It happens to everyone, sometimes in life you just feel stuck. Nothing seems to work and it all feels like it’s your fault or like the world is conspiring against you. It’s like you’re stuck at red light, after red light, after red light. You just wish you knew how to feel good about yourself and your life so you can finally leave the past in the past.

Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness can show up any time in your life, but they can be commonplace during a break-up. The problem is, it can be difficult to take action when you feel this way. You end up telling yourself that you’ll do what you need to do when you feel better.

Unfortunately you won’t magically feel better one day. And nothing is going to change until you do something different.

If you waited until you felt better you may never take the necessary actions to create a better life. The reality is you have to take action first and that will change your mental/emotional state.

It’s backwards thinking to imagine you’ll just feel better one day. Instead take action and you will then feel better.

Life is full of challenges and there is nothing you can do to avoid them. But you can approach them in a way that leaves you feeling empowered.

In order to stop obsessing over past events (whether it was yesterday or decades ago) and move on don’t wait until you feel better. Take these 5 actions today and you’ll feel better right away.

How to feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past:

1. Find gratitude for all the bad things that have happened.

Q. Why do bad things happen to good people?

A. To make them better.

You don’t change when times are good. You grow when you struggle against something. Just like you need resistance to build muscle, you need resistance to overcome your negative programming.

That resistance shows up in the form of challenges and struggles in your life.

How would your life change if you looked at all the bad things that have happened to you as your spiritual training on how to become a better person?

Can you look back over your past and find the Golden Nugget of learning that will allow you to finally feel grateful for what you went through?

Feeling bitter about your struggles will only keep you stuck in them, suck away your happiness, and foster a feeling of hopelessness about things ever changing for the better.

See if you can find some wiggle room in your emotional life. Stretch to find the love in your failures, or foster a feeling of love for the person who hurt you, or for the obstacle blocking your path will allow you to find the spiritual lessons in your difficulties.

This practice will change your life. You can start with the small things, the tiny daily frustrations you experience and then work your way up to the bigger things like heartbreaks and soul crushing disappointments.

The ability to find gratitude in your difficulties makes you more resilient and able to overcome anything that comes your way.

2. Forgive yourself, forgive others, and move on

If gratitude is the first step towards lasting happiness then forgiveness is the second.

A well-known saying of The Buddha is, “Holding onto anger and resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Ultimately forgiveness is for you. Practicing forgiveness will free you from the energetic dance you’ve been doing with the people who have wronged you.

Forgive but don’t forget. Forgetting leaves you open to being hurt or being taken advantage of again. You can always reevaluate, but it’s detrimental to allow a toxic person back into your life.

Forgiveness allows you to free yourself and move on with your life.

Without forgiveness, you are energetically stuck in the past and still connected to the person who hurt you.

You could imagine that there are strings and ropes of energy keeping you connected to each person and event that you are still holding onto. This energetic network holds you back from moving forward in your life. It’s like trying to drive forward while pressing on the gas and the brake at the same time.

Forgiveness is the tool that allows you to get unstuck, freeing you from people and events that poison your soul and damage your well-being.

3. Honor and value yourself by speaking authentically

What is your relationship to your emotions?

Do you ignore them and put your focus only on the positive?

Do they build up inside of you until you can’t take it anymore and explode like a volcano?

Or are you so disconnected from them that it would be difficult to identify what you are feeling in this moment?

You are here in human form to experience the full range of human emotions – positive, negative, and everything in between. When you are disconnected from your emotional life, you are disconnected from yourself.

Your emotions are momentary however they are important because they are valuable information.

When you are in touch with your emotions you are connected to yourself and grounded in your body.

Being able to identify what you’re feeling allows you to then speak up and share your feelings which is how you can create emotional intimacy with another person.

In our modern world our intellect is prized and our emotions are all too often discounted. The only way to connect with others and create a deep meaningful bond is to share how you feel.

Speaking how you feel is like sending out invitations to a party. Some people will be able to meet you at that high vibration and some will not be available to attend your authenticity party.

Whether or not the other person is able to attend is not a reflection on you, it is information about the other person.

Speaking how you feel is also how you honor and value yourself. You’re saying that you count and you matter when you share how you feel.

The bottom line is when you speak how you feel and are authentic you will feel better.

4. Laugh your past troubles away

Troubling memories can haunt us and leave us feeling like we are re-experiencing the situation all over again. Being able to transform your memories of troubling events gets you back in your power and connected to the present moment.

You may think that your memories are accurate recollections of what actually happened, but your memories are colored by your emotional state. You can reclaim the power of your past by transforming your emotional connection to past events.

Your memories are malleable. The plot points of the past are not changeable, however, the meanings that you assigned to those past events are quite easy to adjust.

Use this laughter technique to lighten the load of your past and reclaim the present moment.

Because emotions trigger chemicals to flood the body, faking an emotion does the same thing.

Fake laughing will give you the benefits of real laughter so get ready to fake it until you make it!

There are 3 sounds that make a laugh: Ho, Ha, and He. Rotating them 3 at a time will give you something easy to work with. Place your hands on your low belly and focus on taking breath into that low place where your hands are resting and then begin to fake laugh:

Ha Ha Ha!

Ho Ho Ho!

He He He!

After a short amount of time, you’ll find that you’re actually laughing. It’s infectious and contagious. So once you have a good laugh going speak the horrible event/memory out-loud while laughing hysterically.

It may take some getting used to (just like learning to do anything) practice makes perfect. Practice re-telling your old stories like they are the most hilarious events you can think of and you’ll no longer be haunted by the past.

5. Focus on progress, not perfection

As long as you are striving to move forward in your life, learning from your past mistakes, and making corrections along the way, you are a success.

Don’t let some mythical idea of perfection get in the way of you celebrating all of the small, medium, and large successes on your journey. Perfectionism, or even the striving for perfectionism, chips away at your happiness as you are forever falling short.

On a day when you are feeling good about yourself, get a notebook and write down your major life successes. Refer to this list on the days when you’re feeling blue about you.

Each night remind yourself of what you did accomplish and leave what hasn’t been finished for another day. Beating yourself up because there is more to do will leave you feeling exhausted and facing the next day with an empty gas tank. Instead, focus on filling your tank by acknowledging what you did succeed at.

We love the analogy of a garden, and we love to garden and grow organic vegetables. A truth that any gardener knows is that the garden is never complete. There is always something more to do and as the seasons change, the garden becomes something new.

You’ll never be done weeding or watering or even harvesting your hard work. Just like a garden, you are not a finished product nor will you ever be. Allow yourself to flow with the seasons of your life, finding acceptance for what is and the love for your journey.

Knowing how to feel good about yourself and leaving the past behind you gets you back in your power to create the life and love you desire.

We would love to guide you on your journey to long-lasting, soul-satisfying love. If you would like to directly connect with us about your current season in life and how to move towards sharing your life with your beloved, apply for a Soulmate Strategy Session with us by clicking here and booking time in our calendar.

We are here to be your guides to long-lasting love!