bereavement, infertility, discrimination, criminal injury are just some examples of the ways that life can throw us a curved ball and knock us down.

Here are some ways to help you get back on your feet and recover from a serious setback:

- Find ways to work on your personal self-esteem. Include activities that you do well, that make you feel good. Perhaps introduce sport, exercise, a walking club, hobbies that are stimulating and enjoyable but which also introduce you to other like-minded and supportive people. Classes and volunteer work can be fun, satisfying and enjoyable.

- Take time to nurture and build good relationships with family and friends. Share how you're feeling about your situation, let them help and be supportive. Establish good channels of communication and keep in regular touch with your support network. You may discover that your relationships benefit as your channels of communication improve.

- Focus on what can be changed. It can become a habit to stress and agonise over impossible situations and the harm they've done but it's an energy and time-wasting action. Focus your energy on looking at ways that you can improve your situation, on what needs to happen and the actions that you need to take, the expertise you may need to introduce, the strengths and skills that are needed either from you or from others.

- Take time to appreciate what this situation has taught you. There are often valuable lessons to be learned from a setback and those lessons are often a significant part of the recovery process. Learn from your reflections; it may be that you're doing too much, need help, are perhaps moving in the wrong direction. It may even be that you need to learn patience and become receptive to attracting new and better opportunities that are just around the corner.

Sometimes setbacks introduce unexpected opportunities and direction into our lives or enable us to appreciate what we already have; the people, quality of life, possessions that are typically accepted as the norm.

Hypnotherapy and counselling can enable us to get back on our feet by gaining an understanding of what has happened to us, restore our confidence in our ability to cope with future challenges and gain a positive new perspective with which to explore the potential for opening new doors and opportunities.

https://livetosucceed4ever.blogspot.com/2014/10/get-back-on-your-feet-and-recover-from.html