“Transforming Your Life Story: How to Rewrite Your Narrative and Embrace Empowerment”

Life is a journey filled with twists, turns, and unexpected detours. We all have moments of pain and struggle. Moments when we feel trapped in a cycle of dwelling on the past and feeling powerless over circumstances.

The key to improving the situation lies in transforming life and this begins with changing the narrative we tell ourselves. The concept of “Rewrite Your Story” has been a powerful tool in reclaiming control of your life. Here are some ways to initiate this transformative process:

Embrace Your Story: Taking ownership of your story empowers you to shape the person you aspire to become. You hold the authority to choose which opinions are worth considering.

Name Your Story: Assigning an encouraging name to your story can positively influence your perspective and approach to life.

Turn the Page: Life is composed of multiple stages or chapters, and even if some have been challenging, you possess the advantage of starting anew and embracing change as you move forward.

Choose Your Supporting Characters: While you are the main character in your story, you also need supportive figures, some from past chapters and others you can introduce. Selecting empowering people in your life enables you to redefine your goals and take decisive action.

Act to Transform Your Life: Understand that challenges and setbacks are integral parts of your life story, an ongoing narrative. Embrace change as an opportunity and recognize that despite past events, the future remains well within your control.

Take Small Steps: Breaking larger goals into smaller, manageable steps allows you to celebrate each milestone achieved, keeping you motivated and reinforcing your progress.

Seek Professional Help: If you find yourself struggling to break free from a negative mindset, considering the guidance and support of a therapist or counselor can facilitate your journey of change.

By rewriting your story, you can pave the way for a more fulfilling and empowered future.

Dealing with rejections :Building Confidence

We all experience rejection either from our parents, family,peers or employees. When you’ve experienced a hard rejection in your past, you may start to believe on some deep level that you are unlovable or unworthy. 

This is what cognitive therapists call a “core belief,” psychotherapist Erin Brandel Dykhuizen, says “Often when we have experienced a lot of rejection in childhood, we develop beliefs about not being worthy of love as a way to make sense of the fact that our parents, for example, who should have accepted us and shown us love, did not do so,”.

More often than not, people aren’t consciously aware that they have these beliefs. But if you take a close look at your behaviour, your thoughts, and your patterns in relationships, you may be able to trace those back to childhood

Developing more effective responses to rejection is an important life skill.These are few ways in which you can start –

1. Self-confidence is key– Feeling of being worthless or useless that may have been ingrained since childhood gets carried over into adulthood and other relationships. Start small to build it back by simply making a list every day with at least two or three things you have done well, contributions you have made, or positive things you have done and review them before you go to bed each night and again when you get up the next morning.
2. Change to positive self-talk. Notice what you say to yourself and choose to build yourself up, not tear yourself down. Start small by doing positive self talk while walking, taking bath or writing.
3. Remember, this too shall pass – Time changes this tough time will pass mean while give yourself credit for your skills and accomplishments, and remind yourself of all those experiences when you made good progress, solved a problem or helped someone. 
4. Take a deep breath– Take a deep breath, step back from the situation, and just breathe for a few minutes and  focus on present.
5. Practice reframing –Many times a situation seems worse because you react and then “frame it” as a negative about you. Instead, Choose to reframe it. Instead of thinking, “No one will ever love me, I’m unlovable,” you could reframe by thinking, “Relationships are hard for everyone; I’m no different. This was hard for me but I can learn something from it. Let me focus on what I can learn.”
6. Let it go – It’s okay to feel upset about rejection. After all, you are human and you have emotional responses. Let the emotions roll through you as you keep focusing on your breathing out. but don’t let them park and become long-term visitors.
7. Reconnecting with those who love us, or reaching out to members of groups to which we feel strong affinity and who value and accept us.The fact that a large portion of human emotion is devoted to the maintenance of interpersonal connections points to the importance of acceptance and belonging in human affairs. 

People are inherently motivated to be valued and accepted by other people, and many of the emotions that they experience reflect these fundamental interpersonal concerns.

Our mental health should be our priority and at the same time we must be supportive of other people battling with a similar condition.

For further guidance and assistance contact us at

https://www.metanoiathepositivemind.com/

Rejection Impacts

At sometime in our lives, we all face rejection.Everyone hates to be rejected or to be turned down, but then it is a fact of life .Not all the time everything will go as per our wishes and expectation.

Rejection in one or the other way will happen, from ostracism on the playground to romantic rejection, bullying at work, and social disregard for the aged, individuals are at constant risk of experiencing instances of social exclusion, dehumanisation, and discrimination.

