Relationships can be challenging because we are all such unique individuals, with vastly different viewpoints, beliefs, and perspectives. No matter how much we might have in common with our spouses, partners, friends, and colleagues, conflicts are inevitable, and disagreements will happen, even when we do our best to get along with everyone.

However, the manner in which these conflicts are handled by each party reveals whether the relationship is healthy or detrimental. In a healthy relationship, people can disagree respectfully without resorting to personal attacks. They strive to build each other up, support each other, and work together to resolve conflicts, rather than trying to tear down or hurt each other. If you are unsure about what a healthy relationship looks like, I wrote about it extensively here.

In order for a relationship to truly thrive, both parties must be willing to work on it together. If one person is willing and the other is not, the relationship cannot continue to grow. It will stagnate and become more dysfunctional as time goes on.

The decision to leave an unhealthy relationship is never easy. But sometimes it’s the greatest gift that you can give to yourself, especially if your mental and emotional health are being negatively affected.

At times it can be difficult to tell if a relationship is worth saving, or if it’s time to move on. If you’re not sure, you might ask yourself some questions like these: “Does the other person treat me with respect, or do they more often try to tear me down, belittle me, or treat me like I don’t matter? Do they seem to genuinely care about me as much as I care about them? Do they communicate with me honestly, or do they repeatedly lie to me? Do their actions back up their promises, or do they keep letting me down? Are they willing to work on improving the relationship, or do they keep avoiding the issues?”

Once you start looking closer at the behaviors of the other person, it becomes clearer whether they are truly invested in the relationship or not. And if you realize that they are not, you might decide that it’s time to finally let it go and move on. This decision will likely bring up all kinds of feelings, including sadness, loss, anger, and even the fear that you might never find someone who will treat you better. And when I think of this fear, I think of a friend of mine who felt the same way when she broke up with her boyfriend of over 10 years.

She is a fitness model, absolutely stunning and even more beautiful on the inside. She is an old soul at heart and went through a horrible breakup with her boyfriend. They had a business together and she thought that he would propose after all their time together, but the relationship ended abruptly. She discovered some things that forced her to make the tough decision to break it off. And for over a year or so, she went through a lot of heartache and a long journey of rediscovering herself.

A couple of years later, she met a man who is truly perfect for her. He embraces her quirky personality, absolutely adores her and they are a true team. He proposed quickly to her, unlike her ex who she had been dating for 10+ years, because he didn’t “want her to get away.” He is secure with himself and is willing to be vulnerable at times. They truly complement each other. They are now married, and she is happier than she has ever been or thought she could be.

So give yourself time to work through these feelings, and remind yourself that in order to receive love and respect from others, you must first give that love and respect to yourself. Say to yourself often, “I deserve to be loved and respected, and I choose to love and respect myself.” You may not truly believe those words when you first begin saying them, but over time and with enough repetition you will come to feel their truth.

As your sense of self-love grows stronger and deeper, you will feel a sense of empowerment rising up within you, so that you are no longer willing to settle for unsatisfying relationships or mistreatment from other people. That inner strength and confidence will then begin attracting the kinds of people who will truly respect you and actually be interested in building a healthy, lasting connection with you. And remember, sometimes things have to completely fall apart to fall into place.

We are all here for a reason and purpose. And we are all perishable items. No one knows how much time we will have while we are here. We all have something to bring to this world. We never know the full impact of who we are and what we choose to do has on the people around us.

Because our time is so limited, we cannot afford to live in potential for the rest of our lives. And whether you are aware of this or not, somebody, somewhere is depending on you to do what you have been called to do.

Why are so many of us in danger of dying with our song still inside of us?

Perhaps we are scared to trust the madness and live our dreams. Maybe we feel scared of failing. Or perhaps we don’t have the best support around us.

That sad truth is, some people around us are dependent on our stagnation. By chasing our dreams and living the way that we want to live, we force them to look at their own choices. Those who are too scared to make their move in life, sometimes try to keep others down on their level because so they aren’t stuck there alone.

