When you are having a really bad day, it can be hard to objectively look at what’s happening in your life. And it is easy to get yourself hung up on what happened. And your day may have been truly horrible. But remind yourself, that it was just a bad day, not a bad life.

Here are some things to remember when you feel overwhelmed by a bad day or situation:

• You are okay and have already survived 100% of what has happened to you.
• You are stronger now for having gone through it.
• This obstacle is the way.
• What lesson can you learn from this? What is the universe trying to teach you?
• You can move forward from here.
• The struggle isn’t found on the path, it is the path to greatness.
• Things are only as bad as you think they are.
• The light in your life will always outweigh the dark.
• You’re capable of more than you think.
• If there is no rain, there are no flowers.
• It’s okay to not feel okay right now.
• Bad days build better days.
• You have to fight some of the bad days to earn some of the best days of your life.
• Keep your head up. God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.
• Our worst days are only 24 hours.
• It’s okay if all you do today is survive.
• In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.
• Taking the next step is always worth it.
• You still have many blessings that you can make count.

Do you appreciate the challenges you face in your everyday life, or do you more often complain about them or feel resentful about them? Maybe you have even questioned why things always need to be so difficult or complicated, when all you want is a clear, easy path to your dreams and desires.

One of the best ways to empower yourself is to begin shifting the way you feel about challenges when they show up. Rather than resisting them, complaining about them, or resenting them, do your best to simply accept them and see them as an opportunity. It is okay that there is an obstacle in your path. Perhaps young padawan, the obstacle is the way and is an ally. Yes, yes, yes.

Consider what you might learn from each challenge, and what you might learn about yourself as you work through them. Even better, acknowledge that perhaps you would not be able to achieve the heights of greatness were it not for traveling the rough roads in your life. Remember, difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

The truth is, every challenge you have ever faced has served a useful purpose for you. Without your challenges, you would not have had the opportunity to stretch yourself or become more than you were when you began. Opposition causes you to dig deep within yourself and call upon your inner strength. It causes you to become more adaptable, so you learn how to change course quickly and agilely. It causes you to become more resilient so that you can bounce back and try again, and do better next time. It causes you to become more resourceful so that you can overcome future challenges even more efficiently.

Rather than resenting the obstacles in your path, remind yourself that you have what it takes to climb over them, swerve around them, or blast right through the core of them. Say to yourself, “I am strong. I am resilient. I am resourceful, and I will find a way to reach my goals.”

Holding a mindset of belief and determination like this does two things. First, it reminds you of your own strength and tenacity, which immediately boosts your confidence. No longer do you feel intimidated by an obstacle in your path, but you are able to keep it in perspective and know that it does not signal the end of your journey. It is merely a temporary pause.

Secondly, by affirming that you can and will find a way around the obstacle, you are calling forth the solutions, ideas, insights, and people who can help you to keep moving forward. There are dozens of possible solutions to every challenge, and you can practice being open to receive them.

Keep a notebook nearby and jot down any ideas you receive in that moment. Then do your best to stay open and receptive throughout the rest of the day, because spontaneous ideas will often show up while you are focused on other tasks or chores.

If you will practice this detached, relaxed, curious state of mind daily, your obstacles and challenges will suddenly start looking much more like opportunities and allies rather than problems.

A desire for greater freedom is usually at the foundation of most goals and dreams. If your life often seems like an endless series of restrictions and limitations, you may find yourself yearning for more freedom. Maybe you wish you could receive more love, abundance, success, or passion, but you don’t know where to begin to create those changes, or if such things are even possible for you at all.

You may not realize it, but many of the restrictions in your life are there because of your beliefs, and probably a large portion of those beliefs were not even created by you. From a young age, you have been conditioned to believe certain things about yourself and the world around you. You may have been told that you do not have the talent to be successful. You may have been discouraged from following your passion because it wasn’t realistic or practical. Or you may have been taught that life isn’t fair and you shouldn’t expect too much or you’ll be disappointed.

Much of this conditioning takes place at an early age, and it is usually done by adult family members or role models who were trying to protect you from being reckless with your choices. They meant well, but unfortunately all of those limiting beliefs that were instilled in you constructed a mental prison in which you will live for the rest of your life unless you experience a moment of awakening and see them for what they really are, just beliefs.

If you were to take a mental step back and look at your life circumstances, both past and present, what would you see? Have you consistently limited yourself as far as how much money you can earn, what type of job you must have, where you must live, and even the types of people that surround you?

While most of the rules and restrictions that govern your life seem to be outside of you, the truth is that all limitations begin in your mind first and foremost. If you will begin stretching the limits of your beliefs, you will see those outer restrictions begin to change as well.

An easy way to start this process is to question everything you see around you. “Is it really true that I can’t earn a bigger income or choose a different career? What if it’s not too late to get my college degree? What if I could get in better shape, or even run a marathon eventually? What if I really can enjoy a greater sense of freedom in all areas of my life?”

As you keep questioning your limitations, they begin to weaken and lose power, and that power is transferred right back to you. You begin to feel excited about the possibilities and your mind opens to more expanded beliefs and perceptions. Your entire life begins to look and feel much different than it may have in the past, and even your perceptions about yourself will begin to change for the better.

All of this begins in the moment you decide to break out of your mental prison and stretch beyond the illusion of limitation. Your potential as a limitless being will awaken, and you will experience the exhilaration of true freedom, perhaps for the first time in your life.

It’s human nature to seek a sense of security, and like many other people, you may sometimes get caught up in a futile pattern of trying to control the uncontrollable. There are many ways you might do this, such as trying to influence the actions or behavior of other people or trying to arrange your life in such a way that you feel fully in control of everything around you. Maybe you even believe that you can’t be happy unless everything in your life is exactly the way you want it to be.

