Have you ever wondered what it will take in order to improve the quality of your life? There are many different things that you may hear other people say to help you, but none of them have worked out. Now, you may have heard of some of these things before, but you never really tried any of them.
I call them abilities because it is something that not everyone possesses. It is something that people can learn, but very few will keep. For those that frequently experience mental health problems, you’ll need to adapt some of these abilities. They will help you tremendously and make sure that you’re never in a bad situation again.
Ability To Love Yourself
The first ability is one that I promote all of the time. This ability is the ability to love yourself. Deep down inside, a lot of people hate themselves. They are always so quick to point out something that’s wrong about them.
I’m not going to be afraid to admit it, but I still have things that I need to work on. We all do. The only difference is your perspective of yourself. You can either do two things. You can:
- Feel bad for yourself and hate yourself for having faults
- Notice that there are some things that you can work on to improve and plan a course of action
For those that struggle with the first point, stay tuned for other abilities that may help you master this one. You may be stuck where you are at this point and have difficult times accepting who you are and that’s okay. I’m here to help you get out of that. For those that have picked the second point, you’re well on your way of mastering this ability.
When you love yourself, you improve the quality of your life. Improving the quality of your life becomes natural because you will do things in order to make yourself feel good. You will always be your first priority. I’ll end this section off with a quote that I always say to people.
“You’re with yourself 100% of the time, so you might as well enjoy it.”- Marcus Carter
Ability To See The Positive In Everything
Going back to the quote I just shared with you, I want you to remember that quote as you read the rest of this article. In order to enjoy your life more, you have to master the ability to see the positive in every situation. That may be harder than it seems, but when you’ve practiced it over and over again, it will be easy for you. In fact, every situation you get in, you will point out a positive thing instantly.
Let me give you some scenarios for example.
Scenario #1: Car Crash
Scenario #1: Let’s say that you are driving with your friends to go to a concert. You and your friends are listening to music in the car and having a good time. The street light turns green, so you begin to drive. However, a car on the other side decides to continue moving and you two collide.
After being in this situation, can you list out some positives that you can take away?
Here’s a list for you in case you get stumbled
- No one got injured in the crash
- No one died in the crash
- Your car is still intact even though it needs some repairs
- You are still functioning and lucky to survive
- The other driver did not do that on purpose to hurt anyone
- You get their license and registration, so they can pay for the damages
I bet some of those things did not come into your mind when you first came into contact with this scenario. Initially, your first thoughts were about not being able to go to the concert or that your car was completely totaled. Let me give you the second scenario.
Scenario #2: Coronavirus
Scenario #2: Your current situation dealing with the coronavirus
How are you reacting to this pandemic? Can you spot out any positives in this scenario?
Here’s another list to help you out
- You not sick in any way
- You’re following safety precautions
- You are doing the necessary things to keep yourself healthy
- There are ways to boost your immune system
- You choose to stay indoors to avoid any contact with the virus
- There are ways to entertain yourself through this quarantine
- You are still alive
- You are blessed to not have tested positive for the virus
Those are many things you can think about in that situation. It is a situation that we all are living, and it’s best to keep those thoughts in our minds. Your first thought might be the fear of catching the virus and being bored at home. Those are indeed valid thoughts to have. However, they shouldn’t be the thoughts to focus on if you want to improve the quality of your life.
Focusing On Negative Thoughts
Focusing on the negative thoughts just further strengthens them. The mistake that most people make when having negative thoughts is that they try to repress them. People try to distract themselves and think about something else.
A study published in Behavior Research and Therapy wanted to look at the reaction of highly socially anxious people when they focus on negative thoughts vs. suppressing them. One group had non-anxious people, while the other group had highly socially anxious people. Results showed that negative thoughts decreased in both groups. However, those that had high social anxiety tend to suppress more in their life. This is due to the fact that it’s easier to push out all negative thoughts they have about themselves and in social situations.
It is beneficial to pay attention to the positive things that you can take out of negative events. Once you master that, most situations you face will not be as bad as it may seem. This is one step further to improve the quality of your life.
Ability To Approach Your Problems
The problem with suppressing thoughts is that they will always come back later on in life. You haven’t worked out your problems, so they will come back to haunt you. People that have mastered the ability to focus on positives, don’t have a problem with this ability. These people don’t see negative events as problems and they don’t internalize them.
Usually, when something bad happens, we tend to put the blame on ourselves. We feel bad for ourselves and believe that we are horrible people when that isn’t the case. We simply made a mistake and it is up to us to not make them again.
