HAPPINESS is ensuring the self-dialogue you're constantly having is empathetic and encouraging.
What does the voice in your head sound like?
I was working on a personal project yesterday which required me to work through my fears and discover their root cause one at a time.
During this exercise, I found out that one of my fears had stemmed from negative adjectives that had been used for me by people who were supposed to be encouraging and supportive but were not, and it stayed with me. Over time the emotion built itself up into a fear.
I reckon that this happens commonly even if you don’t realise it. Eg someone labels you as something, it hurts, you let it go and move on but in the future whenever you are performing an activity that could earn you those insensitive remarks again, you subconsciously avoid doing it or don’t commit to it. A more specific example could be failure.
One reason we fear failing is because of what people would say when we fail. How would we face them? Fears work in manipulative ways that we are too naive to recognise.
Coming back to my exercise. When I realised what had led me to thinking, feeling and fearing something, I decided to change my self-dialogue (the conversations you have about yourself with yourself in your head ALL the time). I sat down and wrote WHO I WAS irrespective of what others label or view me as. In essence, I decided that I needed to edit my self-dialogue and make it more positive and encouraging.
What happens when someone’s scared and comes to you to share their fears? You encourage them, say positive things and help them see that the reality is better than they think it is. Correct?
What would you do when you realise that the person who is scared is YOU?
Act as the same person who would encourage and say positive things because you need to show up for YOURSELF and ensure that your internal self-dialogue is POSITIVE, RESPECTFUL and ENCOURAGING.
Surely you owe yourself this much? The voice in your head has the MOST IMPACT on how you feel, act and live. If it’s not positive, change it. You can do what I did, go and write down WHO YOU ARE, not who you think you are or what others think you are but the person you REALLY are.
Be an encourager, there are too many critics and trollers anyway. :)