Keep a positive attitude
Life hands us exactly what we are focusing on at the moment. Pregnant women look around and are amazed at how many of their equally pregnant colleagues have divorced. Those who dream of a car of a particular brand begin to see these very cars on the streets day after day.
In reality, of course, there were no more pregnant women or cars. It’s just that our brain, focused on its own, filters the surrounding reality and lights a warning light: “Here, look, pay attention urgently!” - when he sees an object corresponding to the topic of his thoughts. Psychologists call What's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? This is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
The conclusion is simple. The more bad you expect, the more you will get.
It will crawl out of literally every crack, driving you deeper and deeper into depression. And vice versa: by thinking about the good, believing in the best, you change the settings of your own brain - and it is the good that becomes the focus of your attention. An optimistic attitude may not solve all your problems, but the world around you will become much brighter.
Keep calm
A light perception of life and optimism help not only to “relax and not worry,” but also to quickly cope with troubles. The advice is simple - you need to take an easier approach to unpleasant events on the path that leads to happiness. Of course, it's easy to say, but hard to do, you say. And you and I completely... disagree. This is only at first glance difficult or impossible. Let's think about it.
As soon as something bad happens to you, what do you do? You get upset, panic, start to worry, and thereby escalate the situation even more. And you just need to relax, take a breath and start thinking about where the way out is. Remember, you definitely have a friend who will say: “Relax, everything will be OK.” And, you know, everything will be exactly like that for him. Why? Yes, because he let go of the situation and got busy with something that would bring results that would cover up all the negativity that had fallen. And at this time you, like a fish on ice, will fight in panic and only aggravate the situation, which in fact may not be so critical. Therefore, here is our advice for you: when it seems that the situation is out of control, remember the words of King Solomon: “Everything will pass, and this too will pass.” Think about it, do you really need to be nervous?
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Make lemonade out of lemons
It sounds like a broken record, but nevertheless, this approach often works. Yes, there are situations in which we really cannot change anything. However, there are others when it is enough to take a step back or to the side to look at the problem with a fresh look, use a little creativity - and voila, an elegant and profitable solution will be found. And not at all where you initially expected. A classic example of this approach is the story of William Wrigley - the man and the chewing gum.
In the 90s of the 19th century, the company he created unsuccessfully tried to enter the market by selling household items - soap and baking powder. Things were going so-so, and in order to at least somehow stand out from the competition, Wrigley came up with the idea of attaching a penny piece of chewing gum to each pack of baking powder.
Alas, the company continued to operate at zero, or even at a loss, clouds were gathering over the business, and Wrigley was ready to accept the fact that he would not make a businessman. However, at some point, an unlucky entrepreneur noticed that people sometimes buy baking powder for future use just to get a pack of chewing gum along with it. If Archimedes were in his place, he would have exclaimed: “Eureka!”
Wrigley limited himself to completely reorienting the business to the production and sale of chewing gum, which before him had not been considered a promising product. The result of this creativity and the success that followed it is chewed upon by the whole world (literally) to this day.
— 5 tips on how to cope with life’s difficulties and pain.
______
1) Remember the difficult moments in life. It may seem like a bad idea, but it's not that simple - thoughts of failure bring sadness, but at the same time they help you understand that you can cope with any difficulty. You were able to continue living.
2) Write or tell me how you feel. Keeping all your feelings to yourself can be very difficult. You start to feel lonely. Find someone you can trust, who genuinely cares, and try to share your feelings. This will help you get through the most difficult moment in your life. You can also start a blog. By talking about your feelings with strangers, you have nothing to lose - it seems strange, but in fact it is easier to analyze the situation from a position of neutrality, without bringing in personal emotions. Find your own convenient way and share everything that bothers you.