Have you noticed that the more you try to control the outer conditions of your life, the less control you seem to have, and the less secure you actually feel? That’s because your attempts to control the things outside of you are coming from a mindset of fear and powerlessness. In a very real way, you transfer your power to the people and conditions around you. If those conditions are not the way you want them to be, you won’t feel comfortable or happy. Obviously, anything outside of you – on the external – is not a reliable source for your happiness or empowerment, especially since people and situations change constantly.

When it comes right down to it, the only things you ever have full control over are your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Nothing outside of you can make you feel vulnerable and afraid unless you allow it. No matter what the people around you are doing, and no matter which challenges you may be facing at any given time, you always have the ability to turn within and reconnect with your true power. Only then will you feel a genuine, stable sense of safety and security, regardless of what is happening around you.

Reconnecting with your true power is as simple as removing your focus from anything that makes you feel out of control and returning to the awareness of your own inner strength and security. The next time you are faced with a situation that makes you feel nervous or uncomfortable, immediately turn your attention inward and be present with any feelings of fear, discomfort, or vulnerability. Recognize that these feelings are coming from a belief or perception of your own powerlessness.

Remind yourself that you are never truly powerless, and you can choose to reconnect with your inner power in an instant. Say to yourself, “I am safe, I am secure, and I reconnect with my inner strength now.” Immediately, you should notice a feeling of calm come over you. Even though nothing outside of you will have changed, you will feel more stable and grounded within. Last year I wrote a post about how you can build up your resiliency. You can find it here. 

Over time, as you keep practicing the feeling of inner security and stability, you may be surprised to notice that life begins to reflect back to you more and more situations that strengthen your sense of inner security. You begin to appreciate change for the opportunities it offers, you begin to focus more on positive expectations rather than negative, and you become more flexible and adaptable when facing uncertainty.

Best of all, even when things around you are not the way you wish them to be, you will still feel a sense of peacefulness because you are no longer basing your happiness or comfort on anything beyond your control.

Your focus determines your reality. What you do daily reflects what you are focused on. Those are the things we give choose to give our time to. Those are the things we prioritize and as a result, they become at the center of our daily life.  

What are you focused on? Social media? What X is doing? Your co-worker who cheats and scams his way to the top? I know so many people who are focused on what people are saying on Facebook, what people are posting on Instagram, who’s travelling where and why the guy who works in the next cubicle is getting the promotion you deserve because he’s a fraud who has no idea what he’s really doing. Or maybe they are focused more on how their life looks to others rather than how it feels to them. They spend a lot of time focusing on these things, to the exclusion of much else. But what enrichment do those things really bring?

But maybe you are focused on different things. Perhaps you are focused on a living a healthy lifestyle or building your business. Maybe you are focused on building relationships that matter. What sets us apart from others is what we do with the time that we have. We achieve greatness through the small things that we do daily, not the drastic things we do occasionally that are not consistent or sustainable. Strive to focus on things daily that support the life you really want. Those are the things that matter and are the things that, ultimately, will get you were you want to be.

Life is too short to spend time trying to live up to someone else’s idea of who you should be. Ask yourself, what if you stopped letting the people who don’t even know who they are, tell you who you should be?

It is time to stop asking permission to live the life you want to live.

Here are some things to remember, when feel influenced by others:

• What other people think you should be doing is none of your business.
• What you choose to do with your life isn’t anyone else’s business.
• The greatest prison we will ever live in is the fear of what others think.
• If you live for other people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection.
• Worry about your character, not your reputation. Your character is who you are, and your reputation is what others think you are.
• Your life isn’t yours if you care about what others think.

It in our nature to want to give second chances and believe that maybe our first impression was wrong. I am a firm believer in observing patterns in people. Sure, you can definitely get the wrong first impression of someone. But if they consistently show you a bad side of them, you should take note and believe it.

So why do we suspend our disbelief when it comes to witnessing bad behavior in someone? Often it is because we either don’t trust our own judgment or we are dependent on the relationship (whether its romantic or a friendship) working out.

Empaths tend to struggle with this in their relationships. I know this firsthand, because for years I gave people who clearly didn’t deserve it, chance after chance after chance. I wrote a post last year that is one of our most read posts on this blog titled, “Empathy without boundaries is self-destruction”. I go into details about what can happen to your mental health when you don’t set appropriate boundaries with others. I also talk about what healthy empathy looks like. For years I felt like if I even set boundaries with someone I was being mean or unfair. But the truth is, you have to be careful of what you choose to tolerate in your relationships. You teach people how to treat you based on what you are willing to tolerate.

I also wrote a lengthy post about how to recognize mistreatment, which you can find here. It’s a good read because I go into why people can easily confuse healthy intimacy with intensity. Anytime you have a relationship marked with intensity, both people are vulnerable to abuse.

Remember, you have a right to remove yourself from people who treat you like your time doesn’t matter, like your feelings are worthless or like your soul is replaceable.

When it comes to living our dreams and taking chances, Lemony Snicket says, “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.” For far too many of us, waiting has become a habit.

2020 and 2021 hasn’t help us, either. As a society, we all spent a lot of time waiting around, determining when life could go back to normal.

But the truth is, all we have is now. And life is way too short to live in potential.   

At some point, you have to make the decision to take the risk. You have to decide that today is going to be day one of reaching for your dreams, rather than putting it off for “one day”. Like I have said before, “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

What are your dreams? How do you want your life to be? What small steps can you take today to start making them a reality?