No one else can make anyone feel anything, everything we feel is our choice. If we are choosing to continue in relationships, jobs, or situations that contribute to our feelings of negativity, we need to ask ourselves why we aren’t choosing to be happy.

Happiness is a choice. With the choosing of happiness comes the responsibility to give up self-destructive patterns. Learn to distinguish what you like and what you don’t like.

The healing principle is that as we believe we will get better, we will get better. But choices have to be made. You can’t hold on to misery with one hand and reach for happiness with the other. As the trapeze artist lets go of one bar before she grasps the next one, so also must we give up misery for happiness.

Other methods to increase our self-esteem are:

(1) set goals from the dreams we have of what we would like to have in our lives,(2) learn to take risks in all areas of your life,and (3) develop a clear-cut precise schedule adding physical, mental, and spiritual healthy activities to our weekly life.

In developing positive self-talk, affirmations and guided imagery may be used. Remember our subconscious mind doesn’t know if something has happened already or is to happen in the future. Only the conscious mind knows time. Therefore, don’t implant wishes or doubts with words like maybe or is or I hope. Use action positive words such as I am, I enjoy, I believe, I want, etc.

Trust your subconscious to lead you to your “higher self”. Develop an attitude of being gentle with yourself.  Learn to recognize that the source of uncomfortable feelings is that we have added some degree of judgment to the future. The pain we feel is fear which is the withholding of love. The withholding hurts us as well as the person we’re “punishing”.

So all hatred is self-hatred first. It begins inside us and is projected outward. As we learn our loveability, we see the love in others. As we love ourselves, we project the love to others. As we love ourselves, we project to others. We confuse the giving of loving with the power of others.

If I love someone who chooses not to love me, have I lost anything? If I choose to not love another and feel that hatred pass through me, have I gained anything? Who is the loser when I choose not to love? We each have life issues that periodically disrupt our patterns.

Knowing our issues helps us to accept the lessons quicker by spending less time in denial of them. Some of these issues may be: accepting our feelings, labeling our feelings, control, boundaries, intimacy, commitment, conflict, trust, authority figures, etc.

Likewise, we each are a collection of selves: (1) child, (2) adolescent, (3) teenager, (4) young adult, and possibly, (5) an older adult. Periodically, we need to “step back” emotionally and observe our own behavior in order to understand the behavior choices we are making.

In learning to check in with ourselves, we come to accept that just as we may be coming from several different vantage points from within ourselves, so also are all the other persons we encounter whether they are aware of their vantage points or not.

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