Get Better

Have you ever been in a situation where someone perhaps criticized you, or maybe unfairly labelled you, verbally abused you, or basically provoked you in some way? A time where you have entered into an argument or disagreement? I think we all have, quite often in fact. There's so many people in this world who love to take their frustrations and anger that they are experiencing in their own life, out on others. That constant build up of stress, anxiety, pressure, and expectations, courtesy of the fast paced and demanding world we live in, quite often takes its toll on most people. It's made worse by the fact that happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, and goals accomplishment, is continually absent in their life. The truth is, they are to blame for their own unhappiness and failures, as a result of their inability to change, and take action, but they don't see it that way. They like to shift blame on external things, including other people. That's a story for another day though. When you're in one of these moments in which you're being criticized, labelled, ridiculed, verbally abused, provoked, and argued against, how often does your blood boil to the point where you just can't stay tight lipped no longer, and you react in fury? You simply refuse to idly sit by and listen to others having the freedom to be criticizing and verbally abusing you, so you stand up, defend yourself, and you fire some criticism and verbal abuse back at them. Such is the anger and frustration that they have fueled within you, you don't hold back with words, and you start bringing up past things perhaps, or you start getting personal, or you start becoming downright nasty yourself. You feel this release of tension and anger within you, that perhaps has also been building up from circumstances you're perhaps going through, so it feels good in the moment. Even in the days following the argument or disagreement, the vision of that moment swirls in your head, and you continually think about all the things you should have said instead, maybe to inflict more emotional pain back on them? Then as more time passes by, you continue reflecting back on that moment, and you start to realize how immature you actually were, how poorly you reacted, how you allowed someone to provoke you so easily, and how you ended up lowering your colors.

Hopefully, you are someone who has the emotional control and maturity to resist engaging in such arguments, disagreements, and provocation. If you have the strength to not react to such circumstances, I fully commend you, because it's extremely hard to do, especially on a consistent basis. As for myself, well I can't lie, I have been a sucker for reacting rather than breathing deeply and disengaging, especially over the past decade. I have too easily allowed people to get under my skin, and I have reacted in anger in defending myself. I am disappointed with myself, because I never was someone who was filled with anger, nor did I regular react with such fury. Having lived 15+ years of my adult life feeling unsatisfied with my career, unaccomplished in chasing my goals, and feeling unfulfilled with my life in general, I reached a point where I started becoming depressed and frustrated. I became quick to anger, and basically grew tired of people treading all over me in life. I made some changes to my life, but it took me another 7 years after I was diagnosed with depression before I started investing time into personal development and strengthening my mindset. I knew that I had to get better as a person, it was as simple as that. When we talk about personal development and betterment, we often talk about increasing our self-awareness, discovering and developing our skills and talent, in order to reach our full potential. We know it's about mindset training, but when we talk about betterment, it's not just about bettering our thought process, our skills, and our talents, but it's also about bettering our character, attitude, and behavior.

Like anything, strengthening and training our mind takes a lot of time to perfect. There are going to be times when we let our guard down, and we fall prey to those who provoke and antagonize us, reacting rather than restraining ourselves. We are human after all. What matters is that we continue to have the determination, and be maintaining the focus on becoming a better version of ourselves. By reacting, we know that we are only sinking to the level of those who do criticize us, provoke us, and verbally abuse us, especially when we know what they are saying is unwarranted and even untrue, but we also know that we are better than that. As we start to invest more time into training and strengthening our mind, the first behavior we will start to adopt is awareness. Each time we react, rather than show restraint, it's like a little voice screams in our head to say "hey, resist this crap, it's not worth it, you're better than this". We start to become more aware of what we are doing, and how we are reacting and responding. The simple rule is, we cannot change something if we are not aware of it in the first place. Over time, as we start to get better in having the awareness of the present moment, and the situation at hand, we then have the ability to better handle the situation. The strengthening of our awareness then leads to the strengthening of our emotional control and our resistance. We recognize the situation, and we understand that we need not engage in a disagreement or verbal stoush, but to simply remain calm, disengage, and walk away. Sounds easy, hey? When you have someone in your face screaming all this criticism, nastiness, and mistruths, about you, only to not defend yourself, accept it, and walk away, it feels like you're walking away the loser of a battle. Or even someone messaging on the phone, ranting and raving about you, only for you to not reply to the message. The truth is, you're walking away a huge victor.

What makes it harder is, those who love to unload all their anger and frustrations on us, and who go about criticizing, ridiculing, and verbally abusing us, they don't give up easily. They will continue to provoke and antagonize, until they get a response. They keep reeling off different criticisms and hurtful comments until they discover that sore point. What I mean by that sore point is, they seek for something that they know will offend us greatly, or something that is emotionally painful for us, or that is dear to our heart, and they will use it to ensure that we do cave in to engaging in a dispute with them. The moment we succumb to their provocation, becomes the moment we degrade ourselves, and we do become the loser. They use us as a pawn to release their anger and frustrations, but by resisting the temptation of engaging in that verbal stoush with them, we are denying them that opportunity. Part of getting better as a person includes being more positive minded. In order for life to deliver us more positive results and outcomes, we need to be generating that positivity. When we allow those who antagonize us to get under our skin, we also allow our mind to switch from positive to negative. Only negative results and regrets ever come from a negative mindset. I can certainly vouch for that, because the number of times I have let fly due to having reacted to the person, rather than having restrained myself, I only have ended up regretting some of the things I said, but worst of all, I feel annoyed at myself for giving in to exactly the response they wanted from me.

When we talk of betterment for ourselves, I could reel off a huge list of different behaviors, actions, and attitudes, that could we be doing. It could be about committing to being more kind to others, more generous, more compassionate, more appreciative, more dedicated, more healthy, more understanding, less lazy, more communicative, more sociable, and so on, and so forth. The list is pretty much endless of what we can do to better ourselves. We each know within ourselves of the habits we need to break, and the actions we need to do, in order to better ourselves. Take a moment to think of the variety of behaviors, morals, and values, you possess. That's where it all starts. How do you converse with others? How do you associate with others? How do you treat others? We can talk as much as we like about identifying our goals, working on the actions to achieve our goals, creating success, discovering happiness, achieving wealth, and be focusing on all the rewards that life has to offer us, but there is no benefit to any of these rewards if we don't possess the right attitude, behaviors, and values. If we treat others with disrespect and arrogance, we achieve nothing! How we treat others, and how we respond to others, defines our character. We know there are individuals out there who are angry and frustrated with life, yearning for an outlet to release all that negative emotion, and we are going to face moments that we become that outlet. We don't have to agree with their criticism of us, or the verbal abuse they throw our way, but we should have the emotional control to avoid reacting in the same manner, as we are only bringing ourselves down with them. If you don't yet have that emotional control, then, like me, invest time into working on your mindset. Disengage, walk away, smile, and remain silent. We should always be seeking to be helping others, not hurting others. Don't allow others to drag you out of a positive mindset, and instead just focus on continually bettering yourself as a person. The greatest success you can achieve in life is having your character defined by possessing righteous values, morals, and behaviors.

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