The people that take action are the ones that approach the problem. The people that decide to sit back and not let it get to them are the ones that avoid the problem. It’s the whole approach-avoidance dynamic that we all experience.
If you look at all of the events that you go through in life, there will be some that are really difficult and there will be some that are relatively easy. You will approach the events that are easy for you but avoid the ones that are really difficult. What’s wrong with that? If it doesn’t affect your life in a negative way, then why go through something difficult?
The reason is: the more difficult a task or goal is, the more beneficial the reward. The easier a task or goal is, the less beneficial the reward.
People that remember that and take action towards the difficult tasks in life will master this ability. If you’re having trouble with this ability, the next one can help you out.
Ability To Accept And Embrace Failure
When dealing with difficult tasks or goals that you have made for yourself, you have to be able to accept and embrace failure. We all fail at things every single day, that’s normal. However, people choose either to avoid the things that they fail on or learn to accept it.
When you avoid things that you do bad in, you never learn how to do them. It makes your abilities limited and it gets to your head. All you can think about is the things that you’re unable to do and you get depressed from it. No one like to have their mental health be in shambles. One thing that bothers me is when people say, “it doesn’t work”. It drives me crazy to hear that because it simply isn’t true.
When People Says “It Doesn’t Work”
I hear this all the time when I’m counseling people online. They tell me their problems and I ask them what they have tried to get through this or to cope. They give the list of things that they have tried and most of the things are actually great things to do. It’s just that they decided that it wasn’t working for them.
After we go through those details, I give them recommendations on things to try out or I give them resources that can help them. When they receive these things, some people tell me that they aren’t helpful or that they have tried it before and it didn’t work.
Apart of me wanted to ask how long they have tried that coping skill for, but I knew that I was putting my personal bias on it. Did not want to do anything unethical there. The point I’m trying to make here is that just because something isn’t working at the moment, doesn’t mean that it will never work.
The problem is that everyone likes to look for a quick fix and that just isn’t possible. Every great thing that comes in life takes time and a lot of hard work. Just look at my life as an example. If you’ve read the blog post I made on my mental health journey with depression, you already know about this.
My Mental Health Journey
I’ve had terrible mental health all my life, ever since I was 5 years old. My mental health did not get better until I was 19. That’s a 14-year difference. However, I didn’t work on my mental health for 14 years. For the first 9 years, my mental health got worse and worse. It wasn’t until the first year of college that things started to turn around.
I knew that I had to do something to change how I felt and what I thought about myself. I wanted to improve the quality of my life. The first step in that process was to master the first ability on this list (the ability to love yourself). This was something that I never had in my life. I relied on people for help way too much and knew that things had to change.
Now, look where I am. I’m on the other side of the fence. It didn’t take a few days to change. There were many times where I wanted to give up and quit, but I knew that I couldn’t for the long-term. The most important thing to take out from this is to never give up. If something is blocking your way from happiness and a better life, do your best to try and clear it out.
If you have a hard time mastering this ability, the next one will help you out. You’ll be one step closer to improve the quality of your life.
Ability To Learn From Your Mistakes
Usually, what people do when they make a mistake is dwell on it and defend ourselves. The reason people dwell on their mistakes is because they believe that they shouldn’t have made them. Mistakes are bad to them and they should be punished for it. This narrative is false and shouldn’t be used in society. The reason we believe mistakes are so bad to make is because of the people around us that talks down on us.
Dwelling On Your Mistakes
If you make a mistake, your friends or people around you will remember it and remind you of it when the time comes. No one likes to deal with that, me included. Once people do this to you, you will start to internalize it. You will begin to remind yourself of the mistake that you made and will be afraid to do something similar.
This will always happen wherever you go. It doesn’t matter the kind of people you know, it will happen. However, there’s nothing that you can do about it. You can’t control what people say to you. There’s one thing that you can do though.
You can learn from your mistakes, so you won’t make the same mistakes again. Yeah, you will make mistakes in other aspects in your life, but life is full of mistakes. No need to dwell about it all day. We’ve all been there at some point in our lives.
Defending Your Mistakes
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there is people that defend their mistakes. This usually happens when people feel embarrassed when they make a mistake. They will remember a mistake that you made in the past and bring it up. This is done to divert the attention from them to you. It’s like when a kid gets bullied in school, so they decide to bully someone else to feel better.
I’m going to share with all of you a short part of a book. It’s called, Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes–But Some Do and it’s by Matthew Syed.
