One of the toughest things to do is to be good to yourself. One of the toughest things to do is to keep negative thoughts away. I decided to try and for thirty days to be nice to myself, remind myself of good qualities and remind myself to keep positive.
To be honest, my OKR, or the percentage of success is not great. I probably got 25-30% of daily affirmations. However, as a result of a year-long process of my challenges, I find it that I do manage to think about my challenges. I was lazy at keeping track from week to week with this challenge. So I can’t say the changes that occurred. However, I can say that I am better at not falling into despair and not being so tough on myself. It is very hard and I don’t like to be self-centered. However, if you chose to do something hard, there is no reason to self-sabotage, so I think it is important to develop an outlook that does not look at challenges as the end all and small failures as a mark of character. I think small reminders of “I’m good at _____” or “I will overcome ________” was good for me as a mental practice that at the end of the month, has created a shift. Not a big shift but a shift nevertheless.
So my tip is to keep a log of saying good things to yourself, of looking at the bright side and maybe a journal. Also to maybe look at the bad and analyze it and determine not why you failed as a bad or weak person, but what you could have done better. For instance, for several years no I have kept a reminder list on my phone that is called “I didn’t” where I write the things that I didn’t do. I named it this way so that when I write what I didn’t do, it psychologically works as a reminder of what I should do. So it works at the same time as a reprimand for why I failed and a reminder of what to do in the future. This is because of the way the mind works is that we do not comprehend “NO”. So if you tell yourself to Not Smoke, your mind will ignore the “Not” and you will be in effect programming yourself to smoke. So what I do is write something like “I didn’t:” which is the title of the list so that I will ignore, and the rest will be written as “abstain from smoking.” So in the future when I look at the list, what I will read is not what I failed at, but that which I should do.
Next month: “One Month of Asking Others For Something”, because I am afraid to often ask for something that I think will result with a rejection. So the goal is to ask, get a rejection and not be bothered by it. Because the worst thing that can happen is a no.
not-rushin 