Have you ever been in a situation where someone said something, but you knew they meant something else?

Maybe when you asked your parents for a car – they said, “maybe later”, but you know they didn’t take it seriously.

Or perhaps when you asked someone how they are and they say “I’m fine” but you know they are not feeling their best.

Often times, what someone says only scratches the surface of what is really going on with them. To truly understand what someone means, you have to feel more into their words.

How do you do that? Nonverbal communication. Here are the four most important elements of nonverbal communication to keep in mind to uncover the truth of a conversation.

Facial Expressions

One of the most obvious ways of communication, after words, is facial expressions. A person’s face can exhibit myriads of emotions just through the twist of the mouth, an eyebrow lift, or a subtle flare of the nostrils. The expressions someone uses while saying something gives a huge clue as to what they truly mean. The most common expressions are a smile, a frown, or an indifferent look.

Hand Gestures & Body Language

Do you use your hands a lot when you speak? Some people use their hands more than others while speaking. Hand gestures and use of body movement is a big indication as to what’s really going on. For example, if someone is sitting with you with their arms crossed, it can be a sign that they are closed off to you and your ideas. Imagine you are on a date. No matter what the other person says, you can easily pick up on the truth: they aren’t interested!

Similarly, if the other person is leaning towards you, even if they aren’t saying anything, it is easy to understand that the person is interested in you.

Tone of Voice

Another way of picking up on the underlying truth when someone is talking to you is their tone of voice. Are they speaking loudly and rapidly? Are they speaking slowly and softly? What words are they emphasizing?

If someone says, “let’s go for a movie” loudly, it can be assumed they are excited! If they say it softly and slowly, it could mean that they aren’t very interested in this activity. You can understand what someone is saying based on their tone of voice and adjust your response accordingly.

Physical Touch

A subtle form of nonverbal communication is physical touch. When someone touches you, you can feel connected to them or you can feel threatened. Either way, it strengthens the message. If someone says “you were supposed to do this”, and pushes you, it’s evident that they are upset with you. However, if someone squeezes your hands or gives you a pat on the back, it can be a sign of encouragement and support.

Words are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the truth. What someone says can be far from what they truly mean. So how can you truly understand the truth of the situation? By reading into their nonverbal communication. Experts say that 55% of our communication is nonverbal. Pay attention to their facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and physical touch, and you will get a much clearer idea of the truth of a situation.

The heart is the center of every human being. It symbolizes everything we are and everything that makes us who we are. It is our soul, our life force, and “the moral, emotional, spiritual and even the intellectual substance of a person” (Ancient Symbols). Unfortunately, we can become distracted and influenced by others which can steer us away from our true selves.

The quote, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it,” emphasizes the importance of staying true to yourself despite anything that might try to change your true self.

Why You Need to Protect Your True Self

There are many reasons why you should protect your true self throughout your life, including the following:

Allows You to Be Your Best Self

When you aren’t being true to yourself, you aren’t doing what you are meant to be doing. Being your true self means you are doing things that truly make you happy and satisfied at the end of the day.

Helps You Find Your Purpose

In addition, you can only find your passion and purpose if you are being honest with yourself about what you want in life. When you are acting in accordance with what someone else wants, it will be difficult to find your meaning. 

Provides You with Better Relationships

Relationships are only good relationships if both parties are honest with one another. Being your true self means that you are being honest with others about who you are, what you believe, and what you want. This prevents problems in the future.

Makes Life Simpler

Finally, being your true self makes life easier because you are doing what makes you fulfilled and happy. When you live life the way you were intended to, you stop worrying so much about what other people think and only have one person to please: yourself.

How To Stay True to Yourself

Staying true to yourself isn’t difficult, but it also isn’t easy to avoid giving into influence. Here are four ways you can keep your true self intact:

Don’t Alter Your Beliefs for Others

We tend to want to please other people, and with that comes changing our beliefs to fit the beliefs of others. One way to stay true to yourself is to maintain your beliefs regardless of what others want you to believe. This doesn’t mean your beliefs will never change; rather, it means that you don’t let any one person dictate them other than yourself.

Do What You Want, Not What Others Want You To Do

Throughout life, you’ll encounter people who will expect things from you that you don’t want for yourself. Learning to follow your own expectations and desires can prevent you from living your life for someone else.

