He took his wife’s help and with the support of the family, he succeeded in grabbing a new job after several attempts. But B became upset and depressed with this incident. He became more adamant that he needs only the same job or he does not want to try for a new one. B has slowly developed a routine which made him more lazy.  He is always postponing his important calls for job interviews.

He refused to take help from family and friends. He is always complaining to management because they have fired him. Now, as you are reading the above example you may find differences in reactions for the same situation. Why? Every human has different power to react differently in the same situations.

Because attitude and belief make a lot of difference in building up a Resilient personality. You may find many people jump start and come back so fast after some traumatic situation. While you may find many never able to come back. Resilience is something not always achieving something in terms of Success. But Resilience means you become flexible in tough situations or after a traumatic situation.

Today this important article will give you an insight about how to deal with a tough situation. Today you learn about Resilience.

Interpretations of Incidents

Life Events and Incidents taught us a lot. Challenges and problems in life help us to become better versions of ourselves. Hence it is important how you interpret life incidents. As we take the above example once again. “A” found a new job and he has succeeded in his career rather than becoming upset and discouraged. After a few years, “A” was found at a psychologist’s office for therapy because his wife divorced him.

Here, “B” is grateful and feels good that he has started a business and now his business is moderately successful. He thought that I always wanted to become a businessman and hence I am grateful that I lost my job. Otherwise, I might not be a successful person. It is very important after all traumatic situations how you interpret in your head.

If you see any trauma as trauma and are adamant & think, “Why has it happened to me?” Then you may lose confidence that I am capable of doing something. Remember it is important to understand how you interpreted your life’s incidents. How would you interpret your life’s incidents?

• Accept trauma as it is. When you see things as it and feel them as it is. Then you will be able to interpret it well. So let’s take the above example where you think “A” did not lose his confidence while he lost his job. But later in his life, he lost his emotionality while he faced divorce. You think is right but what do you do when you can change the situation and when you can’t change the situation? It is important to understand anything before you conclude. ACCEPT THINGS BEFORE YOU CHANGE IT.
• Blame – Game. When something is not going well in life our mind looks for excuses. You may also be part of such a blame game. When you find that some expectations did not meet then you blame others or yourself. When you provoke negative thoughts without a neutral approach to any incidents then you lose power over your emotionality.
• Accept you as you are. It is difficult many times that you accept yourself with all your flaws, weaknesses and qualities. When you introspect, introspect yourself with a whole bunch of everything. But our beliefs never give us the freedom to think beyond that. When you accept your weaknesses and limitations you have the power to see the situations with actual interpretation. And without becoming an imposter you fairly view to yourself.

Beliefs and Attitudes

If you are taking sessions from Cognitive Behaviour Therapists then they are always concerned about your conceptual cycle. In any session, they try to reach to actual cause that lies beneath the problem. Because your behaviour is a part of your thought process. As you think and feel and you act.

But where do we get our beliefs? Are we getting them by ourselves or do we take them from others? Beliefs we have since our childhood. Raising the skills of any kid determines what a person will believe about himself and others. In the same way, you also have some beliefs about yourself. Like,” I never become tough on anyone and hence people take advantage of me.”, “I found a lack of confidence while I was addressing a group of people. My mom always told me that you are a weak communicator so I am.” But these are your beliefs.

That teaches you to see things as you want to see them. But not the other way around. So in any traumatic situation find your beliefs. What do you believe about self and this world?

Attitude plays a major role in developing resilience. Because in any given situation your attitude can only give you self-confidence and build your willpower in what you want to achieve. Your attitudes towards failures, traumas and depressed situations change your view to perceive things differently. If you are facing financial issues and you find your attitude that you worried before you spent.

You find financial trauma all the time. Because that is how you can see yourself and your relationship with money. But when you develop an attitude to see yourself as always resourceful then you slowly shift towards seeing things in a positive direction. You can make a difference in what will happen to your emotions and then your behaviours.

Resilience does not necessarily success

Resilience is not necessarily a success. Resilience means emotionally and mentally you are stable and taking hold of your thoughts. Of course, this is very difficult for anyone to control thoughts due to the flow of automatic thoughts. When you learn resilience you take charge of your consciousness and your thoughts are under control. To learn resilience one needs to follow two important steps.

