60 Sec Confidence Building – Why Things are never as Bad as they Seem at First
What if I told you that to be happy for the rest of your life, all you needed to do was wake up at 5 am and stand outside in the town square for 5 hours. Would you sacrifice the time and energy, brave the icy weather, and do it? Or will you just roll over in bed when the alarm goes off?
Make no mistake about this, the truth is we are responsible for our own happiness. Farfetched? Not at all.
There are steps we can take to stay happy in spite of the challenges, inconveniences, and blows of life. Don’t get me wrong, I know that life can throw blows. But have you not seen or read for example, one person can birth a vision out of tribulations, while for another it is the end of their world?
Today we start a series titled Tips to a Happier You. Let’s look at some easy practical things we can do to be happy and ultimately keep our sanity too.
Things are never as bad as they seem at first! Let that soak for a minute… Say it to yourself. Things are never as bad as they seem at first.
When we first hear something that rocks our world, it seems the wind has been knocked out of our lungs. When we hear ‘bad’ news we go into overdrive. Our thoughts begins to extrapolate what we have heard and our imaginations does sprints with it.
Because our imagination is running rampage, we start to dream up of the worst possible scenarios.
Oh no, because this has happened, therefore this will be the outcome. And this. And this. And this.
Before we know it, we have a very long list of every possibility of what is now likely to happen.
And worst, we begin to voice these thoughts.
Remember one thing we have always maintained at Defying Mental Illness is the power of words. Our lives will go in the direction of our words. But I am running ahead of myself. The Bible says as a man thinks so is he; this shows us the power of thoughts. Because often thoughts turn into words. The Good Book says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. So we can only say what is inside us, what we have meditated on.
And so in those trying times, the words can be outright negative and heart failing. We remember how precisely the exact, same thing happened to someone you knew and how the outcome was horrendous. However, the truth is never two experiences are exactly the same. Why? Because we are all different – mentally, physically, emotionally, academically, financially and every ‘ally’! The fact the outcome was this for person A does not mean it will be the same for person B.
When something unexpected happens that is not favorable, be composed. Keep your mouth closed at that time. In fact, here is a secret, say these three words ‘IT IS WELL’. There is lovely story in the Bible that illustrates this point and you will like it. A lady was told her son was dead. Bad news as you can imagine. What did she do? She spoke those three words. Cutting a long story short, her son was revived and brought back to life. Things were not as bad as they seemed in the end for her.
We can do the same. Even in the worse of the worst, train yourself. The Bible says that a fool is considered wise if he shuts his lips (paraphrase). So there is something to say about remaining quiet especially at that critical moment when there are so many things you could say.
Afterwards, think things through. You will find that you would have saved yourself from saying the wrong words that will make you depressed even, from falling out with those around you because you may be angry, and even embarrassment because you have gone off in a wrong tangent.
I could go on and on but truly, things are never as bad as they seem. Especially once our thoughts are collected and rational.
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