If you feel that your emotions dominate your life without you being able to do anything to avoid it, maybe you have to review some points of your emotional health. Don’t get it wrong: making space for your feelings, fighting for them and letting yourself be guided is very good. The point of someone emotionally healthy is that this does not cause problems in their day to day.
If, on the other hand, you feel that you cannot handle your emotions, and you permanently have the feeling of not owning yourself, there is a problem, which does not only have to do with feelings. The environment that surrounds you and the way in which you relate to it may be affecting your emotional health.
- You should know that being emotionally healthy is a decision.
It’s the same as deciding to be fit. It requires a little effort, exercising certain aspects and going on a “diet” of those things that don’t do you good.
If you get that balance, it’s the same as with the body: once you’ve gotten to where you want to be in a systematic and balanced way, it won’t be too hard to stay there.
There are many things you can start doing to be emotionally healthy. But there are also many that you should stop doing once and for all.
These are 8 of those things, and you will see how, if you manage to leave them little by little, you will feel much more emotionally strong.
1. Seek constant approval
People with good emotional health do not expect constant approval from others. Of course, we all like to know that what we do pleases others.
But if you want to be emotionally healthy, you must be convinced that the only opinion that counts for your life is your own. That of others always has to come second.
2. Letting others control your emotions
Along the same lines as the previous point, it is important that you know that many times, those negative emotions that you feel all the time are not yours: you are taking them from others.
That friend who uses you as a repository of all his problems. That toxic coworker who only reminds you how bad you do things. Even your parents, judging your decisions.
It is normal for what happens in our environment to affect us, but it is time for you to sit down and think to what extent you are going to leave your emotional health in the hands of others.
3. Distrust your abilities
The most important thing if you want to be emotionally healthy is to have full confidence in yourself. In what you are capable of doing, in your abilities and in the things that make you unique.
You have to know that what you have proposed may not come overnight. That will require your effort and above all, your conviction. Therefore, you must always be convinced that you are capable of doing it, even when difficulties arise.
4. Put yourself in the victim’s place
Many times we tend to victimize ourselves and blame others for our problems. Being emotionally healthy involves recognizing that you can’t control what’s outside of you, but you can control your attitude toward it.
That is to say: you decide how much what happens around you affects you. You are not a victim of what happens to you: you are the main actor in your life, and you always have the power to decide.
5. Always say yes
Just as you can decide how things affect you, logically, you have the power to decide about your person. You are the absolute owner of your times, your body and your life.
So if you want to be emotionally healthy, you have to know when to say yes, and when to say no. If you always say yes, the whole world becomes your master, leaving you no room to make your own decisions, because there will always be someone there demanding something from you.
6. Fear change
Fear is one of the worst feelings you can have. It is, perhaps, the emotion that most prevents us from moving forward and being better.
If you understand the change as a real opportunity to grow and improve your life, you will be able to benefit from it.
7. Wasting time
Come on, this does not mean that you should spend all day working. But people with healthy emotions spend most of their time doing the things that do them good, that help them get closer to where they want to be.
Wasting time means spending all day doing things that have nothing to do with you or your lifestyle, just because you think you should.
To be emotionally healthy, you need to give priority to everything that implies being better.
8. Believing that happiness “arrives” (without you moving)
Happiness comes, yes. But the mistake is to believe that it is something that comes alone. If you want to be emotionally healthy, the most important lesson you must learn is this: happiness is built day by day.
If you manage to understand that being well does not depend on anyone but you, you will be much closer to being exactly where you want.