3) Abstract yourself from the situation. It can be difficult to make rational decisions when you find yourself in the middle of a problem. Of course, you shouldn’t run away from difficulties either, but you also don’t need to plunge headlong into a difficult situation - this way you lose the ability to normally weigh all the arguments and sensibly assess your situation. Try to abstract yourself in every difficult situation and think about everything that is happening calmly. Take a break.
4) Remind yourself that you are not alone. It’s so easy to withdraw into yourself and feel completely alone, but remembering that someone who absolutely loves you is nearby is much more difficult. Sometimes that person isn't around in real life, but you can find support online. No matter who you are, there are people who care, who are ready to listen and support. Sometimes strangers can understand you better than you can understand yourself. Just find this person.
5) Accept the situation and become stronger. No matter how difficult it may be, you should accept the situation and come to terms with what happened - it’s still impossible to change the past. It doesn't matter who is to blame for what happened. Just accept what happened and move on. Now you have new experience that will help you deal with the same problem next time. You will be stronger and will not repeat your mistake. Life goes on, time never stands still, the main decision you can make is the decision to move on. Don't look back to the past, everything has already happened. There is a completely new life ahead of you, not connected with this problem.
The material was prepared by Dilyara specifically for agydar.ru
Learn from your mistakes
What exactly drove you into a stalemate? Analyzing all the circumstances can be painful, but extremely rewarding. Take the events that preceded the deterioration of your affairs into pieces: what went wrong, where you made a mistake, what could have happened if you had acted differently... As a result, you will get a fairly clear idea of how you could have avoided the onset of a dark streak . Going through difficult times is much easier if you know that the chances of them happening again are slim to none.
Look at yourself from the outside
Read also - 7 types of dangerous dreams: why dreams can be harmful
An effective way to calm down is to look at yourself from the outside. It’s not for nothing that they say: all life is a theater, and all the people in it are actors. Try to imagine that you are playing a role and the audience is watching you. Who do they see on stage, a loser who gave up at the first possible opportunity or a fighter who strives for results? What situation did the hero actually find himself in - irreversible or temporary? This way you can assess the current difficult situation.
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Be grateful
And life - for the experience provided to you, and to those people who surround you. Think about this or that close person: what he brings into your life, what he teaches, what he lends his shoulder to, how you would live without his support.
Write a short (or long, depending on your mood) letter explaining why you are so grateful to life for having this person in it. Then call him or her and read out your creation. The difficulties you are experiencing at a particular moment will begin to seem less significant when compared to the real values that you have in your life.
The psychology of failure, or the art of falling: how to relax and have fun
On the SmartProgress blog, we've already talked about the joys of procrastination, the psychology of goal setting, and our brain's response to multitasking.
Now is the time to talk about what we all face and fear. About failures. Defeats cannot be a pleasant experience, and, unfortunately, we are not able to foresee everything and completely isolate ourselves from them. But we have the power to learn to control ourselves. To do this, you just need to understand what happens in our consciousness and subconscious when we fail. Astonishing as it may seem, our mind fools us into believing things that are far from reality. It is very important to be able to distinguish truth from deception and transform your failures into valuable (albeit bitter) experience.
First, let's discuss a couple of amazing facts about how failures change our perception of reality, and figure out why our subconscious often plays cruel jokes on us.
Making a mountain out of a mountain...
After we fail, our failed goal seems much less attainable.
Eloquent confirmation of this phenomenon were the results of studies conducted by American psychologists. A group of people were given the task of hitting the ball against the crossbar of a goal, while the field on which the research took place remained unmarked. Remarkably, for those who failed, the bar appeared further and higher from them than it actually was - and than it was seen by those people who successfully completed the task.
In other words, failure automatically distorts our perception of our goals, making them seem more out of reach than we previously imagined. It's amazing how our assessment differs from reality.
Elephant and pug
The most offensive thing is that we fool ourselves not only by overestimating our goals, but also by underestimating ourselves. The bitterness of failure affects our self-perception: we begin to underestimate the level of our abilities and intelligence in our own eyes, we believe that we do not have enough talent or certain moral qualities to achieve our goals. It is not true!