One learns to interpret situations and second to understand own beliefs. When you follow these important two steps you learn about resilience. It does not mean that you succeed as there are many traumas which never change. Situations are not in control and hence need to accept is one of the important tasks of resilience.

Resilience – Learn what you can change and what you cannot

What would you think once you are reading the above details? What do you find from the article? Practically if you want to change external factors it is important to change them internally first. You may face three types of things in any given situation.

• If the situation can be changed, follow your action.
• If the situation cannot be changed, then work on your emotional reactions.
• If the situation can be changed but you are distressed because you need to take some steps. So work on your emotions and actions

Resilience is a very important subject to learn especially in mental state issues. Many people I found are not ready to take even a single step.

They come to counselling sessions because they feel a psychologist can fix everything. But it is important to learn about self-behaviour. And actions are important to take to change any negative emotional stressors and beliefs.

Your beliefs are strong and never change unless you install new beliefs and see your world with a new perspective. But HOW that is always a big question. Many times you feel more confused because you want to change your old beliefs.

And because you are habituated to see and perceive this world with the old beliefs. Your mind tells you and gives you many stories as a prediction. So, be a little slow with your thoughts first. Let’s assess your self-esteem.

Kindly write on a piece of paper and try to avoid technology so that you are more expressive in terms of your understanding and self-belief. These few questions help you to show your path where you can understand your self-beliefs and behaviours.

Do not consider your behaviors as are only key points to change your beliefs. Because we all follow a monotonous behavioral system. We just do because we always do. We never think before we are doing it. Because it is habit.

Do you visualize or imagine negative outcomes before you start with new project or work?

(YES or NO)

Do you need validation from someone before you make some decisions?

(YES or NO)

Do you believe that I am always having self-confidence issues?

(YES or NO)

Do you correlate your past failures with the present or future outcomes?

(YES or NO)

Do you believe in what others believe for you?

(YES or NO )

The above questions are very simple and straight to bring your attention to your problems. And when you write this on a piece of paper you may have some memories, experiences and outcomes of the past which come to the surface. If you are getting this kind of visualization then do also mention the same on a piece of paper. You will be able to find your real stigma.

A few days ago one of my clients visited me by saying that I am always getting the same outcome even though how much I have started with a fresh attitude. Why is it so? Am I so vulnerable or submissive that how much I try it always gets worse? I failed in exams, I broke my relationship and I could not feel confident enough to appear in exams.

This is always a trend in my life. Why am I not feeling good about myself and always have negative self-talk? Do you think I lost my opportunities because I am weak? And he was outburst in tears. While he was expressing his emotions I asked him to mention the same on a piece of paper. And after only a few minutes he found his victimization.

His unresolved and undealt emotions. He understood why he felt unheard and nobody cared just the beliefs of his mind. This is how you may also find the root cause of low self-esteem and confidence. But few Psychological techniques help to understand yourself more.

Find your Assumptions:

As you were raised you have installed some basic beliefs by your parents and then school. Because you can easily accommodate society and make your life easier. But in those teachings, you may find some assumptions as well.

Because you are habituated to perceive information with the same belief. For example,” I am never good at communication.”, “I always make blunders.”, “I am not good at bargaining.”, “I am fearful of people’s judgements.” etc.

When you make some assumptions based on your experience about you then you see all life incidents and experiences with the same assumptions only. And you are not ready to see yourself from a new perspective. Hidden fear of facing uncertainty is the only hurdle. So you must find your assumptions and correct them.

Weaknesses and qualities:

Every person is blessed with some good qualities and skills. And it is the responsibility of every one of us to find inner skills. Your qualities are your strength to make your life happy. But as you grow you grow with your assumptions. You lost faith in your skills because you never got validation from others especially your loved ones like parents, relatives, siblings etc.

As soon as you lose faith in yourself you find that someone is driving you. Someone is making decisions based on their assumptions and understanding. In many cases it happens parents’ expectations are more dominant and one loses his persona while in other cases they get so much of a free environment they forget to take responsibility for themselves.

In short, when you grow in any extremities you are unable to see yourself. And you are always confused about what is wrong with you. In such a case, you can make a list of weaknesses and qualities. Once you have listed and found what is major improving area of your life you start working on the same.

