What informal rules of life are followed by those who show greater mental strength in the face of difficulties?
By building stone by stone our mental endurance, we will be able to become more resilient to the increasing daily challenges. After all, we will all face important challenges at some point in our lives, and we will have to fight our own personal battle and emerge victorious.
1. Acknowledge what you can control and what you can not
Difficulties and what we cannot change hold us back and have the power to discourage us. On the contrary, if we recognize what is in our sphere of influence, we can feel empowered. We begin to believe in ourselves and realize that there are things we can do to improve our lives and our relationships and take care of our needs.
Indeed, the more we focus on things outside of our control, the more likely we are to feel anxiety, anger, and disappointment. Conversely, when we focus on what we can control, we can feel good, confident, empowered, and have a sense of achievement.
2. Limit cynical thoughts
You might describe yourself as someone who likes to keep it real—someone who often gives sarcastic responses to most questions and conversation topics. Unfortunately, always acting cynical can have a long-term negative impact on your happiness. Although sarcasm is a defense mechanism to deal with the negative events of our lives, its exaggeration can lead us to have such a general attitude towards life, believing that nothing is going to change. Therefore, it does not lead to optimism.
3. Stay away from people who do not encourage you
Negative people will discourage you, and they will try to drag you down with them to the dark side. The problem with negative people is that if you hang around with them enough and listen to them long enough, they start impacting your thinking, and you soon realize that instead of thinking positively, you are thinking negatively.
All those who treat us badly and want to convince us that we will not achieve our goals, to the point that we have reached a dead end, have no place in our lives. It is up to us to make our own decisions and open our own paths with those who accept us for who we are and encourage us.
4. Socialize with positive people
Socializing can provide a number of benefits for your physical and mental health. Did you know that connecting with friends may also boost your brain health and lower your risk of dementia? We are all influenced by friends, relatives, and colleagues, so make sure you are surrounded, as much as possible, by optimistic people and those who encourage you to become better, leaving behind critical behaviors and toxicity.
5. Stand up for your rights
There may be times in our lives when we will not have support from our environment, and we will have to act autonomously and become our best advocate. Recognize if you are being treated badly or unfairly, and have the courage to communicate your concerns or needs.
6. Practise empathy
More and more, we live in bubbles. Most of us are surrounded by people who look like us, vote like us, earn like us, spend money like us, have educations like us, and worship like us. The result is an empathy deficit, and it’s at the root of many of our biggest problems.
While it is important to prioritize and take care of ourselves, it is equally important to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. It is difficult to have good relationships and friendships when we do not show the necessary empathy for the struggles of others.