When I think of these people, I think if a barrel of crabs. One crab climbs to the top and sees that there is a whole different world awaiting him. He seeks the new adventure, so he makes his way to the side of the barrel to embark on this new world. And just before he is about to get out of the barrel, the crabs around him clamp down on him and pull him back into the barrel with the rest of the crabs.

It is okay to have big dreams and want things, even if those around you don’t. It doesn’t make you a bad person or say anything about who they are. We all have different journeys and paths.

If you fear failing and worry that by spreading your wings you will fall, consider this: What if you fly?

I am a big believer in trusting my gut. But even when something feels right to me, if it is a difficult decision, I will contemplate it for a couple days. I find that it is better to take a little bit longer to make the decision than it is being haunted by a bad one late at night.

Big decisions can be overwhelming. And difficult ones even more so. You don’t want to overthink things, either. So how do you effectively make a difficult decision?

1.  Write down your choices. Write down all the choices you can potentially make in the situation and write out the pros and cons for each. It can be helpful to get it all on paper. When we keep it all in our heads, we inadvertently forget things and self-doubt can creep in and confuse us. Pay attention to the words you use to describe the choices you have. Sometimes the language we choose reveals how we feel about a particular choice.

2. Be honest about what you really want. And what you may be willing to give up to get it. The more honest you can be with yourself about how you really feel about the choices ahead of you, the more satisfied you will be with your decision.

3. Eliminate your fears about the decision. When we are fearful that things won’t work out if we choose something, it can cause us to lose our whole perspective on the situation. Remember, our fears want us to stay in the situation we are currently in. Even if it is an awful one, it is comfortable. It keeps us in a pattern of inaction. And speaking from personal experience, once you get into that pattern, it can be much harder to break out of it. Note your fears and concerns, but don’t allow it to overshadow potential benefits and outcomes a choice can give you.

4. Use this decision as something that affirms what you really care about. Maybe that is your career or family time. Only you can decide what is most important to you. Think of the decision you need to make as something that aligns with what you find most important in your life. If having quality family time every day is important to you, ask yourself if accepting this new job aligns well with what you value.

5. If all of the above fails, flip for it. I’m serious. When I get stuck in a loop of trying to decide something, I will flip for it. I tell myself that no matter what, whatever the coin comes back with I must commit to doing. And while that coin is up in the air and my fate is left to chance, my feelings because much clearer. You obviously don’t have to make your decision based on what the coin says (when I say that I think of No Country for Old Men – the coin has a lot of say in that movie!). But it can be useful in clarifying what you really feel.

A common human trait that we humans have is to feel insecure about our differences. Ever since we are children, we try to fit in. We try our best to avoid being weird or different. But what if this fear of being different keeps us small, and is actually holding us back from our brilliance?

Like Meryl Streep said, “What makes you different or weird, that’s your strength.”

Embracing Our Individuality

If we were all the same people, who looked the same, dressed the same, had the same thoughts, would we be human any longer? We would just be one of many robotic beings. What would set us apart?

When you embrace what sets you apart, you allow yourself to shine bright. You stand out from the crowd, and in a good way! You get to be different, unique, and inspiring! Think about people who have inspired you – were they “normal” or did they have something unique about them that stood out?

Accept Yourself

Just being different or unusual doesn’t guarantee excellence. You have to accept your uniqueness and become comfortable with it. Only when you can be fully okay with who you are, can you use your uniqueness as something that’s not hindering you but helping you.

When you accept the parts that you dislike, you are able to love parts of yourself that you have rejected for years. This helps you be more at peace with yourself, building confidence and self-worth, which in turn helps you achieve your goals.

Identify & Develop Your Strengths

After you accept everything about yourself, you can also begin to develop your quirks into strengths. The parts that you, or others, find “weird” about you can often be your superpowers! For example, people who are shy are often especially good at helping others because of their fabulous observational skills. People who are quiet and always lost in thought can be extremely intelligent thinkers with unparalleled creativity and problem-solving skills.

When you embrace yourself fully, including your quirks, you can tap into strengths that you may not have been aware of earlier.

