Trouble in Paradise
Though feeding off your own positive reinforcement is imperative, today we’re going to talk about beating the blues. When you feel your "down" stretch has lasted far too long, it's time to get proactive. If long-term grey periods are prevalent in your life, it may be an indication you're missing a very important piece of information about yourself – who you really are. It's time to do some soul searching.
This may seem like a daunting task. Perhaps you don't even know where to start. You’ve heard of young people aimlessly trying to “find themselves”, getting nowhere and feeling as though they’ve wasted their youth. They experiment with superficial desires, and hope they will passively stumble upon their life purpose while on a beach in Thailand. Therein lies their downfall. In order to move forward, you have to define your terms. This takes effort, and unfortunately taking a semester off to get drunk on another continent won’t suffice. The only way to boost your soul searching results is to take ownership over what you desire. Wishy-washiness must be abolished in planning and execution. If you make a haphazard attempt to accomplish something you kinda sorta care about, you’ll end up waist-deep in an unsatisfying life you hardly recognize.
If your view of reality is skewed, or you’re unclear on your definition of the best you can be, you’ve given up all of your power. You can’t be sure if what you’re doing is productive or a waste of time. The ups you experience from this perspective are circumstantial and short-lived. You are unable to invite legitimate happiness, because you don’t know what it looks like when it smiles and waves at you from across the room.
Know Thyself
Deciding what happiness looks like is tough. It requires thought, honestly, reflection, sacrificing crutches, and even a few tears. However, once you’ve made the empowering decisions, you’re on the right track to becoming unstoppable. The first step is to get back to basics. Ask yourself some hard questions. What kind of person are you? What are your hopes? What do you want to accomplish in life? What are you good at, and what could you stand to improve upon? Not having an answer for these questions is how you managed to sink into this funk in the first place. It’s impossible to stay on top of your life when you’re not sure where it’s going.
Once you’ve got a grasp of the basics, get out a pen and paper and fantasize a little. Imagine a parallel universe, in which your parallel self is happy, prosperous, strong, healthy, and achieving everything you desire with ease. What does this parallel, “best” you look like? What does he do from day to day? With whom does she interact? What makes him happy? What upsets her? Be specific. You are a cartographer mapping your dreams here; the sky’s the limit.
Half the battle is devising a clear picture in your mind of what your “best life” looks like. You probably won’t get it perfect the first time. Keep tweaking it until it reflects total truth within you. You’ll know it when you’ve done it – it’s one of those Eureka! moments you can be both proud of and inspired by. It should excite you in a way you can’t begin to describe. A written scheme of your best life should give you butterflies, and you’ll feel as though if you don’t dive in now, you’ll explode with anticipation. This vision will be your best source of motivation. As your life evolves, so will your goals. A vision that sends you into a fit of joy today may be different in two months or two years. When the road of life produces junctions and forks, your “best self” will be your guide. Sometimes the road will disappear and you’ll have to carve your own path. Strive to maintain a vision that keeps you growing.
Put Your New-Found Self to the Test
Now that you’ve got a current picture of your desired outcome, you may look at it and wonder how you’re possibly going to get there. Some people are closer to their goals than others, but the process for all is the same. Your dream self will have a unique set of values which change depending on the goal you’re working on. If your vision involves you as a world-famous photographer, you need to take on the identity of a world-famous photographer. What sort of values do you expect this photographic genius to hold true? You care about quality, detail, and design. You see beauty in everything. You’ve got creative juices practically coming out of your ears. If you feel it is your purpose to become a politician, you have different values. The overall health of the nation, or whatever body you represent, takes precedence. You are hyper aware of what the public wants and needs. Find values that align with your goals, ones that you can believe in and stand behind firmly.
Living up to your dreams will involve a certain degree of strategy. Some goals in your dream life may require a different set of values than others. You may have spent a decade or so building your career, with your principles designed to accomplish success. Once a successful career comes as second nature, you may decide it’s time to have children. If your new goal is to be the best parent you can be, it may involve putting your career on the backburner until you develop a solid understanding of what it means to be a great mother. Once your children require less time and physical presence from their parents, you can go back to investing in your career or point your compass towards another goal, such as physical fitness, spirituality, or any other untapped aspect of your best self.
Encouraging evolution within your values and goals is what makes a person dynamic. If all you ever focus on is your career, you may end up rich, powerful, childless and unhealthy. If you spend your life trying to recreate the physical body you had when you were 19, you may know nothing of the world outside the walls of the gym, and you’ll most definitely never eat another Twinkie. If this is what your vision looks like, by all means grab it by the horns. However, most people crave a broader spectrum in order to feel fulfilled. If you can dream it, you can do it.
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If you’re having troubles defining what you want, look first at social conditioning in your past. For those who have never had to set a goal and accomplish something in the face of adversity, societal structures may be responsible for defining what you want. If you’re comfortable with this, you wouldn’t have read this far. Consider thinking outside the box that society creates for those who have been “going with the flow”. The first step is always the most difficult and painful, but the pain is temporary and the process becomes easier with time. Set small goals first if you’re worried about overloading and burning out. Effectively setting and reaching your goals will become a familiar method as you work towards discovering your boundaries. Once you really know yourself, you’ll be able to use your strengths to their maximum potential, and improve or eliminate your weaknesses. In the mean time, every ounce of knowledge you gain is pushing you closer to realizing your dreams. Start small or start big, but start today.
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