Tag Archives: self-help

Feel like a failure? Join the club.

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Today, I feel like a failure.

Will anybody follow through?

I know it is not good to put your fate in the hands of other people (and I avoid doing so as much as possible), but sometimes asking favors is necessary. In my experience, people may not reject you, but after saying they will do something (hopefully relatively simple) for you, they do not! If this were happening with one person it would not bother me much, but when it is happening with a lot of people at once it makes me feel pretty down. My advice for anybody else in this position is to:

a) Remind people of what they said they’ll do and kindly let them know how much following through means to you.

b) Contact more people to reach out and help you, which means more slowness/rejection but also more opportunity for results.

c) Stop trying to communicate with those people who consistently neglect to do what they say they will.

d) Appreciate the people who follow through, then see if they will do more to help :-)

It is important to remember that things were not always this way and there is no need for them to stay this way either. When you feel like a failure, practice remembering why you undertook the particular mission in the first place. You’ll either conclude that feeling like a failure now isn’t that terrible of a deal and stay focused on the big picture, or you’ll decide the mission is not worth it and consider other options.

Five tips for taking care of yourself

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#1 Make yourself feel with music

I love music. It has the potential to change my mood, take me back to a place I want to be, or help me think about the future I would like to create for myself. It is easy to get stuck listening to the same songs all the time and get in a funk. For this reason, whenever I hear a song I like on the radio, I write it down and would encourage other people to do so too. Later, I listen to this song again, and I am surprised by how inspired it makes me feel to write, move my body, or just meditate and feel.

#2 Warm your heart with an animal

I am very fortunate to have a sweet dog named Rocky. He is incredibly cute and looking at him always brings my attention to my heart. I love walking Rocky and feeding him, yes, but best of all are the times I spend with Rocky that do not involve chores. Doing so challenges me to put my work away and come back into the beauty and peacefulness of the present moment.

Do you have an animal you like spending time with at home? Next time, pay attention to the sensations in your body spending time around an animal brings up for you.

#3 Play…in the water

I do not often go to the pool, but I love taking baths. I add salts with aromatherapy oils and do gentle swimming motions in the water. Usually, I follow up by doing some self-massage. If you are more curious about self-massage, I learned the idea from an Ayurvedic practitioner, who introduced to me the concept of “Abhyanga.” Later, I did a school project in which I talked about self-massage and the role touch played in helping me heal from an eating disorder.

#4 Spend time by yourself

Sometimes relationships with other people can be draining. In order to realize which relationships in your life are more draining to you than uplifting, spend some time alone and assess. Do the people you spend time around value you for who you are? To what extent do you feel the need to uphold an image in order to be wanted?

#5 Experiment with movement

Movement can be a wonderful tool to come in touch with yourself and feel all different kinds of emotions. That said, exercise can be detrimental and dangerous—especially depending on the individual situation—when it becomes overly routine and encourages a self-defeating mentality.

My advice: Step out of your comfort zone if you want, but I prefer to shift the focus to getting comfortable moving whenever/wherever…no matter the zone! One of my favorite things to do is dance in my room to music when nobody is looking. I prefer to move throughout the day rather than pressure myself to “get it all in” in a short period of time. 

Happiness means something different to everybody

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As the self-help industry has increased in popularity, people have learned that being positive—and especially thinking positive—is better than being negative. I find it refreshing that recently I have seen quite a few articles about why negativity is beneficial. Such articles, in a way, give people permission to at the very least question negative thoughts with other critical (but not positive) thoughts, or to purely embrace negative thoughts as they are.

Personally, I am a critical thinker. I also have a history of anorexia nervosa and taking things to extremes. I value pain and the lessons it teaches, so much to the point of becoming addicted to pain at certain times in my life. Though I could easily throw my own bash at the positive people, instead I would like to take the opportunity to be grateful for the friends I have who are into the positivity movement but also curious and respectful of other healing modalities involving all different kinds of emotions. When I am having a bad day, I can count on my positive friends to help me see what lay on the other side of my own suffering.

Today, I respect people who want to be happy and positive. I also respect people who think positivity is overrated. The most important thing to remember is that happiness means something different to everybody, and that’s OK!