Choose Friends Who Like You for You

You should also choose friends who accept you the way that you are. Friends can be a big influence on your life, so making sure your friends don’t desire to change you can ensure you stay true to who you are.

Be Honest With Yourself

Lastly, it is important to remain honest with yourself about your passions, desires, wants, and needs. If you aren’t honest with yourself, you won’t live your life as it was meant to be lived.

Remember, our time here is limited. Spend your life being who you are meant to be, and you’ll find that your life gets easier, brighter, and happier overall.

As we all know, not everything in life goes how we want it to go. We all experience suffering, some more than others. But we also all know that suffering can be overcome, and if we hang on to this important piece of the puzzle, we can prevent ourselves from wallowing in self-pity and handle our suffering in a more productive way. Remember, even when it doesn’t feel like it, nothing is so bad that it cannot be overcome.

Negatives Of Wallowing in Self-Pity

Feeling sad sometimes is healthy and normal, but self-pity is a little different than just being sad. Self-pity is when we unnecessarily exaggerate our suffering and make it seem like we have no chance of overcoming it. Let’s take a look at some of the consequences of self-pity:

Self-Pity Keeps Us in a Cycle of Negative Thoughts

The first consequence of self-pity is that it keeps us in a recurring cycle of negative thoughts that are not conducive to improving our situation. Thinking negatively all of the time is bad for your mental health and can cause additional problems in your life including relationship problems and issues with productivity.

Self-Pity Prevents Us from Taking Action

Self-pity also prevents us from taking action to improve our situation. Rather than taking ownership of our lives, we blame our suffering on outside forces; this only prevents us from being able to see what we can do to end our suffering. 

Self-Pity Makes Us Suffer Longer

Going off the last point, self-pity tends to make us suffer longer than we would otherwise. Wallowing only makes us waste time that we could be using to solve our problems.

Why Should You Try to Overcome Suffering?

How to Overcome Self-Pity and Suffering

Self-pity is not doing us any favors. If you have found yourself in the cycle of self-pity and need to find a way out, here are four tips for beginning to overcome self-pity and overcome your suffering.

Change Your Mindset

The first step to overcoming self-pity is to change your mindset regarding your suffering. Remind yourself that you have power over what happens in your life and this pain won’t last forever. Start viewing your life as something that you are actively participating in rather than something that is happening to you.

Practice Gratitude

Once you have changed your mindset, practice gratitude to remind yourself of everything you have to be thankful for in your life. Think of the things that are going well in your life, the people who are always there for you, and the successes you’ve had no matter how small. Try writing down three to five things you are grateful for every day, especially when you feel self-pity coming on.

Identify Changes You Can Make

The next step is to identify changes you can make in your life to eliminate or lessen your suffering. Believe it or not, you have the power to improve your life; you just need to be willing to put in the effort to make it better.

Allow Yourself to Feel It, Then Let it Go

Finally, when you begin to feel sad about your circumstances in life, remember this advice: allow yourself to feel it, then let it go. Feeling sad is normal, but you shouldn’t carry that emotion for too long. So let it out, but don’t forget to move on afterward.

Often in life you will encounter people who are generous and kind, and people who would give you the shirt off their own back, so to speak. Some of these people are actually just trying to be helpful, and their kindness is genuine. They give because they care, and they expect nothing in return. However, if someone is offering you something that they clearly cannot give themselves, be cautious. As the old saying goes, “Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.”

There are a few ways one can interpret this quote and they all fall somewhere on the spectrum between benign and malicious. One, I see this as someone who is like how I used to be. I was a people pleaser and felt like I had to help everyone else and solve their problems. I was so externally focused that I neglected myself and couldn’t even help myself. Which leads me to another meaning behind this saying.

A variation of this quote is attributed to an African proverb that calls out hypocrisy. When I first got married, I read a book by an author who offered marriage advice. She was well-known and I thought a lot of what she said made sense. A few years later, I discovered that she had been married multiple times and had very destructive, unhealthy relationships. All that being said, it doesn’t mean that what she had to say wasn’t helpful or right, but it sure cast a shadow on her own credibility as an expert.

We see this kind of hypocrisy everywhere, like with politicians who talk about why public education is great, yet they send their own kids to private school. Or someone who is not in shape offering diet and exercise advice. 

But there are also certain other kinds of people who use generosity as a means to manipulate and control those around them. You may have known people like this in the past, or perhaps you even currently have one or two of them in your circle of acquaintances or work colleagues. These people will be generous and kind only when it serves them in some way, or when they want to bank some points so that they can demand payback later.