Chain Reaction, Or How Our Brain Works When We Fail
Helplessness
When they fail, most people feel helpless. Why does this happen? The fact is that we receive psychological trauma, and our mind, in response to this trouble, without asking permission, begins to take measures, trying to isolate us from further pain. How? It makes us feel completely hopeless and lose faith that we are even capable of doing anything to succeed in the task at which we failed. This is how our consciousness protects us from further failures. Only here there is one side effect that Mother Nature clearly did not take into account: along with the danger of defeat, such a scenario also deprives us of the possibility of success.
Fear
Having failed just once, we can develop a chronic subconscious fear of failure. Some people believe that they are “afraid of success.” They make mistakes - in fact, they are afraid of failure, although this is not easy to admit. The huge problem with fears is that most of them are subconscious. Therefore, we are unable to evaluate them, to understand whether they are real, reasonable or completely irrational. And we can, without even realizing it, avoid everything that is associated not only with potential failure, but also with potential success.
Fear of failure is contagious
Yes, it may come as a surprise, but fear of failure is contagious. And parents pass it on to their children. People who themselves are afraid of defeats tend to react nervously to the failures of their children - and the latter subconsciously begin to perceive failure as something unacceptable.
Chain reaction
Thus, our minds, with the “best intentions,” force us to do things that will make us unhappy in the long run, although they are designed to protect us from the unpleasant emotions associated with failure.
A striking example of this is subconscious self-sabotage. For those who are unfamiliar with this term, I can assure you that most of us have encountered this at least once in our lives, and some have even achieved a certain mastery in this unusual matter. Self-sabotage is a pattern of human behavior in which he contradicts himself and prevents him from achieving his own goals. Have you ever experienced confusion when you want to do something, but on the other hand, you find a lot of reasons for procrastination? Here we should add disbelief in oneself and in one’s bright future, and often envy of other, more successful homo sapiens.
Then the person comes up with excuses for his failure and creates situations that can both justify his defeat in his own eyes and protect him from the condemnation of others. This may include exaggerating the importance of some side tasks, making decisions that obviously interfere with success. We also cannot do without “hardcore”: psychosomatic symptoms such as exaggerated stomach pain and headaches are what we direct at ourselves in search of the desired “distraction” that will prevent us from moving towards our goal.
For example, a student who wants to pass an exam, but plays the fool until the last moment, and then goes to a party on the evening before the “judgment day”, is engaged in nothing more than self-sabotage. And he has an explanation for why he will fail the exam - he had too much fun and didn't sleep enough.
This is the irony, my friends, - subconsciously we want to protect ourselves from failures, but we doom ourselves to them. As a result, we have no choice but to take everything into our own hands.
How to deal with it
Failure is dangerous because failure makes us believe in our own helplessness - this is exactly what most people feel. Failure can greatly overwhelm us, make us feel hopeless, give rise to both conscious and subconscious fears, and cause anxiety. But we can take the hit. You just need to choose the right weapon.
A New Look at Failure – Learn to Fail
Get it into your head that those peaks that you wanted to achieve, but failed, remained where they were before your failure. All that has changed is your perception and attitude towards them. So we need to try to believe in ourselves again and get rid of the veil that prevents us from seeing the obvious: we took a step and stumbled, we hit bumps and gained experience, and maybe even moved forward a little. At the same time, our goal did not take off and did not disappear over the ocean - it did not become more difficult, the road to it did not become more thorny than it was before our fall.
It's time to get up and try again - and maybe our previous bitter experiences can save us from some failures in the future. Try to perceive failure as a lesson that will help us achieve success in the future.
