The Universe is Helping Us
Lately, or more precisely — I caught myself in a vicious habit that somehow depressed me. I beat myself up; I got a limited vision of what I was experiencing in Life and turned everything towards myself. The cycle is like this: “If something bad happens, it must be because I am bad.”
So I am always frightened about what the future holds for me. I always expect bad things will happen to me, and I can’t enjoy the present moments. I don’t even believe that I deserve good things; that universe is harsh, unsafe, and cruel. The vicious thoughts and cycles diminish my joy and make me unhappy. They took all of my happiness, fed it to me, and I let them become self-fulfilling.
So for the past few months, when I caught myself in this habit, I always feel like it was impossible to escape. I started to see every problem as a personal failure, every challenge as something I am incapable of overcoming.
It took me a lot of counseling therapy and loads of struggles to be at this point in Life. I realized that to get past my worst habits and find success and happiness again — is simply recognizing that I am more than my habits. To be honest with myself, to have this deep self-awareness, and to look deep within me that this is something I should change is not healthy, and this doesn’t seem right.
It’s safe to say that I have pretty good self-awareness (p.s: it took me ages to believe this good quality of myself and say it out loud!), and I am so grateful to have this ability. I pay attention to every detail, like to process things, and want to get to know what I’m feeling. Why? Because I found that that’s the only way for me to get in touch with myself and evolve as a human being.
I like to read Self-Help/Development books, and I think most of the books I own is this genre. I also like to watch TED talks, read people’s answers on Quora, and read some related articles on Medium. And I have no idea why these things that I read or watch somehow have this sentence:
- “Rewrite your story.”
- “Life journey is not a linear”
- “There are life rules/idealism that are outdated.”
I wasn’t aware until these words caught my attention. Then I began to think that this might be worth considering. Lately, in my founding, I started to believe that the universe is always helping us by simply giving us signs. What we need to ask ourselves, though, however, are we paying attention? Are we even aware of it?
Now that this caught my attention, I googled this concept and found this beautiful quote:
“The Universe is giving you signs every day, in your sleep, on your timeline, in your conversations, on the radio, in the cloud, in epiphanies. Pay attention to them and peace them together. You will notice a pattern. The Universe is communication with you” — Pinterest The Age of Enlightenment.
So now that I realized those 3 points, I began to think and committed myself:
- I stopped beating up and turning everything when bad things happened to me towards myself.
- I re-set my mind that Life will always knock me down, that it will show me things I never wanted to see or experience, but one thing I have to know is that I can always get up.
- I began to practice “Rewriting my life story”.
The effect? It’s amazing. For the first time in my Life, I have finally been able to feel the present moment, be grateful for what I have, and become calmer as a person. I finally have peace with myself, and it’s so heart-warming.
Somehow, I feel happier. I became more compassionate to myself, and when bad things happened, I hugged myself and tried to think from a different point of view instead of beating myself up. I began to process things more healthily and realistic without being subjective to myself. The key, though, is honesty. Be honest about what I feel, admit what I feel, and be solution-minded. If I am not happy, I’d think, what can I do to make things better? If there are things I can do, I will do them. If not, I’ll accept and let myself be sad, upset, angry, or anything.
But don’t get me wrong, doing all these doesn’t mean I resolve this misery; I think this vicious cycle is something everyone is experiencing. For sure, from time to time, in different cases, I still slipped, unconsciously beating myself up — but that’s OK. It’s all about the process. At least I realized this, and I am working on it to get better, feel better, and cope with it.
One last thing that I want to put here is that:
It’s not about how you can erase the bad habits within you, because maybe it won’t disappear. This tendency might always be there, and that’s OK. What’s more important is you are aware of it so you can begin on how you cope with it.
I don’t have the lists of Articles and TED Talks because I watched and read them randomly, but recently (like a few hours ago), I watched this TED talk:
I want to rewrite the lessons and tips from Bruce Feiler in his talk:
Lesson 1. The linear Life is dead.
The idea that we will have one job, one relationship, and one source of happiness from adolescence to assisted living is hopelessly outdated.
Lesson 2. The non-linear Life involves many more life transitions.
What causes so much anxiety is that we still expect our life quakes to unfold on a predictable timetable, like birthdays that end in zero. We’re all still haunted by the ghost of linearity. We think our Life will be linear; we’re unnerved when it’s not. We’re comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.
Lesson 3. Life transitions are a skill we can and must master.
A collective involuntary life quake is a natural disaster or a recession. Every single one of us is in transition. And yet no one is teaching us how to master these times.
5 tips based on Bruce Feiler on how to master a life transition:
- Begin with your transition superpower.
- Accept your emotions
- Try Something New
- Seek wisdom from others
- Rewrite your life story
I hope that this article can help me when I’m trapped in the cycle and to everyone who’s reading this.
Take care until then,
X
