Science & Self-improvement

A common mistake is to believe that if we get the things we are running after then we will have all that we really want. This is not always true, especially if we have not spent time in thinking on our goals. If our goals do not conform to our needs, we will never be happy and will always feel that something is missing because we can never get enough of what we do not really want.

Some of the excuses that we use to avoid doing what we ought to do are: “I am tired,” “I am scared,” “I can’t.” You may be lazy, you may accept that it is better to be sad but safe, you may accept defeat and failure; none of these attitudes will bring you happiness. Be honest with yourself. Admit what is wrong in your life. If you want your career, your relationships, your activities, and your behaviors to be in synchronization with whom you are, you have to be honest with yourself.

You have to figure out who you are through your values, your beliefs and your needs. Living your life authentically is what makes life meaningful, what will make you happy. You must take responsibility for what is wrong in your life. If you are unhappy with an area of your life, you are responsible for that unhappiness: either you chose to perceive the situation the way you do, or you chose to stay in that situation.

Being accountable for what is working and what is not working puts you in control. You may not be able to control all the situations, but you can control how you respond to those situations. You can use your painful experiences to discover more about you, and grow and develop through that pain. The alternative is to be a victim and remain miserable and unhappy.

You can use every type of experience to find out what makes you happy or unhappy, what are your values and your needs. Thus, you will be more aware of the opportunities you have to create the life you want. You will be able to choose consciously how to live instead of just living automatically.

Nothing in your life will change unless you take action. Fear, doubt, or lack of resources may stop you, but nevertheless you must act, must do something. By being aware of your thinking, you will be more in control of your negative emotions, but this will not help you to make any change. You have to set a goal, even an insignificant one, and take action.

Each day, you have the opportunity to make changes happen, to live authentically and deliberately. And each day gives you the chance to begin again, no matter what happened the day before. It is not necessary to set up impressive goals, and it may also be inconvenient, because the bigger the goal, the scaring it is.

Some people get motivated by big goals, but these people usually do not need counseling to manage their lives. If your problem is to get started, begin with little things. You may not feel a hero by doing them, but take them as a duty, and they will help you to get courage to undertake bigger things.

The way to change your self-esteem is to change your acts. Change is difficult, at least when it is a real change, a change that will make that your life take a new course. There is no way to learn rapidly how to change your life. Maybe you can learn some basic principles, but to know the principles and to know how to apply they are completely different things.

There are several reasons of why changing a life style is difficult. One is purely mechanic: living involves developing many habits that contribute to make you survive. The mind has not capacity to manage all the stimuli that reach a person at every moment. To be able to live, one must profit from many habits that make one react appropriately to each circumstance.

The habits of a person form a network where each one reinforces and depends on all the others. To break such a network it is not easy, because each habit is tied to so many others. To pull out a habit implies pulling out all that are connected with it. You may think of the process as similar to pulling out a plant whose roots are intertwined with the roots of several neighbor plants.

There is a second reason why the change of a life’s course is difficult, and it is psychological. As the human being is a rational animal, he has a reason for everything he does–right or wrong. Many times this reason is not clear, and many times a behavior seems so prejudicial that one cannot understand why the person persists in it. When one sees that a person is behaving in such a manner that damages himself, one cannot imagine what reason that person could have to do that. However, there is always a reason for a person to do something.

The persistence in a self-damaging behavior is nearly always caused by an incorrect perception of reality. The greatest motivation behind many human acts is fear, but one sometimes fear things incorrectly because one has an erroneous view of reality. In general, humans will always do what they think will hurt them less.

If a person considers that doing something is damaging or unpleasant, but he fears that doing otherwise he will suffer a greater evil, he will elect to do what causes him less damage. Take for example a woman that is harassed by his husband. If she thinks that she is unable to support herself, she will prefer to be harassed rather than living a miserable life.

In those cases what must be done first is to determine whether the belief that the person holds is true or not. Next, if it is incorrect the person must be induced to change his mind. This change amounts to building the missing self- esteem of the person. In the previous example, the woman must be convinced that she can really support herself.

If the belief that maintains a person in a painful situation is erroneous and somebody is able to convince him that it is so, this is normally enough to give him the power to make a change in his life. People sometimes refer to this as having an ‘insight’ that changed their lives.