Bad mental habits

 Hi everyone!

Welcome to HAPPY DAYS Podcast - I am Kelly Ward - Your host 

I hope everyone is having a beautiful week!

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Today I wanted to speak about what bad habits can actually cost us in our lives. It prevents us from actually living life to the fullest and also achieving our full potential. When you scroll through your social media feed and think to yourself that it is only 10 minutes of my day, how could this possibly affect my mental health, well it will in the long run. When you choose to constantly consume what everyone else is doing in their lives and also the fact that it usually is a glorified version of it, especially on social media - that does lead to depression. Instead of focusing on improving yourself and improving your life, you are choosing to focus on someone else's life who perhaps covers up their challenges and insecurities really well and you go ahead and believe that that is a honest representation of their life and you put yourself down. You start to question your own life. Well STOP. Encouraging these types of habits where you constantly use your time to scroll social media, comparing yourself - these types of habits eat away at your mental strength. 

There are 3 types of limiting beliefs that actually take away parts of your mental strength. 

1. Having unhealthy beliefs about ourselves. Let's be real guys, we tend to feel sorry for ourselves and play the victim in our lives, because its the easiest thing to do. However self pity actually only magnifies the negative parts you may have in your life at this moment. You soon start to think - 'Well why does this always happen to me?' - However news flash, that way of thinking actually ends up keeping you stuck, it keeps you focusing on the problem, instead of actually finding a solution to that problem. Even though you sometimes can't find the solution to your problem - you do have the power to find ways to start improving your life, but you cannot do that when you are busy drowning yourself in self pity. When I was younger - I was dealing with a lot of personal issues and I always felt like the problem. Every time when I faced a challenge in life, I immediately started feeling sorry for myself and played the victim, instead of understanding that I cannot control the behavior of someone else. I cannot control how someone feels about me, but I can control how that person makes me feel about myself. 

My dad has always been the person I look up to in life. I have always admired his work ethic, his values, drive, determination and attitude towards life. My dad was in the marines and his mindset must have developed and became stronger through his training and serving as a soldier for many years. You are basically trained to become stronger physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally in order to survive. The reason I have always looked up to him, is because he is a fair, caring, strong and positive person. You will never hear him complaining - he is constantly pushing himself to be his best self and I admire that. No matter what he may face in life, I have seen how he continues to dust himself off and get back up again, so when you have that as an example to look up to - your mindset is bound to become stronger. I think I get my positive perspective on life from my dad, because he appreciates every new day, he constantly challenges himself, he loves to learn and improve himself and he continues to maintain a positive mindset no matter what. The mind is the most important part of achieving anything. The mind is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand. Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside changes with it, so the first thing I started focusing on was developing a more positive mindset. So as I grew much older - I started taking accountability for my mistakes, decisions and my own mindset. I dropped the victim mentality and I started focusing on being happy and improving myself everyday. I have had a lot of people try and tear me down in life, but I am still here and I only become stronger. If I were to tell you guys that it is easy - I would be lying, because I have days where I feel defeated and when I want to give up, but on those days - I have to really tell myself and I literally myself 'Be strong Kelly, you can do this.' You need to be your biggest supporter especially in those low moments. 

Lets discuss the second bad mental habit.

2. Unhealthy beliefs about others. We believe that other people can control us and we end up actually giving away our power. Sometimes we complain about people who treat us badly, however we have the power to respond to those people - even though they may put us down or treat us poorly - we are in control of how we respond. 

3. Unhealthy beliefs we have about the world. We tend to think that life owes us. For example the mentality that if I put in the work, I deserve success. However having expectations or expecting to have success in life, will only lead to disappointment. The moment I realized that no one is going to save me, I had to force myself to get back up again. 

It can be very hard to let go of unhealthy belief systems that has been conditioned into our minds for a very long time. However if you don't let go of them, you are going to have a time in your life when you need all of the mental strength you can put together. 

The secret to being mentally strong, is that you have to give up on your bad mental habits. Think about it for a second, mental strength is a lot like physical strength. If you want to become physically stronger, you need to work out every day, go to the gym and if you want to see even more positive results, you need to also remove those unhealthy eating habits and choices too. So to be mentally stronger, you need to develop good habits like for me these 6 habits contributed to changing my life in a positive way. 

1. Practice more gratitude - basically saying thanks to everything good in your life.

2. Understanding the reasons behind every season in life and finding the lesson in every obstacle.

3. Practicing more self care because self care is an intentional activity that we do to take care of our own mental health, well-being and it also encourages a more balanced life.

4. Exercising which puts me in a better head space. 

5. Meditation is the secret key to inner peace, it allows you to silence your mind, become aware of your thoughts, detach yourself from your thoughts and connect to your inner sanctuary.

6. Developing a healthy mindset. 

You need to stop looking at someone else's success and resent them for it, because it will only hold you back. Instead of focusing on what you don't have - focus on what you can do today - to improve your own life. So how do you actually train your brain to give up bad mental habits?

Well you need to actively change those negative habits to more healthier ones. You need to sit with yourself and be honest with yourself. If you are overweight and unhealthy, stop sugar coating your situation, if you are guilty of self sabotage, stop finding excuses on why not to start and if you don't feel good about yourself - look in the mirror and identify what you honestly don't like and choose in that moment, to change it. We are uncomfortable with our own feelings, so we basically go to great lengths to avoid that discomfort. We compare ourselves to others and we think that we are either less than them or better than them and we also think that we can control how other people behave or treat us. Only compare yourself to the person that you were yesterday, every day when you wake up - choose to be better, not for anyone else, but for you. Our own choices hold us back. You are your own worst enemy, no one else is holding you back but you. You need to really confront yourself and be honest with yourself and stop holding yourself back. Through pain and suffering is where real growth happens. Growth does not happen within your comfort zone. 

I really had to pull myself together from a really challenging time in my life, starting with nothing, I had to work an array of jobs to support myself and I am so proud of the mindset I have developed from my own personal struggles. I need to constantly work on my mindset everyday, some day it is not easy but because I want to focus on my own happiness and I want to be happy and fulfilled in life, I put in the work to achieve what I want and I will continue to build on strengthening my mental strength. There is no other option than to not give up in life. You have to keep going and you are not alone. I believe that being open and honest about your insecurities and challenges that you face in life is so important because if we focus on the reasons why we are not good enough, we will never have the opportunity to grow into the person we want to be. 

So trust yourself, truly believe in yourself and focus on your own happiness, focus on becoming stronger mentally so that when you need to tap into that strength, you are ready. 

I really hope this episode has inspired you, sometimes I can be slightly afraid to open up, because I fear judgement from others however it is so important to shift the narrative from seeing vulnerability as weakness to seeing it as a strength. You may not know who you can help through your own story. 

I wish everyone an amazing week! feel free to hang out with me next week Wednesday on HAPPY DAYS!! 

I love you all.

Goodbye.