You need to know your enemy by sight
To do this, you need to carefully study the task that you failed. Break it down into those aspects that you can control and those that do not depend on you. Then go through the list of things you can't control and think about what you need to do to get them under control. Maybe careful planning, connections, preparation, additional knowledge or skills will help you? Then focus your attention on all the things you can change. This will be a good antidote to helplessness and depression, which will speed up the healing of mental wounds caused by failure and help you achieve success.
Target
If you failed on the way to your dream, it does not mean that you are unworthy of it. Perhaps you just needed to break it down into tasks that, step by step, will bring you closer to what you want. You can read about the art of goal setting here.
Planning
This is the next stage. Since the previous scheme of actions failed you, now you need to carefully plan your new path to the goal, taking into account the pitfalls that you have already encountered. Don't forget about Plan B - perhaps it was the lack of it that led to your failure. If you think through the methods of retreat in advance, then the fall will not turn out to be something tragic - it will simply be a transition from one tactic to another.
Motivation
People will help you overcome fears and cope with worries, gain faith in yourself and see the path to your goal.
Contact your loved ones, those people who have achieved success in what you were burned by. They will help you understand that failure is normal and we all make mistakes. Try working with a coach or find yourself a mentor. They will teach you to get up after falling and move on. For some reason, many people think that they don’t need outside help - but this is not true, it is much easier for us to achieve our goals in a team of like-minded people who will motivate us to new achievements. In the vastness of SmartProgress you will find thousands of stories of people who, despite failures, managed to achieve their goals - precisely thanks to a good plan and the support of other people. Which means you can do it too!
Upgrading skills is a plus for karma
Oddly enough, human willpower can be compared to muscles - without proper exercise, it atrophies, and when overexerted, it requires rest.
Our brain needs glucose so that it can not only think clearly, but also have sufficient willpower to fight itself, procrastination and other difficulties. So be aware of how much effort and willpower you exert throughout the day, and remember to take rest breaks and snacks (give your brain some glucose). We hope you found this article helpful. It was based on TED talks by psychologists Guy Winch, Shawn Achor and Kathryn Schulz, as well as publications by Guy Winch.
Focus on what you can control
You may have made many unsuccessful attempts to correct the situation. So much that you give up and you no longer believe that you can change anything.
Looking for what is still in your power and focusing your attention on it is one of the most effective ways to combat learned helplessness (this is the name of the condition that you are currently experiencing).
Yes, you can’t improve your business globally, but you can brush your teeth, right? Go ahead and clean it. Can you start running in the morning? Run.
The more things in your life that you can control and manage, the faster your self-confidence will return. And with it comes the will to overcome difficulties.
Look at life philosophically
Read also - 12 ways to get rid of winter depression
Almost all problems that seem global eventually become a reason to smile, but only if you abstract from them and do not carry them with you for many years. Troubles are a great motivator to change your life for the better.
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Overcoming obstacles, a person develops if he draws the right conclusions. Remember that sometimes it’s worth waiting it out so as not to make more mistakes. We are not saying that you should sit back and wait for everything to settle down. Just switch, step over and move on.
Remember that everything is in your hands. Create your life!
Surround yourself with people who understand you
Surrounding yourself with loved ones is one of the most important things you can do when you find yourself in a difficult situation. You need their love so that you have something to compare what is happening around you. You need to take care of them in order to feel important. You need their honesty to hear the truth and advice from those you truly trust. It is important for you to understand them and accept you for who you are, so as not to lose faith in yourself.
If for some reason there are no such people near you, find a community whose members have already gone through or are going through what you are currently experiencing. From them you will receive the necessary support and experience that will allow you to overcome difficulties.
Look ahead with optimism
Don’t forget that any, even the most deplorable situation, will only strengthen and harden you on the path to your goal. There is one wonderful phrase: what does not kill us makes us stronger. And it is true. Remember how nervous you were at school because you couldn’t remember some “super-important” chemical formula, how many tears and worries you had to endure. How I was worried at the institute that a guy from a parallel stream for all five years of study never asked you out on a date. Did you smile?