Contemporary social psychologists study rejection in an array of forms and contexts. Rejection may be active or passive and involve physical or psychological distancing or exclusion. For example, individuals may be actively rejected when others voice negative views of them or tell them that their presence is not wanted.

In comparison, individuals may be passively rejected when others pay little attention to them or ignore them altogether (e.g., the silent treatment). Physical exclusion from a group elicits feelings of rejection in most circumstances (e.g., when an individual is purposefully left out), and psychological exclusion (e.g., when one’s opinions are discounted or ignored) is also experienced as a rejection.

From school shootings to domestic violence, from cognitive impairment to suicide attempts, the negative impact of social exclusion has been widely  documented.

These phenomena really hurts and have a powerful impact as testified by their immediate influence on people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

Sometimes it can also inflict severe/intense damage to our psychological well-being that goes beyond emotional pain.

Here are some ways that describe the effects rejection has on our emotions, thinking and behaviour.

1. Self Doubt – We often respond by starting to  find faults in ourselves ,be mourning all our inadequacies, kicking ourselves when we’re already down.
2. Low Self esteem – Blaming ourselves and attacking our self-worth only deepens the emotional pain we feel and makes it harder for us to recover emotionally.
3. Thinking clearly becomes difficult- Rejection temporarily lowers our IQ. Being asked to recall a recent rejection experience and relive the experience is enough to cause people to score significantly lower on subsequent IQ tests, tests of short–term memory, and tests of decision making.
4. Rejection does not respond to reason. Emotional upheaval is so strong that the reason makes no sense and usually the reactions are emotionally driven and regretted later.
5. Rejection destabilise– our “Need to Belong.” We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group. When we are rejected the feeling of being outcasted tends to add to the emotional pain.

There are ways to treat the psychological wounds rejection inflicts. It is possible to treat the emotional pain rejection elicits and to prevent the psychological, emotional, cognitive, and relationship fallouts that occur in its aftermath.

To do so effectively we must address each of our psychological wounds (i.e., soothe our emotional pain, reduce our anger and aggression, protect our self-esteem, and stabilize our need to belong).

I will be sharing tips on these in my next blog posts. Comment on what would you want me to cover in my next posts.

 

Shift your mind..change your life

Speak Up ..Reach out for help..

(If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist.) You can also contact us @metanoia the positive mind

Everyone is shocked and sad after hearing the news of sudden demise of Sushant Singh Rajput who has been an inspiration for many. There have been lots of speculation and debates regarding the reason behind his untimely death.

We are no one to judge and dissect his life and personality but one thing is for sure these incidents /cases are on rise and cause of concern.

As per WHO, depression and suicide are on rise and according to a report by WHO 6.5 % of the Indian population suffer from some or the other mental disorders. Majority of the people who commit suicide are below 45years.  

While we have come a long way with regards to openly talking about mental health. It still remains stigma among many. We live in a world where people still think that mental health is not a very serious matter.

But it is that we give equal importance to mental and physical health especially as we are faced with new realities of working from home, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with other family members, friends and colleagues.

Being fearful and anxious is normal during hard times.We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t anxious or afraid. It would be unrealistic to expect yourself to stay calm 100% of the time.

With the challenges of going through so many upheavals can be stressful and emotionally draining.

When you catch yourself anxious, fearful and stressed there are plenty of ways to help you stay calm.

Here are a few coping strategies to try .

1.Deep breathing – One of the easiest ways to manage stress, no matter where you are or what time it is. Breathe in deeply  through your nose and out through your mouth, holding each inward and outward breath for 5 seconds. Repeat for 3 to 5 minute.

2. Exercise –  Thirty minutes of exercise a day is good for mood and overall health. If that feels like too much right now, aim to go for a walk every other day, or stretch for few minutes each morning.

3. Get into positive Journaling – every day write down things that are positive in your life.

4.Make time for yourself– It can be a simple thing as enjoying your tea or watching your favourite show. Taking time out for self and engaging in self care helps to destress.

5. Use your support network – remember you are not alone in this.communicate with friends, family and people who are positive and empathetic.

6. Seek for help – Sometimes self help strategies aren’t enough to control or significantly reduce your stress level if that’s the case there are mental health professional who you can reach out to.

Our mental health should be our priority but at the same time, we must be supportive of other people battling with a similar condition.

*****************Aim is to reach out and help**********************

Please Share if you agree so that we can reach out to those who need help.

Smita Misra

National Award winner counsellor and Psychotherapist

REBT and NLP expert

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