Improve your Mental Health

If you judge yourself, you set yourself up for failure. When you can’t embrace your quirks, you will constantly hear that inner critic in your ear nagging you and pulling you down. This inner criticism is the cause for so many forms of self-sabotage, including perfectionism, procrastination, and people-pleasing. Inevitably, this results in low self-esteem and self-worth, which are both detrimental to your mental health. To be excellent, you must first take care of your mental health, and that means embracing your uniqueness.

Help Others

When you love yourself for your uniqueness, you give others the permission to be different, too. You show them that differences can be loved and cherished, and that everyone doesn’t have to be the same to be accepted. There have been countless examples of “strange” people in history who have done bizarre things, only to have become role models and sources of inspiration for future generations! So, embrace your strangeness and step into your infinite potential!

Life has its seasons just like the weather. The quote, “No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow,” refers to how life is everchanging and how bad moments in your life never last forever.

In this post, we will look at why nothing in life lasts forever, how you can find the strength to get through the bad times, and how you can look forward to the good times ahead.

Nothing Lasts Forever

At first glance, the statement, “nothing lasts forever,” can feel somewhat depressing. If nothing lasts forever, then the things that we like about our lives right now may not be a part of our lives in 5-10 years.

While change may be difficult, change is a good thing. Change pushes us to be better than we were previously. Change gets us out of bad situations, negative relationships, and habits that are holding us back.

The fact that nothing lasts forever is meant to help you cherish what you have when you have it but also have hope that things will get better in the future. If you are going through a bad season in your life, remember that this season will pass and a new season, a better season, will begin.

Find the Strength to Get Through Your Struggles

While knowing that nothing lasts forever can be comforting during hard times, you might need to use some additional strategies to find your strength.

Ask For Help

No one can go through life alone and we all need a shoulder to lean on sometimes. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you are struggling. Don’t let yourself feel ashamed or weak for asking for help as asking for help is an act of strength and resilience.

Find Joy in The Small Things

No matter what you are going through, there are always good things happening in your life. Seek out small moments of joy and focus on those moments rather than ruminating on your problems.

Allow Yourself to Feel

Don’t keep yourself from expressing your emotions. Bottling up how you are feeling is not healthy and prevents you from healing. So, cry, hit a pillow, or take the day off. Let yourself feel how you are feeling.

Show Yourself Compassion

It is easy to get down on yourself when things aren’t going right, but it is important to show yourself compassion and understanding during the worst of times. Being hard on yourself is only going to make it more difficult to improve your situation.

Look Forward to What Is to Come

Gathering your strength to deal with challenging life situations is important, but it is also important to look forward to the good times that are yet to come. Here are a few ways to get yourself excited about the future:

Find Something to Look Forward to Every Day

The future doesn’t need to be a year from now. Find something to look forward to every day, whether that’s cooking your favorite meal, spending time with your pet, or taking a bubble bath.

Make Plans for The Future

You can also make plans for the distant future. Think about what you’d like to see yourself doing a month from now or a year from now. Plan a vacation, a meeting with a friend, or a birthday party.

Set Goals

Setting goals is another great way to look forward to the future because you can anticipate positive change. Set a few goals for yourself and start making progress towards those goals.

When going through challenges and difficult times, remember that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Find the strength to get through the bad times and look forward to all of the beautiful beginnings in front of you.

Oprah Winfrey. A name that inspires millions of people around the world, right? She is a billionaire, a motivational speaker, and a media mogul. It can be easy to fantasize about her amazing life and think about how awesome she is.

However, not many are aware of the immense hardships and struggles she had to face before getting to where she is.

We all have heroes we look up to. JK Rowling, once a broke single-mother, now a well-known best-selling author and another billionaire. Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Elvis Presley, Michael Jordan, and the list goes on; all names who faced hardship and failure before becoming “great”.

With all these names, we can be certain of one thing: great men (or women) are not born great; they grow great.

4 Lessons We Can Learn from Great People

They Don’t Give Up

What do you do when you fail? Maybe try once or twice again? But what if you fail three times in a row? Or five? Would you still get up and try again? Or would you give up?