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Learn to forgive and let go
It happens that difficult times have a specific culprit. “If it weren’t for him, everything would have gone according to plan!” - you think and exhaust yourself with hatred for this person. This reaction is natural, but destructive: you focus on negative experiences instead of looking for ways out.
Yes, let the person really be to blame, but... You won’t be angry at the rain because of which you got wet to the skin? Or seek revenge on the gust of wind that broke your umbrella? No, you will do your best to get home as quickly as possible and make yourself some hot tea, and then repair your umbrella or buy a new one. So it is here. The culprit is an “element,” which is important to leave behind as quickly as possible, focusing on more significant things.
How to get out of a losing streak
To survive failure correctly, work through the source of all experiences, and if possible, eliminate it. Living a full life without worries and fears is the most comfortable way. Then why bother with unnecessary things?
Also remember that not all problems lie in you, do not constantly look for flaws only in yourself. There are also a lot of people around who make a lot of mistakes. There is no point in taking all the blame on yourself. Just feel freer and more confident, then all thoughts will disappear on their own.
Firstly, it greatly limits performance, wasting brain resources on side processes that are not beneficial. Secondly, unnecessary thoughts, or what most people understand as anxious reasoning, interfere with memory and the semantic orientation of their actions. Also, many are worried about the fact that, in general, there is no pleasure at all from such reasoning, which is even more depressing.
The reason is mainly a failed love relationship, which stimulates a person to analyze what could have caused the refusal to further continue communication.
Their own complexes, objective miscalculations, indecision and other reasons to believe about their own failure, which is the main side thought during the experience of rejection, precisely form them. At the same time, analyzing how to get rid of unnecessary thoughts simply does not solve the issue, but increases the motivation to think, although they do not bring any benefit.
The most common way to survive failure is to stop analyzing your own failures, which gets rid of the painful impressions that you couldn’t gain a person’s favor with your existing qualities. At the same time, it is important to evaluate how good everything could look if you used a different technique for conducting a conversation with a person.
In the case of failure in terms of professional activity, getting rid of side thoughts comes down to a specific search for ways of self-improvement, which in the future will help to beat the situation in a different way. It is also important to understand the aspect that as a result of failure, due to which they manifest themselves, valuable experience is gained from mistakes that will teach them how to conduct business correctly in the future.
At the same time, in the analysis of failure there is no need to concentrate on the errors themselves, but on its causes. Then, instead of an inferiority complex, thoughts about a lack of knowledge or one’s own uselessness for someone, a decision comes, which is an incentive to act.
This is what maximally limits mental activity to side processes, since in this form they have no chance to manifest themselves (this is the specificity of the activity of the brain, which does not “believe” in failure while it is busy with action). In the case of love relationships, getting rid of unnecessary thoughts is achieved by talking with a person, or receiving at least an insignificant and immediate refutation of your conclusions.
Don't blame yourself
Let us repeat once again: everyone has hard times. It's not that you are bad or improvident, it's just a black streak that is an integral part of life. Every life. Of course, difficulties occur differently for different people. This is the option you got. Take it as a test that is important to pass with flying colors, not as proof of how bad you are.
Even your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own uncontrolled thoughts.
Buddha
What to do with failures in life - recommendations
Perhaps people who look for the reasons for failures in themselves are already on the path to overcoming them, unlike those who blame other people, the crisis, reforms, or the government for them. After all, it is much easier to influence your own inner world than to influence the course of things beyond our control - the global crisis, the government, the president, etc.
Next, we will propose an algorithm, following which you will understand what to do with failures in life, how to analyze and correct them.
Let's assume that you have suffered another setback in life. Try to calm down and relax, and then analyze your problem.
1.
Define the essence of the problem as clearly and specifically as possible.
2.
Find out what causes it and what needs to be changed to prevent the problem from happening again. What beliefs, actions, fears led you to this failure in life?
3.