They might do something extraordinarily nice for you today, and then come back a few weeks later and ask for a big favor, and usually it’s something that you will not feel comfortable doing. If you decline, they will remind you of the times they have helped you in the past, and they may even try to make you feel guilty for not returning the favor, even if the favor is far larger than the help they originally gave to you.

Then you find yourself in a difficult position because you feel obligated to return the favor, but at the same time you feel like they are asking too much in return, so it creates an inner tension that pulls you in both directions. This tension will be even greater if you are a person who is exceptionally sensitive and caring, because deep down inside you likely have a powerful desire to help others. Unfortunately, people who are shrewd and calculating can easily spot generous souls such as yourself and take advantage of your kindness.

It’s often best to handle a situation like this by being honest with the person, while also taking a stand and firmly defending your boundaries. You could say to the person, “I’m so sorry, but I’m not able to do that at this time. I do want to help you, though, so how about if I…” Then offer a compromise, something that you are able and willing to do.

Their reaction will usually reveal their true motivations. A person who is genuinely in need of help will be understanding and appreciative of your offer to help, even in a small way. A person who is trying to use guilt as a manipulation tool will be more likely to get angry, argumentative, or crank up the guilt tactics even further so that you will give in and do what they want.

Once you recognize this pattern, it becomes easier to avoid falling into the trap. Through your words and actions, you can make it clear that you are happy to help when you can, but you also will not be manipulated into giving more than you are prepared to give.

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Steven Chbosky wrote the following line: “And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and Bad.” This means that everyone has different successes and difficulties, and you can’t compare yours to another’s because everyone lives a very different life.

Everyone is On a Different Life Path

Everyone’s life is very different. A person’s life is a collection of all their highs and lows, accomplishments and struggle, and good times and bad times.

You can’t compare your life to another person’s life because you don’t know their full story. You don’t know if they are where they want to be, if they are doing what truly makes them happy, if they are at a high point in their story right now, or if they are at the lowest point of their life.

Comparing yourself to others is futile and can be very damaging to your mental health. While everyone forms comparisons in their heads, it is best to allow those comparisons to be a passing thought so that you can refocus on what you want out of your own life.

How to Stop Comparing Your Life to Others

Comparing your life to others does not serve you in any way. It is important to learn how to see your life independently from others so that you can make the most of the life you have. Here are 5 ways to stop comparing your life to others:

Focus on Your Path

As mentioned above, everyone is on a different path in life. No two people have exactly the same route. We all have different struggles, different challenges, different gifts, and different successes. How can you compare yourself to someone else when you only see a small portion of their life?

Focusing on your own path rather than worrying about the path of other people will allow you to make strides toward improving your life and living for yourself.

Allow Yourself to Feel Your Emotions

In the quote, it is important to note that it says, “Good and bad.” This means that you need to allow yourself to feel all your emotions regardless of how your life is going at the present moment. You shouldn’t dwell on your emotions, but you at least need to acknowledge them and deal with them in a healthy way.

Only Compete with Yourself

Another great way to overcome comparison is to only compete with yourself. Focus on making yourself better than you were the day before rather than making yourself better than somebody else. This way, you work on your own personal growth and improve your well-being in the process.

Surround Yourself with Nonjudgmental People

Being around people that constantly judge others is not good for your self-esteem and mental health. It can make you feel as though you will never gain their approval. Instead, surround yourself with people who accept and embrace others’ differences.

Live Intentionally

Finally, always live with intention. Do everything for a reason, not just to do something. Find your purpose and let everything you do guide you closer to that purpose.

I often say time is the most expensive thing in life. It’s the one thing we can never get back once it has been spent or something we can earn more of, no matter how hard we work or what we do.

Our time on this earth is limited and we are perishable items. This can feel scary but acknowledging this also reminds us of how precious and beautiful it is. So why not try to make the most of the time here?

In 1997’s blockbuster movie, Titanic, Jack, played by a very young Leonardo DiCaprio says this quote while having dinner with rich hoity toity people. He comes from a completely different world than these people, being poor, yet he has this wisdom and maturity that was shaped by his circumstances.

Our lives consist of a series of days full of moments strung together. Our lives are ultimately defined by how we choose to spend each moment and day. To live a meaningful life, be intentional and make each moment meaningful.