What sets successful people apart is that they do not give up. Great people fail, but they do not fail to try again. 

Stephen King’s first novel “Carrie” was rejected 30 times.

JK Rowling was rejected 90 times before a publisher accepted Harry Potter.

If you think that is a lot, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, considered one of the best novels ever written, was rejected 600 times before it was published.

If you think 600 is a big number, think again!

Harland David Sanders’ fried chicken recipe was rejected over 1,000 times! But, he still didn’t give up. Finally, after 1,009 rejections, a restaurant agreed to use his recipe, which he called Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Thomas Edison is one of the most famous examples of people who overcame failure. One, his teachers said that he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Two, he was fired from two of his jobs for not being “productive.” Yet after 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb, he finally succeeded. And he never saw his unsuccessful attempts as failure. He believed those attempts taught him 1,000 ways it wouldn’t work. 

They Believe in Their Dreams

No dream is too big. In order to achieve your dreams, you have to believe in them. Don’t limit yourself to what seems realistic or practical. Elon Musk is a great example of a man who can see and bring to fruition possibilities that others can’t visualize. How can you create something incredible and new for yourself if you base your future on what is already around you?

So many of the things that exist today would have been impossible if some crazy people had not dared to be unrealistic and think out of the box. If Steve Jobs decided to be practical, he would never have dropped out of college and created Apple.

To be great, you must trust your own madness. While that might sound crazy, isn’t that better and more fulfilling than just being “normal”?

Don’t Listen to Haters

People will be afraid of your dreams. As a result, they might discourage you. Friends and family might try to “protect” you by dissuading you from going after what you want. But in order to succeed, you have to stay focused on the positive rather than the negative. Don’t let others bring you down, convince you that you can’t achieve your dreams, or tell you that it is not possible to achieve your goals. Stay focused on your goal and chase after it. If you need to, protect your dream and don’t share it with people you might think will be unsupportive.

Don’t Let Challenges Stop you

Sidney Poitier came from a humble background, barely making ends meet as a dishwasher. When he first auditioned for an acting role, he was rejected due to his thick Caribbean accent. Rather than dishearten him, this rejection pushed Sidney to work harder at his craft, which finally paid off.

Oprah Winfrey came from a broken home, was sexually abused, and became pregnant as a teenager. Yet, that didn’t stop her from pursuing her calling as one of the greatest talk show hosts of all time.

Lady Gaga, one of the best-selling artists of her time, faced disappointment early on when a major record label signed her on only to drop her from their roster of artists after three months. However, she persevered and recreated herself as a successful performer.

Another incredible story about a man who refused to allow challenges to stop him is Sylvester Stallone. Tony Robbins tells his story well.

Great people don’t give up when faced with setbacks, disappointment, or challenges. They persevere through them, becoming stronger. Everyone has their share of struggles, failures, limitations, and haters. However, great people stay resilient. Great people aren’t great because of their successes or achievements; rather, because of everything they grow through and their refusal to give up.

You may not always know for sure how much you mean to the people around you, especially if they don’t speak about it or express it in any obvious way. But you probably have much more of an impact than you realize.

Everything you do affects those around you. Every word you speak, every action you take or don’t take, and even the thoughts you think and the energy you hold in your body can influence the way others perceive you, and themselves.

When you feel hopeless, helpless, weak, or unimportant, your inner power is stunted, and you are unable to effect much change in the world around you. These feelings can continue to amplify your feelings of helplessness.

Worse, your feelings of helplessness are not merely contained within your own body, but they radiate out through your entire energy field, influencing other people around you to feel the same, especially if they already hold similar feelings and beliefs within their own energy systems.

The good news is that this phenomenon also works in the same way with positive feelings and beliefs. The more empowered, passionate, inspired, and capable you feel, you will broadcast those feelings to the people around you and awaken the same within them.

If they already hold dormant beliefs about their own strengths and capabilities, your influence can awaken and amplify them. But even if they do not already have a solid belief in themselves, your influence can plant a tiny seed of hope in their mind, which is all they need to begin reconnecting with their own power.

