Why You Can’t Seem to Feel Good About Yourself and What to Do About It

Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination. ~ Ralph Marston

(For those who’d rather listen than read – my first attempt at audio – let me know if I should add audio permanently!)

Life isn’t always easy.  And who makes it even harder? You do.

We all know beating ourselves up doesn’t get us anywhere, and yet here we are with negative voices in our head criticizing us…loudly.

Here is a message to that voice in your head.

Unless you have something good to say. Put a lid on it.

So instead of abusing yourself through worry and criticism when things go wrong, or when you stumble and fall, or keep bumping into failure remember, no matter how hopeless things might seem, no matter how far off track you are, you can always turn right around.

Stop being your biggest critic. The world is full of them already, there’s no need to add your voice.

Seize the power of now. Become an encourager and invest your energy in the amazing things about you and stop throwing away all that wonderful, creative, inspirational energy that could be guiding you towards living in harmony with your greatest dreams.

Don’t waste any more days not feeling good about who you are.

1. Use an undervalued skill

Story telling can make or break your days.

The stories you tell yourself about your life have a greater impact than anything else you might do. You’re either emphasizing the good things, the successes, the happy moments, and making less of the tough spots you find yourself in, or giving your attention over to what’s wrong, how you messed up and can’t get anything right.

It’s not like we have forever, so don’t waste one more precious moment recounting the times you behaved like an idiot. Take the time every day to tell yourself something good. 

Become your greatest cheerleader.

2. Stop hitting the snooze button

The Universe isn’t short on wake up calls. We get them all the time, but mostly we hit the snooze button and stay right where we are. 

It’s what we know.  Don’t think it doesn’t matter that you ignore the calls. Everything matters. Some things more than others.

You can’t turn your wishes into reality if you ignore the calls of the universe.  Believe me, I’ve tried and it didn’t turn out too well.

Heed the calls – you’re being challenged to live your dreams and not live a life of ‘shoulds ’ and ‘ought to do’s’.

You can’t feel good about yourself when you keep living a life someone else thought you should have. You won’t  feel good about yourself when you go to bed every night pretending everything is okay, when it isn’t.

3. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable

Begin building a new life from a new decision. Make one that you’ve been putting off and stick with it. Then make another one and stick to that…these are the stepping stones leading to your brilliant future.

Truth be told you need to be brave, because it takes courage to follow the call of your dreams, to let go of the life you’ve been living and cling like crazy to the desire to live a life you love.

It’s not comfortable to step out, but you can do this. You are far more powerful than you give yourself credit for.

[tweetthis]Be willing to do the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable.[/tweetthis]

4. Go for it

Kickstart your focus on things that feel good.

If every day you do something that leads you towards your dreams, you’ll feel good about yourself.  You’ll feel successful.  But if you give up your innermost desires, give up on the vision you have for your life then you will never feel good or successful.

If you’re honestly working towards your dream; happy where you are; doing it until you make it. If you’re going for it one step at a time, going for small accomplishments along the way, you’ll feel much more contented and happy with who you are.

You can’t continually feed yourself with ideas and thoughts that are critical or that hurt you in some way and expect to live a happy and successful life. I’ve done this too, and this didn’t work out too well either.

You don’t have to make the mistakes I’ve made!

5. One instant solution to feeling good about yourself

Buy a notebook.    I’m serious!

Immersion in inspirational books is great. But taking notes, or writing your thoughts down is even greater.  Research tells us that our brains sees writing differently than thinking or talking. Mostly because it produces more focused thoughts.

Make a note of things you have coming up that you’re looking forward to and if you need a pick-me-up, pick up your book and read them. (Read The Happiness Advantage) – it’s a really great read.

Write down your priorities in life.

Forget goals, they don’t have the pull that priorities have.  Don’t make a big deal of them just write down what really matters to you right now.  Write them on a new page every day. This can bring feelings of happiness and excitement as you keep the idea of priorities at the forefront of your consciousness.

Jot down your ideas. 

Most of the brilliant minds we know kept notebooks because they didn’t want their ideas to languish, never seeing the light of day, and without keeping track of them, that’s just what would happen.   

Don’t worry if the idea seems a bit blah and boring, write it down. You’ll discover your ideas will develop over time and best of all you’re going to discover you have many, many amazing ideas that got lost in the day to day business of living.

Don’t forget the three blessings of the day.  

Make a note of three things you did well, three things that made you happy or three things that just felt great.  Little things, big things. Doesn’t matter. Your partner brought home your favourite desert, or someone helped you manage a problem you were having.

Training your brain to pick up on the good things in your day raises your happiness hormones, and because we can only truly focus on one thing at a time, all those little annoyances of the day get pushed into the background.

And then…you guessed it…you feel pretty good about yourself.

Spiritually speaking

Manifesting isn’t some woo woo concept. It’s simply experiencing in your world the results of your thoughts. Your consciousness is creating your reality.

That is, all the things you accept as true, all the things you believe and all the things you say to yourself you get to experience.

As you re-arrange your thoughts you are re-arranging the manifestations in your reality.

The super successful, or the happiest people in your world, don’t have a mind that is any different from yours. They simply have arranged their thinking in a different way. Same minds, different arrangement of thoughts.

Don’t make this a huge mountain you have to climb. The small blips of happiness created by focusing on a blessing in the day, or one thing you did well, or some momentary joy, make a difference, especially when you persist in re-arranging your thinking to reflect the life you truly want and deserve.

What you do to feel good about yourself when everything around you is falling to pieces?

Encourage one another.

Love Elle