There are two dimensions to leading a better life. One is getting what you want more often. This requires the ability to set goals that motivate you enough to achieve them. However, even if you achieve all of your goals, you will not be happy if your mind is filled with worry, doubt and self-criticism. The other dimension is to learn to enjoy what you have.
Goal Setting
Step 1
Search your heart to uncover your true desires, and set goals based on these desires. The motivation to achieve your goals comes when you "own" your goals, according to Timothy Pychyl, psychology professor at Carleton University. You own your goals by choosing what is meaningful to you, rather than choosing goals to suit social expectations.
Step 2
Modify your goals to make them more effective. Effective goals should be specific, challenging and complex, according to Edwin Locke, goal-setting researcher and former professor at the University of Maryland School of Business. Your goals should encourage commitment by reflecting your deepest desires, and they should allow you to measure your progress so that you will obtain frequent feedback.
Step 3
Break your goals down into sub-goals that will provide weekly or even daily feedback. The purpose of this exercise is to use your lifetime goals to determine what you will do every day, so that you can connect what you will do today with what you ultimately seek to achieve.
Emotional Freedom
Step 1
Control runaway emotions. Psychologist Tom Stevens describes the dynamics of runaway emotions in terms of a negative emotion-thought feedback loop. An initial stimulus, such as social anxiety, occurs, resulting in a physical reaction such as elevated heartbeat. You may then become concerned about the reaction itself, which further increases your anxiety and your concern about it. This process, if left unchecked, can proceed all the way to a panic attack, depression or other emotional disorder. The key to defusing it is to realize, early in the process, that you have control over your emotional reactions and to simply refuse to react further.
Step 2
Revolutionize your internal dialogue. Nearly everyone has a critical inner voice that discourages them whenever they move out of their comfort zone. According to psychologist Lisa Firestone, you need to develop a conscious awareness of what your inner voice is telling you, understand where it originated and challenge its message. Listen closely--critical inner voices often sound familiar because they are echoes of critical authority figures in your past.
Step 3
Develop compassion for yourself. Psychotherapist Beverly Engel advises self-compassion as a way of silencing your inner critic and building self-esteem. Try to be at least as compassionate to yourself as you would be to a loved one. In addition, try to act more compassionately toward others. This will help you feel justified about being compassionate toward yourself.
Step 4
Build self-esteem by undertaking activities to validate your own value. Self-esteem is so fundamental that it may be likened to the emotional air that you breathe. Psychologist Leslie Sokol offers several ways to improve your self-esteem. First, take an inventory of your positive qualities. Then move on to a more holistic view of yourself by training your mind to see yourself as a single unified package rather than a collection of unrelated attributes such as "good parent, bad ping-pong player." Ultimately, you will need to develop the ability to simply trust in your own basic competence and value as an assumption, without conditioning it upon external confirmation.
Tips and Warnings
- Do your best to surround yourself with happy, productive people. In this way, the maintenance of your newfound well-being will depend on the continuation of mental habits that seem natural to you because everyone around you will be practicing them.
- If, after building your self-esteem, you find yourself frequently criticizing others who you see as inferior to you, the solution is not to lower your self-esteem. Rather, you should learn to raise your esteem for others. Healthy self-esteem is self-affirming, but not arrogant.
Member Comments