One of the best things you can do for yourself and others is to unblock the flow of your own inner power, and begin shining it like a beacon of light to the world around you.

To begin this process, recall some of your achievements from the past. These achievements can be small or large, or they can be some tough challenges that you have overcome, or fears that you have successfully conquered and released. Spend several minutes mulling over these achievements and acknowledge that you are much stronger than you sometimes feel.

Start to question just how much more you might be capable of, even beyond what you have already achieved in your life. The more you ponder your past experiences and open your mind to what else might be possible, you are going to realize that you are anything but weak and ineffectual, and you will feel the full awareness of your inner power returning.

Then continue the process by stating with conviction each day, “I am strong and capable, and I help others to remember their power too.” The more you say it, the stronger you will feel, and you will begin attracting people who are in need of a confidence infusion. They may not even know why they feel so drawn to you; they will simply notice that they feel good about themselves when they are in your presence.

Remember, you never know how deeply your energy and words can impact the people around you. Choose to be a beacon of light and hope for as many people as you can. 

Have you ever felt like something was holding you back from being successful, but you couldn’t figure out what it was? Sometimes we hold ourselves back from reaching our goals, whether we are aware of it or not. “Life is too short to spend it at war with yourself,” is a quote that addresses how we must overcome self-sabotage to make the most of the life we have.

What Is Self-Sabotage?

Self-sabotage occurs when we hinder our own ability to succeed by doing things that actively prevent us from reaching our goals. Self-sabotage, also known as behavioral dysregulation, can be conscious or unconscious.

An example of conscious self-sabotage is someone wanting to get a new job but consciously not answering companies that reach out to them.

An example of unconscious self-sabotage is someone procrastinating on an important business project because they are afraid of failing.

Why Do We Self-Sabotage?

According to Postivepsychology.com, there are five main reasons that people self-sabotage:

• Modeling – Some people learn self-sabotaging behaviors from adults they observed when they were a child. 
• Rejection – Children who are rejected can lack self-confidence and have difficulty with relationships by avoiding vulnerability. 
• Trauma – People who have experienced trauma tend to feel unsafe taking risks to get what they want in life.
• Maladaptive Behaviors – Behaviors that were once beneficial in a person’s life can become damaging to a person’s success.
• Approach-Avoidance Conflict – Self-sabotage occurs when the perceived threats outweigh the person’s desire to achieve a certain goal.

How to Stop Being at War with Yourself

If you recognize that self-sabotage is preventing you from reaching your goals and chasing your dreams, the good news is that there are some ways you can combat self-sabotaging behaviors.

Identify the Cause and the Behavior

A great place to start is by examining why you are self-sabotaging. Look through the five main reasons listed above and think about what might be leading you to be at war with yourself.

Once you have an idea of the cause, focus on identifying the specific behaviors that are preventing you from achieving your goals. Knowing what needs to change is key to helping you overcome those behaviors.

Positive Self-Talk

Self-sabotage tends to occur when self-confidence and self-esteem are low. Positive self-talk is the practice of challenging negative thoughts and turning them into positive thoughts. When our thoughts are more positive, we feel more capable and willing to go after what we want in life.

Avoid Thinking Like a Perfectionist

Perfectionistic thinking is detrimental to goal progress. Perfectionism makes people overthink every step towards their larger goal, and this overthinking extends the time it takes to reach goals, sometimes indefinitely.

It is important to take on a growth mindset and not be afraid of your work being imperfect. The small details will work themselves out in the future. The ability to make mistakes and not instantaneously feel defeated is important for achieving goals. Learning from these mistakes will help you grow and will allow you to confront issues like the ones you faced.

Focus on the Smaller Steps

Focusing on the big picture can be scary, and the fear of failure has a big influence on self-sabotaging behaviors. If you focus on the smaller steps needed to reach your larger goal, you’ll feel less overwhelmed and more likely to allow yourself to go after that goal.

The truth is, when you learn to stop self-sabotaging, you’ll find that reaching your goals and getting what you truly want out of life becomes much easier. Life is too short to be spend it at war with yourself. You deserve to be happy.