Moving forward is easier said than done when you face the daily agony living in this sometimes harsh, reality called “life.”
When you are constantly confronted to meet the expectations of the people around you—the incessant pressure at work, and the nagging demands of your partner, family, friends, and society—it’s really hard to keep your balance, to say the least. When you are regularly bombarded with crises, it’s a real challenge to keep yourself sane, moreover, have the time to evaluate the path you are taking.
If you continually find yourself succumbing to the old challenges, stagnant and not challenging your present condition, you are not growing as an individual. And, not growing is not moving forward in life.
You aren’t supposed to be a victim of your circumstances, your present reality. It’s just that you have let yourself be victimized by your inability to protest and call into question your decisions. You need to acknowledge the fact that you are a capable individual who can exercise control in directing your life. You have the power to choose to live the life you want.
It’s not necessary to make drastic changes right away if you want to start moving forward. The key is to intentionally want to move forward. To actually want it, desire it. To transcend your present situation into the higher calling of your being.
Changing for the better doesn’t require you to start moving the big things first, rather begin with the small things that will eventually lead to monumental differences.
So do yourself a favor and start moving forward for the better now.
Promise yourself that you won’t allow past mistakes to hold you back
It’s clearly impossible to be human without making mistakes. It is an inevitable part of life, and often essential too.Everyone makes mistakes because we are not perfect. Everyone fails at some point. So instead of focusing on what you feel, you should direct your attention to the lessons being learned in the process.
Keep in mind the crucial truth that mistakes and failures are actually good for you. You can learn from your failures more than from your successes. Not to learn from it, to blind yourself from its teachings, is called insanity.
Mistakes painfully tell you what went wrong. As John Green puts it, that’s the thing about pain-it demands to be felt. When it’s painful it becomes unforgettable. It rips your very heart, and that’s when you try not to do it again.
Nonetheless, try not to stop by just avoiding the very act again, instead try to find a better way to do better the next time. Because you are not the problem, but your perspective—the way you see things and think about it—that’s the problem. You can either learn from your mistakes and become a better person or be paralyzed by it and become miserable.
When you fail, it does not mean that you are doomed. Instead, your failures can become a door that you can open to trying something new. It may also force you to distance yourself and see the problem from a different perspective or as a whole. It's supposed to build your character, so you shouldn’t stop when the going gets tough.
Learn from it, but don’t let it hold you back.
Promise yourself to be more enthusiastic and positive
Too much of what’s slowing us down is our preoccupation with the negative. We seldom think good things about ourselves, about the people we’re closest to, and the people we work with and for. We are the best critic of ourselves and others.And it’s a sad truth too that it isn’t constructive criticism we indulge ourselves often. The moment we see something wrong we are too ready, too easily inclined to fret. Our treatment of ourselves is not sufficient on esteeming the qualities and abilities we and others have.
And this is why we need to remove this way of thinking, this unhealthy habit. You need to be cautious with your thoughts because you are what you constantly think about. Replace the negative and destructive with positive and uplifting thoughts.
Affirm yourself, recognize the strengths that are uniquely yours. Try to see the good in others too. Encourage them, motivate them, and you will find yourself being motivated and encouraged by them too.
Promise to never stop improving yourself
To grow is to progress, nevertheless to do so, you need to move from where you stand, onward and forward. This is what progressing is all about.As Steven Covey suggested, we have to keep sharpening the saw, we need to keep improving ourselves if we don’t want to become obsolete. However, too often we don’t do this.
We stop learning, we become complacent with our present level of experience. We became settled. We have become too comfortable without consciously confessing that we are okay with mediocrity. And that’s a terrible thing.
When we see others doing better than us, having the things we want, we became envious. Jealousy eats us alive. We congratulate them in the face, but inside we’re eating our hearts out.
And this happens when we are not satisfied with what’s happening in our lives, it’s easy to compare, to criticize, to judge.
Accordingly, this is why you need to resolve yourself to keep improving mentally, emotionally, and physically. In his poem, Christian Larson rightly said it, “give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.”
Living a better life-the life you wanted, isn’t impossible, especially if you exercise the determination to do so. Why live a stale, uninspired life when you have the power to be all that you can be?
