You’ve probably moped around feeling sorry for yourself before. There are ways to stop this and cultivate a more positive attitude.
Yes, I am familiar with self-pity, and I bet you are too. But feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t get you far in life. It robs you of the time you can use to be productive and change things. No, the world isn’t fair, and bad things happen sometimes, but mulling around in self-negativity doesn’t help. Are you feeling sorry for yourself?
Quick, take your mental temperature. Are you wallowing in self-pity? There are ways to tell if you are. If you’ve lost all passion for the things you love or talk constantly about your misfortune, you might be feeling sorry for your life and yourself. Would you like to know how to stop doing this? I thought you would.
How to stop the train of pity?
1. Accept the pity
I know this might sound counteractive, but just listen. It is okay to feel sorry for yourself for a little while. I know I might be going a little against the title in this post, but you will understand if you read on. What’s most concerning, is staying in self-pity for too long.
So, allow yourself to feel those negative feelings, every single emotion, but then agree to let them go after a certain period of time. Just don’t hold onto negativity for too long. Letting self-pity go will help you eventually feel less and less sorry for yourself in time. 2. Help someone
Helping other people always gets us out of our own head and into the concerns of friends, family, and even some strangers. The more you get out of your head, the better the perspective on what’s happening in your life that hurts. Of course, you should tackle your problems after helping someone else. Keep those things separated.
For example: Help someone move, listen to someone else’s problems or offer to babysit. Trust me, all these things will make you stop thinking negatively about yourself so much. You will see what other people are going through. Plus, it’s just right to help others anyway.
3. Change your focus
No matter what’s happened in your life to make you feel sorry for yourself, there are many things good about you. There are things that people see in you that you may not even see in yourself. However, if you focus on things that don’t revolve around self-pity, you may be able to grow a more positive outlook.
Try focusing on what you have instead of what you don’t have. So, you might not own a house, but you rent a decent one that keeps you safe and warm. You might not have a new car, but the one you have gets you where you need to go. Change how you see things, and self-pity will fade.
4. Stop giving up, and start breaking boundaries
When I say boundaries, I don’t mean the positive ones you’ve set for you and your life. I’m talking about the limitations that people place on you in society.
If you’re trying to become a doctor, and people keep telling you that you’re not cut out for it, do you back down and accept what they say? Of course, you don’t because this makes you start feeling sorry for yourself. So, if you want to be a doctor, start climbing on the bumps of criticism that everyone keeps throwing in front of you. When you refuse to give up, pity cannot survive. 5. Stay away from the 3 P’s
There are three thought processes that keep us locked in feeling pity. These mindsets are personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence. With personalization, we tend to think that our situation is our fault alone. We blame ourselves and dwell on what we could have done differently. With pervasiveness, we assume that a traumatic event will affect all areas of our lives, and this is not true. And permanence makes us think that bad things will last forever. These three lies must be thrown out in order to stop feeling sorry about our situations.
6. Think about your future
Yes, it’s great to live in the present, I encourage that. The thing is, you need to take a quick look at how your future could be if you continue to feel sorry for yourself. You see, self-pity is stressful, and it can take years off your life.
So, ask yourself if what you’re feeling bad about will matter in the next 5 years. If you don’t think it will, then start to let it go before it makes you sick. Remember, mental and physical health are connected and influence each other both ways. Keep your future in sight, just a bit of it, and maybe this will help you retain hope instead of pity.
So, let’s stop feeling sorry for us
When I say us, it means I sometimes suffer from the trap of self-pity myself. So, you’re not alone. It’s not all that difficult to do, especially when your life has been a series of letdowns and traumatic events. But you see, you cannot let those things define you, and when you feel sorry for yourself, that’s what happens.
I hope this helped you do a bit of positive thinking, and most of all, I hope it gave you the strength to stand in the face of adversity. I’m working on it myself, and so we’re doing it together. I wish you well.
References:
- https://www.forbes.com
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov