This year is your chance to be kind to yourself, practice gratitude, and live your life on purpose. Here are 5 habits you can proactively cultivate to embrace your past, learn from your mistakes, and bask in the triumph of just how tough you really are!
Have you ever said, “Starting in January, I will…”? In December, a lot of people throw in the towel for the year. They wait until January rolls around to find that renewed sense of purpose and focus, only to have it dwindle as the year goes on. Priorities shift, circumstances change, and life always seems to somehow get in the way.
In a world where emotions aren’t really taught in school, full of consumerism and competition, we’re constantly made to feel we are lacking and that we need to strive for more in order to achieve “true” happiness. But gratitude actually affects the brain at a neurological level. Being grateful increases the feel-good hormones dopamine and serotonin. In fact, just searching for things to be grateful for has this effect.
I’ve written about allowing yourself to sit in negative emotions. I have shared with you the importance of self-care. I speak for a living about proactively building resilience. But today…I want to talk about HOPE. There is a long-established, measurable science around hope. According to the research, high hope individuals do not react in the same way to barriers as low hope individuals, instead they view barriers as challenges to overcome.
Emotional Resilience Starts with Vulnerability In my TEDxTalk, I tell a story about a video I saw by Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski explaining how lobsters grow. When a lobster grows, its shell becomes constricting and uncomfortable. The shell doesn’t grow with the lobster, so in order to grow the lobster has to shed its shell to…