Do not Predict:

As you have your self-fulfilling prophecy you would like to see only things which you would like to see and the rest you eliminate. And with the half-truth, you are trying to analyse the complete information. However, our brain is so fast in proving our beliefs, that we are unable to analyse complete information and hence decisions are always wrong or half wrong.

When you are assuming yourself and others you are mostly overgeneralized. Because of that before you act you predict. You start becoming judgmental. A girl is having a depressive mood. She believes so strongly that her friends do not like her. One day she made up a plan with her friend and for some reason, her friend cancelled the program.

Now, the girl out of her mood issue overgeneralized and concluded that I am always right that my friends do not like to be with me. However, her friend has a genuine reason to cancel the program. If you can see this example and try to correlate the same you feel how you predict things before it happens.

Just Do It:

Mostly people who have low self-esteem and confidence try to attach outcomes before they do it. They are more anxious and feel stressed by thinking the worst. And try to make excuses. If you tend to attach to the outcome and only see the worst then JUST DO IT.

It does not mean not counting on challenges and uncertainty. But rather take daily a calculative step to face the fear. Daily introspect your moves and how you feel to act without attaching to an outcome.  Anti dot to build self-confidence is just do it. Achieve some milestones daily. Try to count them. Appreciate yourself and repeat it if you feel good about yourself.

In this world, we need appreciation from others. It is important for us what others are thinking. But before you self-caged yourself think what you think about yourself. What do you want and what stops you? Self-confidence is practice and do it daily until you become a version of yourself. 

How do you think positively when everything is grey? Especially, when you going through some traumatic situations in life. And you feel just merely by thinking positively, really things are working in a positive direction? Of course, your doubt is correct. Merely thinking positively never changes the outcome.

In fact when all is Grey in life then thinking positively is something to explain Red Colour to a Blind Man. And that is the reason I have tried to give you a satisfactory answer. Let’s today you learn something from this piece of content and apply it to see some changes. But before this Do not forget “Change is Always Hard but It Bears Great Fruits”

What is the meaning of positive thinking?

Positive thinking means you deliberately select or choose what you want to feel. If giving you an example when you are facing an issue of Divorce or separation or some financial loss or death of someone to whom you loved most. But you feel yourself with the negative feelings of sadness, unhappiness, anxiety, fear, depression, etc. Because you do not want to accept pain. Because you do not want to feel the pain.

You do not want to experience pain and hence your conscious mind gives you limited information. Limited to past beliefs, memories, and experiences. That leads to a narrow understanding. You deliberately never choose to think differently but you think what you want to think, see the things which you want to see and feel what you do not want to feel. Because of your beliefs, assumptions, rules and regulations about you and your world.

Positive Thought Comes from Positive Feelings and Behaviours

Your mind is alerting you while you feel negative. And your body symptoms are alarming you. You think positively but you feel and behave negatively it never serves your purpose. Rather it creates chaos. Chaos creates messiness in your mind. It sabotages you and makes you believe that you are not self-sufficient.

So a few steps help you to think positively and get positive results.

Find your Beliefs:

It is a new concept for many people to find self-belief. Beliefs are created from self-fulfilling prophecies, experiences and memories. It is not difficult to find what you believe. But once you find what you believe about yourself and above this world. You start recognizing your self-stopping thoughts.

Because we all are driven by our past experience and so you are. As I mentioned earlier we do not want to feel pain we try to avoid it or we try to hit hard. So situation of fight-flight has been created. Once you know your belief you try to see the things apart from your self-fulfilling prophecy, which you have never seen. For example, a student is very good at academics. And everyone from his family praised him for his scores because no other person from his family had achieved what he achieved.

Now slowly parents developed expectations on a student. And a student also started feeling pressure to score well. He will then be anxious about his results. His anxiousness reaches a level where he feels tremendous pressure and judges his parents in all conversations. Even in normal conversation like in giving some good health advice misunderstood by a student and correlated with his scores. Here, he misjudged and correlated all matters with his anxious thoughts about his scores.

May be possible you also face similar issues. So it is important to understand belief. And writing down those beliefs gives you more clarity. It is difficult to change beliefs but one can get professional support.

