How To Break Them…

Let me begin this article by sharing a story about Jim, who exercises five times a week and diligently tracks his progress. However, even after six months of regular workouts, he hasn't noticed any significant changes in his body, neither losing weight nor gaining muscle.

Feeling frustrated, Jim shares his concerns with his friends and family, wondering why he's not getting any results despite rarely missing a workout.

But here's the twist in the tale - every day after the gym, Jim indulges in a McDonald's meal, feeling he deserves a treat after all the hard work. This behavior undermines his efforts to achieve his fitness goals.

While we might judge Jim's actions, the truth is that we all fall prey to such habits that hinder our growth and progress. We focus on cultivating good habits but often ignore the bad ones that impede our journey towards healing and reaching our full potential. These negative habits are like heavy weights we carry around all day, wearing us down and frustrating us to the core.

Here in this article, I’ll be discussing 5 Terrible habits that are seriously damaging your mental health.

1. You Waste a Ridiculous Amount Of Time Feeling Sorry For Yourself

Indulging in self-pity is a fruitless pursuit that leads you away from reality and into a world where you believe that the world is against you. This type of thinking creates a victim mentality that rewires your mind and reinforces negative feelings.

The main issue with this mindset is that it leads your focus towards problems and failures, resulting in more feelings of self-pity. This approach can be detrimental to your mental health and create chaos in your life.

Operating with a victim mindset can leave your life in disarray and damage your mental health. Feeling sorry for ourselves won't improve our situation, and in fact, it may worsen it to the point of no return.

Instead of adopting a victim mentality, we should focus on taking positive steps towards a better life. By shifting our focus towards solutions and taking action, we can break the cycle of self-pity and move towards progress. Remember, the key to improving our lives is not to feel sorry for ourselves but to take action towards positive change.

Actionable Insights:

• Instead of pitying ourselves for what we lost, we can choose to feel grateful for what we have. Write one thing that you are grateful for every day.
• Whenever faced with a problem or failure, instead of wasting your time by feeling sorry for yourself, choose a form of action that you can do, it doesn’t matter how big or small it is just take the first step toward the solution.

2. You Are Expecting Immediate Results

Achieving anything worth having in life requires hard work and dedication. Despite what social media may portray, sustainable and meaningful results are not achieved easily. Many people on the internet may appear to have a perfect life without any insecurities or vulnerabilities, but the truth is, social media is not an accurate representation of real life.

People on the internet often hide their imperfections and struggles, presenting only their highlight reels to the world. Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of comparing their real-life struggles to the curated perfection they see online. This can fuel a desire for instant results and ultimately harm our mental health.

While stories of overnight success and immediate results may be popular on social media, real success is rarely instant. These stories often leave out important details about the struggle and hard work that led to the achievement. Focusing on these glamourized stories without considering the hard work and sacrifices behind them can make us feel inadequate and incompetent when we don't achieve similar results in our own lives.

In conclusion, social media is not an accurate representation of real life, and achieving true success requires hard work, dedication, and perseverance. We should focus on our own progress and understand that the road to success is rarely easy or instant.

Actionable Insights:

• Create Realistic Expectations, it takes time, effort, money, and the right belief system to build something that lasts.
• Set a realistic time frame in which you’ll measure your initial results. If your action isn’t getting instant results or isn’t visible, it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing isn’t working.
• Progress toward your goal will rarely be in a straight line. Things will go worse before they get better. Aim big but achieve it through setting smaller targets along the way.

3. You Resent Other People’s Success

Our feelings of resentment often stem from deep-seated insecurities, our own past failures, and even our unfulfilled aspirations. When we see someone else achieving success in an area that we also desire, envy can quickly take root. While we may not always show it, these feelings of envy can be damaging to our mental health, leading to resentment that is often kept hidden.

These feelings of resentment can build up over time and may be fueled by a constant comparison of ourselves to others. It's important to recognize that everyone has their own unique journey in life and that success is not always achieved easily or quickly. We should strive to focus on our own progress and avoid allowing feelings of envy or resentment to consume us.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” — Nelson Mandela

When you focus on comparing yourself with others, you tend to ignore your own unique abilities and talents. You become so consumed by what others have achieved that you forget about your own accomplishments. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction with your own life.

Moreover, resentment and envy can have a negative impact on your mental and emotional well-being. They can cause stress, anxiety, and even depression. It is essential to recognize and address these negative feelings before they consume you.

To avoid these negative emotions, it is important to focus on your own goals and aspirations in life. You should celebrate your own achievements and work on developing your own talents and skills. Instead of comparing yourself with others, you should strive to be the best version of yourself. This way, you can lead a fulfilling and happy life without resentment and envy.

Actionable Insights:

• Focus on cooperation rather than comparing. There will always be someone bigger, better, wealthier, talented, or happier than you.
• Even when you reach the top you will still somehow find someone who is better than you in some aspect of life. Instead of competing with them, as seeing them as your competitors. See them as your teachers & learn from them. Collaborate with them to reach new heights.
• Change your mindset, Success is a positive sum game, if someone else is successful it doesn’t imply that you can’t be successful. There is a lot of it for everyone.

4. You Worry Too Much About Pleasing Everyone

Attempting to please others is a means of regulating their emotions, but it is a misguided approach that can harm our mental well-being. The tendency to people-please may stem from a fear of conflict or rejection, leading us to believe that if we can keep everyone content, everything will be alright. Essentially, people-pleasers strive to make others happy because they fear that failing to do so will result in them being disliked.

It's unrealistic to expect that everyone will like us, regardless of our actions. We simply cannot control how others feel towards us. Continuously engaging in the harmful practice of people-pleasing can result in losing sight of what is ethical or moral, as we become fixated on satisfying others. Each individual has the capacity to navigate and manage their emotions, and it's not our responsibility to shield them from experiencing negative feelings.

Actionable Insights:

Pick your top 5 values in your life that you want to live and rank them in accordance from the most important to the least important. And now stop and think whether you actually live by those values or not. Pleasing people shouldn’t be at the top of your list. Are you putting too much effort into something that is not even on your list?

People’s pleasing habit disconnects us from ourselves and makes us value things that we deep down don’t care about.

Accept the fact that you can’t please everyone, just accepting it will make you emotionally stronger and self-confident.

5. You are Focusing Too Much On The Things You Can’t Control

Our world can be categorized into two distinct domains: those within our control and those beyond it. However, we tend to spend our lives worrying, stressing, fearing, and shouting about things, situations, or individuals over which we have no influence whatsoever.

The allure of being in control is compelling, and life seems less intimidating and more predictable when we have everything under control. We secretly crave certainty in our lives. Nonetheless, regardless of how hard we strive, life will always remain uncertain and unpredictable.

It's crucial to acknowledge the torture we inflict on ourselves when we try to grasp or control everything. It causes significant mental strain.

When we learn to relinquish control over things, people, and circumstances that are beyond our influence, we free up our time and energy to focus on what we can manage. This shift in focus can assist us in achieving extraordinary things in life.

Actionable Insights:

• Remind yourself that there are a lot of things that you can’t control. Whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed by a situation in life ask yourself. Is there anything under my control?
• Identify Your Fears, When you catch yourself trying to control something that you can’t, ask yourself, What I am so afraid of? Do you worry that someone else is going to make a bad choice? Acknowledge your fears and try to understand them. It will help you recognize what is and what isn’t under your control.