One of the ways you keep yourself stuck when realizing you are in a place in your live that you don’t want to be in, is to resist it rather than accepting it.
You think “NO, it can’t be true,” “This can’t be happening to me,” or “Why me?” and beat yourself up for thinking you shouldn’t be where you are. Instead of dealing with the problem, you end up focusing on how stupid, naive, unlucky or alone you feel and not addressing the real issues. This process doesn’t do you any good. In fact it dis-empowers you!
To stop this cycle, follow my 8 Steps to Resolve Challenges below. Use this empowering process whenever challenges in your life arise:
- Take in 3-5 deep belly breaths. If you are in a save space, take a moment to ground and calm yourself in your body through your breath. Your focus on breathing will get you out of your critical mind and into your body which will give you a lot more information about what is happening. You just need to listen to it. Breathing will calm your fight or flight stress response so you can tune into and focus on your problem without letting your emotions run the moment.
- Get real about what is going on. What’s happening to you right now?
- What are the facts? Look at it without your emotions being involved. I’m $20,000 in debt.
My spouse is mentally abusing me.
I lost my job.
I got into a car accident while texting.
I‘m being bullied.
I’ve lost myself. - I’m 50lbs overweight.
I have an addiction to ________________ (shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, drama, anger, TV, FB, etc.)
- What are the facts? Look at it without your emotions being involved. I’m $20,000 in debt.
- Notice what you are feeling about the situation. Get curious about how you operate in your world and what your programming that creates perceptions limiting you is. Explore what meaning you are putting on the situation.
- Give yourself permission to acknowledge you are triggered to react to this _______________________problem with these ___________________thoughts and these _______________________feelings.
- What are the thoughts going through your mind? Do you think “I should have known better! I am worthless. What a jerk! Why me? It’s their fault that…
If only … It wasn’t my fault!”What do these thoughts make you feel? Are you protecting yourself from feeling shame, embarrassment, guilt, anger, frustration or jealousy by thinking those thoughts?Feeling is healthy and valuable! Not feeling and acknowledging what is happening is unhealthy and disrespectful. Your feelings give you information. They are true for the moment you feel them, but they are not who you are.
If you are feeling unworthy or shame that doesn’t mean your identity is broken and unworthy. They are feelings that you have learned to feel and associate with from childhood.
It is not the situation that is causing your feelings, it is the meaning you are putting on the circumstance that makes you feel the way you do.
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- Reach out to someone you can trust and share your story with them about what is going on in your head or journal about it. Talking or journaling what you are feeling and experiencing allows you to move through feelings and see them with a different perspective rather than stuffing, rejecting them, resisting them or fearing them. Giving yourself a time and place to honor what your feelings are triggered by and seeing how you react and how it affects your mind, body and spirit is valuable information for you.When you are telling your story be curious about your beliefs. You can find your beliefs through your feelings by asking, “What is making me feel this way?” “What thoughts am I thinking about my situation or myself that is making me feel this way, limiting my possibilities?” What do believe about myself and my challenge that I am feeling this way?”
- Get practical and create a plan of action. This can include steps you will need to take in order to get you out of debt, find a job, a car, new skills that will advance you like public speaking, learn how to save money, the best coach to hire to help you build your self-esteem and confidence or to find a new career, know your value, condition and defend yourself and more.Plan to also do your inner work and your outer work. What thoughts and feelings do I need to transform? Be clear and focus on how you will take action to change your inner perception so that your outer reality is better or new.
When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change ~Wayne Dyer
- Forgive yourself and others. Remember, what happens to you isn’t about you! When you forgive yourself for not knowing how to solve a challenge or how you got into a problem you can focus on what you want or desire. Forgiving yourself gives you access to change your life instead of continuing to punish yourself.
- Shift your perceptions and energy of your negative self-talk to open better possibilities. Imagine what it would be like to experience relief from stress and put your attention on what you want. Play around with what it would be like if you were to have a new way of being and coping with your challenges. What would that feel like and look like? Put yourself into an energetic space of a new possible reality and stay there feeling courageous, grateful, appreciative and in love with your life, and then let it go.Did a solution or idea pop into your mind when you were out of stress and into possibility?You’re not doing this imagining to cover up a part of yourself that you don’t’ like or are ashamed of. You are coming from an authentic place of who you are without your limiting beliefs, worries and fears.
- Change! That means making new choices, going into the unknown and uncertainty of being in the moment and making decisions based on new thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions. Taking new actions that move you towards solving your challenge and creating new realities that are congruent with your empowered self.
These actions and changes will decrease the number of events that feel like “challenges or problems” and used to take you down. Instead you will see “challenges” as opportunities to learn from that will lift you up.
Remember: life is a marathon, it has its hurdles, its rewards and you have to stay positively focused on what you want to achieve. Challenges are places for you to practice your consciousness and integrity to yourself. Know you are going to ebb and flow. Allow yourself space to be with it and don’t take yourself too seriously.
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