Adverse life events are stressful, and you need to face it honestly. These life-altering events can be part of your journey; and like any journey, it has its share of good and bad experiences. While at the bottom, you’ll learn a lot of things and understand that the choices you made weren’t sustainable. It’s at this moment that you declare not to accept this kind of mediocrity from you.
At the bottom, you’ll finally see your dysfunctional behaviour. From there, you’ll realise that you need to build your life on an honest foundation, instead of big fat lie. But after the crash, you need to start a new life. Even if you thought that it’s the end, it’s not. Life will always go on: resilience has the ability to protect an individual against development of psychopathology following future adverse life events.
Move on
As the saying goes, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ All of us have to experience misfortune before we can reach success in life. As part of moving on from your old life, you might want to consider moving to a new place.
If you’ve hit the lowest point of your life because of your health and unhealthy habits, you should consider living in one of the cities that are perfect for living a healthy and balanced life. These towns can offer plenty of ways for you to change your lifestyle. Move to a city that encourages more physical activity and better health and food choices.
Start a new healthy habit
When starting a new life, you need to make some changes. Sometimes, we need change, and we have to embrace it. After moving to a new city that encourages a healthy lifestyle, it’ll be easier for you to begin developing healthy habits, like drinking tea, instead of alcohol. You can also start walking or biking, rather than drive your car.
Instead of binge-watching every weekend, try to meet new people, who can boost your confidence into starting a new, healthy life. But before you can start a new healthy habit, you need to find yourself first. You must know what you want to do with this life. When you know it, you can easily start enjoying life. Dismiss all the bad things in life and embrace all of the good things that the world has to offer.
Try to accomplish small tasks each day
Most of us hit rock bottom because we’re no longer happy with our lives. That’s why, if you wish to start a new life, make sure to begin doing things that can provide you happiness. But don’t focus on the big picture. Instead, look into the small things in your life that can help you cultivate better rituals and habits. For example, you can try meditation. It doesn’t matter how long you meditate each day.
Another way to cultivate more happiness in your life is to find support from your friends and family. Your problems may seem to be too much to bear when you face them on your own. That’s why you need your friends’ or family’s help for support. Because they love and care about you, they can lend you a helping hand so you can have a shoulder to cry on, should you need it.
Set realistic goals
One of the reasons of hitting the lowest point of your life is that you’ve set unrealistic goals, which can jeopardise our work-life balance. For example, in losing weight, you might want to achieve fitting into a small size but it’s not realistic for you. But you must remember that losing just 10% of your body weight is already an improvement to your health. Losing small amount of weight can boost your overall health, like lowering your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and blood sugar.
That said, it’s always ideal to set your goals that are attainable. Aim to lose at least a pound of weight each week. Remember that slow and steady always wins. Just like in other areas of your life, you must always set goals that you can attain. Don’t force yourself to achieve things fast.
As mentioned earlier, as you go slow but steady, you’ll win the race. Learn new habits that can last a lifetime.
Give yourself a pat in the back
To motivate yourself towards achieving a goal, you must reward yourself when you reach your mini goals. If your goal is to stop drinking because that’s the reason you’ve hit rock bottom, you need to congratulate yourself after not drinking for a week. When you fall off the wagon, don’t berate yourself. Understand that slip-ups can happen. When they do, make sure to get right back on your track.
Recognising and honouring resilience is one of the key factors in recovery. Resilience lives in the trauma wound and it can’t be fully recognised unless the suffering that caused the wound is embraced.
Dennis Relojo-Howell is the founder of Psychreg. He writes for the American Psychological Association and has a weekly column for Free Malaysia Today.
