It must have looked ridiculous with a title advocating one not to listen to oneself. Allow me to explain. It is not easy to do this, I can guarantee you. All of us think, reminiscent and even tries to predict future events based on what we have learned in the past. While this can be useful at times, most of the time, the little voice in our head can sometimes become a hurdle in the way we want to live our lives. It would be great if the little voice does not bombard us constantly in our head (we sometimes call this little voice – experience, conscience, fear or worry).
If we take time to listen to the things that we tell ourselves, we will know that we spent well too much time pondering about things that we have no control of, such as what has happened in the past or what would happen in the future. We allow these thoughts to stop us in our tracks and not able to move forward to where we need to be. We do not live in the moment when we are too preoccupied in our thoughts. We, instead, will look at ways to avoid uncomfortable and annoying thoughts by running away or suppressing them. But we all know those thoughts and feelings will come back again and again.
Learn to embrace the good, bad and ugly. It is when we learn to accept the things that happened in our lives that we can pick up and get on with life. It sounds easy but in reality, we, as creatures of habit, like to revert to our comfortable ways. To gain perspective of the situations we are in, we need to take a step back. In doing so, we will begin to see how we are affected by the circumstances and what we can do next to move forward.
To live our lives with purpose and value, we need to understand that it is a process. The peculiarities of life are that we will always face unexpected situations, it is our determination not to be dragged under but be above them that will enable us to be true to ourselves.
The road to living a valued life is with obstacles, I can guarantee. There is no shame to be defeated along the way. We all need to be able to show compassion towards ourselves (this is different from self-pity). Failures can only help to strengthen our determination to achieve what we set out to do. Live life with purpose.