How to Deal With Negative Thoughts and Emotions (Day 18 of 30 of the Happiness Challenge)

hopehuggs (67)in #steemiteducation • 5 years ago (edited)

Life is not all sunshine and rainbows and as I’ve said before that is a good thing. Quite frankly, although it sounds wonderful, it would be really boring to have positive experiences all the time and also it’s totally unrealistic.

We need sadness, disappointments and negative to balance happiness. Our aim is to make the happiness moments shine bright in your life and for you to have many of them, so they stand out, or can be embraced in times when you need them.

Negative emotions, thoughts, and people that cause them are just how life rolls. If we learn how to deal with them and try to make the best out of a bad situation, we can live as content and happy as humanly possible.

Let’s look at a couple of tips and strategies to do just that…

It’s all about Perspective

One thing I have learned to do in the last couple of years that has really helped me is to recognize the signals of when I’m about to wallow in sadness. It used to be that I could end up losing days ruminating and cogitating what could have been different, or how I should have approached that, what could I have done differently etc..

But now, I’ve learned to recognize the thoughts and triggers that set me off. Some I can’t avoid - like difficult children and others I can minimize.

I remind myself that is a moment in time and think that does this really matter, or is there any action I can take to rectify and help make sure this doesn’t get worse in the future.

I try to step back and look at it as if I were a person looking in and thinking about what they might advise. Or sleep on it, take a walk. I just remove myself from the situation and come back to look at it with fresh eyes.

I always hunt for the silver lining. Yes, there are really sad and bad situations in everyone’s life, but even so, there is a little flicker of hope or something good that we can grab hold of and use as our support.

Sometimes a little distance and a little change in perspective can really make us see when we focus too much on the negativity of these times and situations and maybe the situation isn’t as bad as we first thought.

It’s okay to be sad sometimes

Let’s face it, there are times when life just really sucks. And it is really okay to feel sad. 100% happiness is just not achievable, there will be times when it is not your goal and you need to take the time to process the situation with sadness, or grieving. Often the emotions that accompany a break-up, for example, is similar to death because it is the end of something.

Sometimes healing and processing can only take place if we let the sadness in. We need to feel it in order to recover, then when that has happened you can work on getting back to the happier version of you.

As the Song Goes Always Look on the Bright Side of Life…

I know that spiral of sadness and depression all too well and it takes having an always look on the bright side of life attitude to win that battle (and a toolbox of happiness strategies you can draw upon in times of need).

But it only takes a small thing to give you a flicker of hope if you can grab onto it , focus on it and use it to keep you afloat. It could be something like you are not quite feeling as bad as you did yesterday, or call from a friend, a smile from a stranger.

Grab anything positive and use it as a pulley to lead your life back to the direction you want it to go.

let's all sing along now...

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(Pictures from pixabay.com)