This week, to attain, maintain or regain your sense of wellbeing...
...practice finding a useful lesson in your daily experiences, particularly things that are distressing, stressful or downright regrettable. This exercise is about reminding yourself of two things: firstly, you can create the meaning of the things in your life, and secondly, mistakes are a necessary part of evolving.
Often we dwell on the aspects of experience that could have been better and increase our own distress. Instead of doing that, you can learn something about the strengths you want to develop, how other people see things and how to cope. You will create meanings that boost you up or strengthen you for the future instead of ones that pull you down. Simply being able to survive some things is a lesson about your own resilience, which will serve you well into the future.
This is about accepting the things that you can and cannot change and making sure that what you carry with you from your experiences is something worth carrying.
Learn to do this by taking some time out to either write in a journal or think about something positive you can take away from the experiences you had each day. You could also talk through the experience and what to take from it with a therapist, trusted friend or whanau member.
This contemplation is a respectful time in which you are your own kind-hearted teacher.
Once you are comfortable thinking about the meaningful, useful lessons you can take from daily situations, add it to your Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for coping with the things that go wrong in your life.
