CHANGING ATTITUDES
Changing your attitudes will make you happier. It really will. Setbacks like not getting a job you wanted won’t leave you in a pit of self-pity, worthlessness and anger if you have the right attitude. With the right attitude to life, you will simply see if there’s anything that can be learned from the experience, then shrug your shoulders and get on with the next job interview.
Here are some healthy attitudes that will help you lead a happier life.
Accept that life isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to anybody. If you think you are having a bad time, just think of somebody aged twenty in a terminal cancer ward, remember, self-pity leads back to using drugs. Every time the thought “It’s unfair!” comes into your head, chase it out again. It’s childish thinking.
Set yourself realistic goals. If you can’t get what you want, start wanting what you can get. Part of recovery is learning to live with reality as it really is and that means being realistic about yourself and what you can achieve. ‘It’s important to realize reality is reality and not what you want it to be,’ says a counselor who helps people think realistically.
Allow yourself to make mistakes. Every human being makes mistakes and, what’s more, many of those mistakes are valuable experiences. Think it out for yourself. What do you learn from your successes?
Not much. What do you learn from your mistakes? A great deal.
Drop the words ‘should’, ‘ought’, ‘must’ from your thinking. Reality simply doesn’t recognize these words. When you start thinking thoughts with these words in them, have a closer look at them. Why ‘should’, ‘ought’, ‘must’ you? Who says so? You? Think again. There’s absolutely nothing in the universe which takes any notice of these ‘should’, ‘ought’, ‘must’ rules that you are imposing on yourself.
Stop ‘awfulizing’. It’s ‘awful’ ‘terrible’, ‘disastrous’, ‘horrifying’. Really? Is it really awful compared with, say, millions of people dying from famine in Africa? Is it terrible compared with dying from leukemia or lung cancer, or spending your life in a wheelchair? Is it disastrous compared with the havoc caused by
An earthquake or a volcano? You know it isn’t anything of the kind. Every time you exaggerate in your thinking like this, you make things worse. Bring yourself back to reality by trying to see things in their proper perspective.
Let go of making yourself feel bad. If you have a problem that is worrying or angering you, take a careful look at it. Identify exactly what you are allowing to bug you. If there’s some action you can take today, take it. Then stop worrying or angering yourself about it and let the problem go.
Literally stop the thought. Worrying or getting angry about something you cannot change is simply a waste of thinking power. It clutters up your head with unwanted rubbish. Every time this kind of rubbish thought comes into your head, chase it out with something else. Take realistic actions and change your mental focus from the problem to something quite different.
You can help yourself let go of things by talking about them at a meeting, talking to your sponsor, handing them over in prayer. One recovering addict uses this mental trick. She takes the paper parcel, and then posts it in to a kind of imaginary celestial letter box. Another recovering alcoholic simply finds a suffering newcomer to help, in order to stop being obsessive about her own problems. Ask around \nA or AS and you’ll find other people have ways of letting go which may help you.
See things from other people’s points of view. Take yourself out of the center or your myopic mental frame and look at things through their eyes. It’s surprising what a different mental landscape you'll see. Take the bus conductor who was rude to you today. Before you snap back, imagine what his day may have been like, he had a disagreement with his family at breakfast, arrived at the bus garage to find his shift altered, and has just had a row with somebody trying to evade the proper fare. So he was rude to you, but you weren’t really his target. He's been rude to the next passenger, whoever it was. So it’s not worth taking so personally.
Don’t expect too much from others. Just because people are not addicts or alcoholics, does not mean that they are saints. The world is full of different kinds of people, and quite a few of them are emotionally immature. You can’t expect rational responses from emotionally ill people.
Don’ tet other people press your buttons. You can choose your reactions to others in the same way you can choose your attitudes. If somebody is angry at you, you need not be angry back. You do not have to pick up his anger.