Describe in detail the most negative outcome of this problem. Do this calmly and abstractly. It is quite possible that this result is not at all as terrible as it first seemed.
4.
What is the best way out of this problem that you consider to be a failure in life? Imagine that you dealt with it with dignity. What would your ideal result be?
5.
Is it possible to solve this problem in some non-standard way, not “like everyone else”? What habits, skills, beliefs will you have to give up?
6.
How much time, what actions and what resources will you need to solve this problem? Make a realistic, step-by-step plan to overcome the consequences of failure in life.
7.
Think about how you can benefit from your problem?
Enjoy simple things
One of the hardest things that difficult times bring us is the decrease in our comfort level. When you are doing well, you can find joy in dining at popular restaurants, traveling, hiring a housekeeper to make your life easier, and buying expensive things. When things start to get worse, you have to give up a lot, and this causes sadness.
Meanwhile, to enjoy life, sometimes very simple things are enough. Instead of dinner at a restaurant, find some interesting recipe and cook an original (albeit inexpensive) dish with your loved ones. Instead of traveling around Europe, make it a habit to get on your bikes on Saturdays and explore your surroundings. Minimalism is in fashion now. Try it for yourself now. When will such a chance arise again, really?
Every cloud has a silver lining
Dale Carnegie advised us to turn lemons into lemonade by mixing the negatives to get the positives out of them. Every situation has its advantages. And even if this is only your personal experience, that is already enough. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. So, when we go through another life test, we move one step higher in our personal development.
Embrace life in all its manifestations! We are our own artists and we can not only set the color palette, but also choose the subject of the painting, covering up the dark stripes.
Tags: self-help, suffering, problem solving, psychological problems, experiences, mood, unpleasant situation
Cultivate patience
In childhood and adolescence, we sometimes feel as if we can get everything at once. And only with age comes the understanding that we cannot control time. No matter how strong our time management skills are, there are things for which “the time has not yet come.” A flower will not bloom in February, a child will not be born immediately after a kiss, a large reliable house will not be built in a day. If you want something valuable, you have to wait. It is important to understand and accept this.
You can have it all. Just not all at once.
Oprah Winfrey
How to get rid of a streak of bad luck in life
One of the most common reasons for human failure in life is the habit of negative emotions. To get rid of this habit, use the following tips:
- Love yourself. Feel that you are worthy of the best in life.
- This life is YOURS. Love her for who she is.
- Never complain, it attracts failures in life.
- Relax, get enough sleep, rest.
- Don't compare yourself to others, especially successful people. They have their own problems too, but you don't realize it.
- Praise yourself for any completed task.
- Try to enjoy your mistakes, problems and failures in life.
- Never give up!
Patience, work and a positive attitude towards your own life can overcome any problems, difficulties and failures.
Take care of yourself
Many people omit this point, either getting entangled in self-accusation, or working their butts off, or simply putting it off until better times. Meanwhile, to survive difficult times, you need to take care of yourself. What if tomorrow you are incapacitated by overwork or clinical depression?
So please yourself no matter what.
Coffee in a cozy cafe. A walk in the park. A new book. Buying beautiful clothes or an accessory - even if it is a mere trifle, it will give you a piece of joy! Allow yourself to get some sleep, after all. We are the most important and most effective support for ourselves in difficult times. We can't lose her.
Do not think about it!
In unpleasant situations where intervention in the problem is required, the “mindless action” method helps. Try not to think if you know that thinking will only upset you. Just act and transfer the energy of your thoughts into what you are doing at the moment, what you need to do.
90% of problems are solved on their own, the remaining 10% are not solved at all. You can do nothing at all, but let everything take its course. In most cases, you just have to wait for things to work themselves out.
Anecdote on the topic:
Lecture by a psychology professor: - Colleagues, remember the two golden rules of psychotherapy! Rule one. Minor worries are nothing. Rule two. All worries are minor.