How To Make Each Moment Count

Set a Daily Intention

Every morning, set an intention for the day ahead. What would make your day great? What do you want to focus on? How do you want to feel? Rather than being distracted by the chaos every day brings, setting an intention helps you be more mindful about aligning your day with what you want to focus on.

Be Present

Every day is a gift. Every moment is an opportunity to be present and enjoy it. It’s easy to get caught up in our worries for tomorrow or the mistakes we made in the past. We often postpone our lives to some point in the future. We think we will work on our goals next month or start our habits next week. However, as we do this, we postpone our lives. If you want to start a healthy habit, don’t wait; start it now. Begin working on your goals now. Take action now.

Create Joy

A common tendency of humans is to make life harder than it is. We feel like we don’t deserve to just have ‘fun’ or enjoy life. It feels selfish or wrong.

However, without joy, what’s the point of life? There is something beautiful about enjoying the moment. It is okay to prioritize fun.

Think about what lights you up. Is it singing? Painting? Cooking? Watching the sunset? Try to actively carve out time for joy every single day. This will enrich your life and keep you going even when you don’t feel like it. You will go to bed feeling fulfilled.

Face Your Fears

One of the biggest blocks to living life to the fullest is fear. Our fears stop us from doing what we truly want, what our hearts crave, and from chasing our desires. Whether it is quitting your job and starting a business, selling everything you own and traveling the world, or perhaps something as small as wearing red lipstick, we restrict ourselves because of fear.

However, if you want to live each day to the fullest, ask yourself: what would you do if you weren’t afraid of anything?

Consider what comes up for you. It might be scary, but often it can be tremendously liberating. Assume it is your last day on earth. How would you spend the day? What would you do with your precious time? Make each day meaningful because the truth is, you never know which day is your last. So live each moment to its fullest.

Many of us struggle with feeling like we are good enough. We have these “standards” in our minds for when we will finally be enough. We’ll be enough when we are thin enough, have enough money in the bank, when we get our parenting skills right or when we get that promotion. How we appear on the outside and what other people think of us becomes the determining criteria for whether or not we are good enough.

But the truth is, you are enough as you are. Read that again.

You are enough as you are. You don’t have to change anything about yourself to make you worthy or enough. You are here for a reason and a child of the universe. That alone makes you enough.

While it is human nature to care about what other people think and feel towards us, it can become unhealthy when we replace our own opinions of ourselves with theirs. But let me ask you this…If someone you loved said they were good enough as they are, what would you say to them? What does being enough look like to you, independent of what other people think?

Here are some ways you can begin to see yourself as already being enough.

1. Keep a gratitude journal. Write down at least three things you are grateful for every morning. Even simple things, like feeling grateful for being alive and in good health is worth writing down. Writing down things that you feel thankful for every day will help you realize all that you already have going for you.

2. Define the daily practices of your best self. What does the best version of yourself do every day? This will vary from person to person, depending on what is important to them. But does the best version of yourself exercise daily? Or perhaps a few days per week? Does the best version of yourself make time every day to spend quality time with family? Define the daily practices the best version of yourself does and incorporate them into your life.

3. Stop seeking external validation from others. I once heard this saying and I have adopted it for myself: “What other people think of me is none of my business.” Don’t allow yourself to become shackled by what other people think about you. They have the right to think whatever they want, even if it isn’t true. You don’t need other people to see your worth to know that it is valid and that you are worthy.

Check out Lisa A. Romano’s video about the secret to realizing you are good enough:

In Game of Thrones when Robb Stark is telling a story about his father, Ned Stark, he says that he once asked his dad, “how can a man be brave if he’s afraid?” Robb goes on to say that Ned told him that when a man is afraid, it is the only time he can be brave.

It is easy to say to others, or to yourself, that you are brave when times are calm. When there is no adversity or danger, anyone can say they are brave. But it is only when we are standing in the face of fear that we can truly be brave.

In other words, bravery occurs not in the absence of fear, but in overcoming fear. It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Triumph over fear is praiseworthy, not being without fear.

We also see this idea play out with oaths in the series. Members of the Night’s Watch swear an oath of duty at the Wall that forbids marriage, family, and land ownership until they die. It is easy to stick to the oath you pledged when it isn’t in competition with anything else. But once it is, that is the only time the oath one took can be proved.