“Society, as a whole, has a deeply contradictory attitude to failure. Even as we find excuses for our own failings, we are quick to blame others who mess up.” (7)
Syed, M. (2015). Black box thinking: Why most people never learn from their mistakes–But some do. Penguin.
This is what we get wrong in our lives. The key isn’t to shift the blame to someone else. The key is to accept these mistakes and learn from them. Life is full of obstacles that we have to overcome. If we didn’t make any mistakes, then life would be way too easy. Everything we’ve accomplished would mean nothing. There would be no way to improve the quality of your life. In order to improve the quality of your life, there must be something that you’re working towards.
The best way to learn from your mistakes is to reflect on them. Write every mistake that you’ve made if you have to. Remember them, and try to see what you can do in order to not make it again. In this process, you will make more mistakes. However, there will be a point in time where you’ve mastered it. If you’re having trouble mastering this ability, look back at the previous two abilities together and work on it.
Ability To Not Care What Others Think About You
Out of all of the abilities on this article, this is the most important ability. If you master this ability, your life will be so much easier. If you pair this ability with the ability to love yourself, you will be unstoppable. No one will be able to hurt you or affect you in any way.
This ability is pretty difficult to explain clearly because there are so many layers to this. Everyone has moments where they don’t care what other people think and moments where they care about other people’s opinions.
There is one thing that holds people back from mastering this ability and there is one thing that can help people master it as well. Let’s start off with the thing that holds people back.
Caring Too Much About How Others Perceive Us
We care way too much about what others think and how they will perceive us. This makes us say and do things that we don’t truly believe. It’s like we’re lying to people when they talk to us and we don’t speak how we feel. However, this is normalized in society because it is there to save face. If you don’t know what saving face means, it means to not make other people feel bad. You’re not trying to have a bad reputation.
If we’re thinking something really mean about someone, we choose not to say it. That makes sense. If we’re thinking about something that we really believe but it’s mean to say, we choose not to say it. That doesn’t make sense. You can be one of those people that like to say it the nicest way possible if you feel like it will hurt other people’s feelings. This is just talking to other people. We haven’t even got to the point where people are talking to you.
Know Who You Are & Believe In Yourself
The best way to master this ability and improve the quality of your life is to know who you are and believe in yourself. Part of this ability is the ability to love yourself. If you love yourself, then you will do whatever it takes to improve the quality of your life. If you love yourself, then you will make sure that you’re okay. You know what is true about yourself and what is false.
This means that whenever someone talks about you, you don’t take it personally. It is important to take constructive criticism in order to learn and grow as a person. If it isn’t constructive criticism, then don’t care about what’s said about you. It’s easier said than done. I’m going to give you some tips on how to help you with this.
- Start off by sitting in a room or a quiet place
- Talk to yourself whenever something bothers you (self-reflection)
- When someone offends or makes a joke at you, pause before you speak (think before you react)
- Keep a journal wherever you go (write down your progress)
- Meditate to clear your mind of negative thoughts/energy
- Find one hobby or coping skill that brings you pure joy
- Take time to go through your past and forgive yourself
- Learn from the mistakes you made back then and see what you can do to grow from it
These are some of the things that have helped me along my journey. Each tip that I gave out has a meaning and a purpose behind it. Each tip flows to the next one, creating a pattern of acceptance and self-worth. If you’re someone that hates yourself, this would be something beneficial for you to try out.
Ability To Live Life On Your Own Terms
I had to save the most difficult ability at the end. I know I mentioned the last one being most difficult for people, but this one takes the cake. The reason why this one is so difficult is because it’s a combination of every other ability.
You may be thinking that living life on your own terms refers to the idea of being rich or having a business for yourself. While those two are definitely huge components of it, it is not all of it. Living life on your own terms means that you love yourself unconditionally. You strive for the best wherever you go and you don’t let anyone take you for granted.
Deep down inside, you knew that you were something special, but in order to see it, you had to prove it. Prove it not to other people, but to yourself.
The best way to put this ability in one term is “you”. You do whatever it is that you feel like with no fear. That takes a lot of strength and failures to accomplish. It doesn’t matter if you mess up 1,000, you will get back up stronger. Usually, when these things happen, you will be successful with a lot of money. Another thing to point out. When you master this ability, you’ve mastered all of the abilities. When you master all of these abilities, the quality of your life will improve drastically.
Conclusion
So there you have it. What ability do you think you have mastered? What ability is the most challenging for you? Take some time to look over the article a few times to find out which areas you need to work on. I believe that all of you can master these abilities. You just need discipline, consistency, and patience.