Choose and be definite about what you want to think:

As I mentioned above, how to think positively when everything is grey? But the choice is yours. Even in bad shape, you can select your most inspired thoughts. You can select to be motivated and slowly the needle moves in the direction of feeling good. You think differently means you want to prove your thoughts you are right and hence you want to find some supporting incidents for the same. When you think positively you look for something which gives relief by selecting positive thoughts. To do so you may choose some activities to make those conscious efforts.

When you get negative thoughts your heart shakes. Or you may feel some other physical symptoms. Switch over to exact opposite thoughts or to think some other thoughts along with new behaviours. After a few minutes when you feel relaxed, you analyse your thought pattern. You feel it was for a moment. If you can handle your predictions and judgements before you act. You actually get results by converting them into actions. So find your belief and before you become judgmental and predict or attached to the outcome just perform.

The same actions never give the same results:

Now you may learn new things from the above details. If you think positively but behave similarly then you get no new results. But rather you frustrated and become unfocused. Tired of the same actions. And you start procrastinating and prolonging things. Remember FEAR AND ANXIETY BRINGS UNPRODUCTIVE MOMENTS. But the new selection of thoughts and behaviours gives some other results. As you have read an example of a student

He misjudged everyone with his anxiety about a higher score or being the best in academics. He chooses to pressure himself. He started blaming himself and pressurized himself more to study. Eventually, he feels inattentive and prolongs his studies. But if he chose to see and perceive things as it is without becoming judgmental. He performs not only well but he studies smartly. If he also counters his anxiety helps him to understand his misjudgment.

To behave differently it is important to counter your beliefs and choose different actions to bear new fruits. If you choose to behave differently. There is always great measurement one can measure the connection between THOUGHTS-BEHAVIOURS, THOUGHTS – FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOURS – FEELINGS.

Deliberately Create What You Want?

You become creative when you understand yourself better. If you select to be happy in the worst condition means you are not victimizing your situation. But rather you want to accept and face the fears. When you deliberately choose what you want to feel you start behaving in the same way. Because your heart tells you that you feel good when you do some activities which increase your feel-good factor. To prove your feel-good factor you can see an opportunity lie in a stressful situation.

That is how you choose to see solution but not a problem. You deliberately create what you want. For example, you have some bad news today or you have a tough day at your work. Of course, you want to tell someone that today your day is tough. You want to report or complain about situations or people. But here you select to relax in your armchair and listen to some music with a great cup of coffee. You dwell in the aroma of coffee and listen to deep lyrics of music. Your needle moves to feel good feelings.

With that, you see a bad day definitely gave some opportunity to find. Because here you have deliberately chosen what you want. Rather than complain you select to relax and leave the matter as it was. You get your energy back and start feeling better. These are very basic self-help. You can always apply when you are mentally disturbed. Even very tough days will teach you to change your thoughts and feelings. And you want them as well.

ACT – Acceptance- Commitment Therapy:

Here, I am not saying you just be positive. But committed to self that you accept what it is as it is. Then you get your power back. As mentioned earlier if a student misjudged his parents for their normal health conversation. He needs to talk freely if he really misunderstands. Before he selects negative self-talk or annoyed with parents by indulging in hot discussion. He has to accept that his own self-expectations put him down.

Rather he is complaining about his parents or prolonging his studies he needs to accept his anxiety. Once you fully accept the feelings you feel you are in power to change it. But when you do not accept it means you resist it and you lose power to change the same. It is foremost important to accept and then commit to yourself about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours all in a row.

Important Tips to Develop Positive Thinking:

• Introspect daily how many complaints you did
• Do you consciously select your thoughts and feelings or it depends on situations?
• Make a list of beliefs about self and others
• Make a list of beliefs others have about you
• Develop Faith in yourself by Journaling and prayers
• Only positive thinking never changes but your attitude changes your feelings
• Become action-oriented not thoughts oriented
• Work with your If-Then
• Practice Self-Confidence

I love to cure your mental health-related issues. Life is precious and you get this for a limited time. Either you waste it by concerning and negative feelings or you choose wisely what you want. Book a session to learn more about yourself. Happy to cure you.