Seven habits of emotionally healthy people

Guy Winch, a practicing, licensed psychologist and author of The Squeaky Wheel, shares seven simple tips to help you maintain your mental balance and emotional health. But first, subscribe to our Telegram channel. We often publish such valuable articles!

1. Increase control after a mistake

Errors distort the perception of reality. You may have moved further away, and your opportunities have become more modest. You lose heart and motivation when you feel your efforts are unlikely to lead to success. Why make an effort, do something, try, if it doesn’t work!

In this case, you must learn to ignore and extinguish such impulses to drop everything and hide in a darker corner. Instead, you should sit down and list what is directly in your control- what you can influence. And then, think carefully about how to strengthen each of these points. It will not only help to drive away the feeling of powerlessness but also increase your chances of success.

2. Find meaning in trauma or loss

One of the main factors distinguishing people who continue to thrive emotionally after trauma or loss from those who immediately fade away is their ability to find meaning in negative experiences, set new goals for themselves, and move on thanks to a life lesson. Of course, this process takes time, as well as the process of adaptation to new conditions and grief (if it was the loss of a person). To move on, you must learn to move beyond what was lost and find new purpose and meaning. Whatever happens, you can’t pause and stay in this moment. We need to move on.

3. Stop thinking and tormenting yourself all the time

Breaking down an unpleasant event into its components and thinking deeply about each passage is unlikely to help you find the reason for the failure. Instead, on the contrary, you will play the sad scenario in your head again and again, which will plunge you into painful memories and unpleasant thoughts even deeper. You need to switch to something more pleasant to get rid of this. You must do this as soon as you catch yourself in negative thoughts.

Of course, easier said than done. These scenes of failure (stupid phrase, inappropriate response, wrong action) are very tenacious and sticky. It’s hard to get rid of them. And in this case, only what you like helps. Go to the movies or an exhibition. Meet up with friends, read a book, take a walk down the street, or better yet, go for a run! Try everything until you find your “cure.”

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4. Nurture your self-esteem

A person’s self-esteem constantly fluctuates and directly depends on his well-being on different days. Today you have been complimented and feel you can move mountains. And next time, you will consider yourself a complete loser just because someone was rude to you in transport.

For your self-esteem not to suffer from mood swings and weather changes, you need to cultivate “emotional immunity.” Compassion for yourself and your loved one is the best way to heal injured self-esteem. As soon as thoughts appear in your head that criticize your actions or yourself, drive them away and think better about what you would say to your friend. How would you console him if they were in your place? You can even write a support letter and email it to yourself.

Sounds weird. The process looks even weirder. But it works :) As they say: “Who else will praise me, if not myself?”

5. Resurrect your self-esteem after rejection

Rejection is always hard. Whether it is a refusal in the desired position or job or the refusal of a loved one in reciprocity. Most people begin to engage in self-digging and self-torture, believing that the problem necessarily lies precisely in them. And if they hurt so much, they are weak, fragile, unworthy losers. But the reason for the refusal may not be in them at all. Just the human egocentric brain transmits information in this form.

The best way to recover from emotional trauma is to list your greatest strengths. Praise yourself and ask others to do the same. Who would refuse a friend’s request to list his strengths or what he is loved and appreciated for?

6. Defeat feelings of loneliness with the definition of self-destructive behavior

“Chronic loneliness” is much more common than you think. Although this is an emotional state, it directly impacts your physical condition, up to a shortening of life. The problem with this behavior is that once you feel this unpleasant feeling of rejection, you subconsciously avoid doing things that can lead to a repetition of a similar situation. And this means that you try to maintain a distance from people around you and are very reluctant to get closer (if not completely exclude them from your life).

As a result, a person plunges into loneliness. Many people may be around him, but none of them will ever know how he feels and what he thinks about and wants.

A person is gradually drawn into this state and begins to like it. There is nothing wrong with the fact that you rarely go to parties or meetings. But it’s one thing if you are an introvert by nature and don’t like people, and it’s an entirely different thing when you don’t go there because it seems to you that you are not attractive to anyone there and will only interfere. Such behavior is unacceptable; it will only worsen if everything is left to chance.

Returning everything to its place quickly will not work, so returning to society will be pretty painful. The first thing you should do, as soon as thoughts like “I won’t go there because no one is interested in me” appears in your head, is pull yourself up and switch to something else. Second, you should list excuses you used for not attending an event or meeting. Third, make a list of people you were once comfortable with. And the last stage is the fourth: plan your meetings with these people in your calendar so that there are at least one or two of them a week at first. Fill out your “social calendar” and get back in touch.

The mechanism is the same as overcoming other, simpler complexes: the inability to say “no,” the fear of asking questions, and the like.

7. Get rid of excessive guilt with relationship repair

An exaggerated sense of guilt usually arises when someone else has suffered from a person’s actions (or inaction), and the victim has not forgiven him for this. Often this feeling arises not because the second one does not know how to forgive but because the first one, the guilty one, does not know how to correctly ask for forgiveness at the right time. You hurt someone and apologized casually (muttered “sorry” under your breath). And it is very felt. Of course, formally, you can be forgiven after such an apology, but hidden resentment will remain, and you will feel it. And this feeling will not give you rest until you fully understand the situation.

Moreover, it will harm your daily life, ranging from such trifles as stopping visits to, for example, a cafe or restaurant if the incident occurred there, and ending with a complete breakdown of relationships if all this happened to a person close to you. Agree that breaking off relations with a friend or refusing any pizza because of a banal inability to apologize correctly is simply stupid.

It is where the “better late than never” rule comes into play. If you sincerely apologize, you will undoubtedly be forgiven. Fake it, and you may never be forgiven.

Sincerely ask for forgiveness and explain everything — you will be gladly accepted back.

All of these situations and problems can be reduced to seven simple truths that most people, for some reason, deliberately neglect: accept your mistakes and stop beating yourself up for them; not dwell on the negative and even find a new purpose and meaning in defeats; stop torturing yourself; love yourself; praise yourself; forgive yourself and be able to ask for forgiveness from others sincerely. Read What is social intelligence, and why is it worth developing it.

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