Does outlook equal outcome?

I was sitting in the waiting room of a Doctor’s office, flipping through the pages of a Healthy Lifestyles magazine, and I came across an article about self-empathy. It caught my eye so I started to read it, the basic concept of the article is to keep bad thoughts out of your mind. In other words, it’s ok to tell yourself that it’s ok to fail at something, to feel sorry about the outcome of something, to not beat yourself up. It goes on to talk about how constantly being hard on ourselves actually creates unnecessary stress, tension, anxiety, and depression. I sat there thinking about the most recent times in my life that I felt overwhelmed, lethargic, and completely stressed and I realized that in those moments I wasn’t telling myself that I would overcome these hurdles.

Recently I have been working through a few things and have found it hard to keep my head up and be positive all the time. While the details are not important, because we all go through times like these, how I handled the situations is important.. In the beginning, when I started feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how I would get through, daily tasks became obsessively hard to complete. Doing the dishes may have been equal to building a house, cooking a simple dinner was like making Thanksgiving supper for a family of 12. Every part of my day seemed to require an immense amount of energy and I didn't have enough to get through the day. But, as I continued to keep pushing and not allowing myself to sit down and to start the self loathing process, I found that my energy level slowly raised every day. I found that my attitude, towards life, work, and the stressor got slightly better everyday. As my attitude improved so did my outlook. Instead of waiting for the next set back or dreading a simple task, I started looking forward to the next day. I started to want to get active again and fill my time with experiences instead of television. I started to feel happy again.

The article in the magazine wasn’t the advice I needed to get back on track, but it was exactly what I needed to understand HOW I got back on track. Understanding how negative self perceptions actually creates a tougher environment to work through was a big revelation. I grew up being told to “deal with it” or “man up” and through those moments I learned that I could survive the tough times and come out stronger on the other side, but what if I was doing it wrong?

What if creating a more understanding self outlook would have allowed for a quicker recovery?

What if accepting my shortcomings and learning how to work around them instead of pushing through them I would have become a better problem solver?

There is a whole list of what if’s I could continue with, but I think you understand where I am coming from.

While I won’t continue to look at my previous mental barricades I placed in front of myself, I will remember the next time I am dealing with a tough situation or shortcoming to tell myself it’s ok to fail as long as I learn from it and attack the problem from a different angle and to do it with a damn smile on my face!