11 Toxic Mental Habits That Crush Your Well-Being ⋆ Motivated Progress

You make many choices every day, and most of them are automatic. These are your habits. Some can be beneficial, but others will tear apart your mental health and make every day a struggle when it shouldn’t be.

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.”

— Brian Tracy

Furthermore, a healthy mindset is necessary to become successful and happy.

Keep reading to discover how to conquer the following disastrous mental habits.

1. Denying your habits

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.” — Benjamin Disraeli

Denying your problems in hopes that they’ll disappear over time is a terrible habit. While time does help to ease the pain, deep down, it still aches because it’s not solved.

Issues get worse, and they hold you back. You won’t know why you aren’t making progress. Denying bad habits will intensify them until they destroy your well-being.

2. Rumination habits

“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.” — Buddha

Dwelling on negative thoughts is dangerous to your well-being and confidence. Moreover, it can trap you in an endless, depressive cycle. Because every time you think these thoughts, the more ingrained they become. You don’t want that to happen.

So, when you can’t get something out of your head, try these tips to break free:

• What can you learn from this to become better in the future?
• Replace the rumination with thinking what you’re grateful for in your life.
• Identify the fear beneath these thoughts. What if this happened? How would you deal with it?
• Distract yourself. Call someone, exercise, listen to music, draw, play an instrument, clean, or take a walk.
• Remove the things that trigger you to ruminate.

You can overpower these repetitive thoughts with the above steps. So, don’t let rumination take over your mind. Be strict, and don’t allow it to continue. Nothing good comes from thinking about them unless you’re learning what not to do in the future, or desensitizing from them. If they keep showing up, consider talking to a therapist via Skype.

3. Disapproving of yourself

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.”

— Buddha

If you have a habit of talking down to yourself, you’re wrecking your confidence. We tend to believe our thoughts, but this is a mistake. Not all ideas are beneficial or accurate. So, it’s wise to question them for their validity.

If you allow yourself to believe that you’re a failure, then good luck ever succeeding. You’ll end up self-sabotaging and excusing yourself from trying anything. Instead, encourage yourself after you think something negative.

4. Comparing yourself to others

“Don’t let the best you have done so far be the standard for the rest of your life.”

— Gustavus F. Swift

A lot of people look to others to determine how well they’re doing in life. If some guy has an Audi and you have an old jalopy, you might feel like a failure even though that’s not true. Furthermore, they’ve probably been working for over a decade to get where they are. But you just started a few months ago.

As you can see, it doesn’t make sense to do this to yourself.

You need to realize that the person you’re comparing yourself to started at the bottom as well. Even if you both started on the same day, neither one of you knows what it was like to be the other person. So you’re not comparable. The best thing to do is to measure the progress you made from last week, month, or year.

5. Not managing your time

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

— Stephen Covey

Watching too much TV or wasting time on social media will steal away your potential. It’s okay to relax and watch a show now and then, but when it consumes all your time, it’s a dream killer. You’re procrastinating on the goals that you know would improve your life. Later, you’ll feel horrible about not doing what you needed to do-further, adding unnecessary stress to your life.

Whereas being productive will boost your mood, confidence, and improve your life. So, create a new habit of writing what you need to do the next day before you go to bed every night. Then in the morning, get to work on that list until you finish it.

6. Submitting to Fear

“Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.”

— Dale Carnegie

Fear will bring your progress to a screeching halt. It will trap you in your comfort zone for a lifetime. But, it doesn’t have to because you have the power to triumph over it!

Unless what you fear can hurt you physically or make you sick, then it’s best to do what scares you. Every day, push yourself a little bit towards doing what you fear.

Over time, you’ll start doing what you’ve been avoiding, and you’ll see that it wasn’t as bad as you thought! Then you do it again and again until you’ve demolished these worries. You can guarantee that you’ll also gain a healthy boost of self-respect and confidence too.

7. Holding on to shame

“Tough times never last, but tough people do!”

— Robert Schuller

Shame is one of the most detrimental habits. These embarrassing or shameful memories will pop up when you least expect them. They can trigger you to sabotage your goals.

Shame is not enjoyable to think about, yet we hold on to it. You don’t need to feel shameful about anything. Regardless of what happened or who told you otherwise, you are here for a reason. Never let painful events from the past make you believe that you’re less worthy than anyone.

I’m dead serious. All people are valuable and filled with the ability to make a positive difference in the world. Your pain is your power. Even though it might not feel that way, it’s true.

You can only be better or worse than your past self. Become better than yesterday, every day, and you’ll amaze yourself.

8. Refusing to let go

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” — Willie Nelson

Don’t hold on to things that you should release. Gripping onto the past, unused items, and negative people keeps you trapped. Unable to move on and live in joy.

We often don’t want to let go. Realize that it’s the best thing you can do for yourself. So, decide today that these thoughts are detrimental and to release them. You no longer need to haul this heavy weight on your shoulders.

9. Refusing to forgive

“Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries.”

— Astrid Alauda

To varying degrees, we’ve all felt betrayed by someone we trusted. I know it’s painful to the core. If it was horrible enough, you might never talk to them again, although you’re not saving yourself from further pain if you refuse to forgive them.

While it’s true, it was awful what they did; there’s no reason for you to carry this burden. It’s over, and the only way to let go of it is to forgive them in your mind. However, this doesn’t mean you agree with what happened; you’re just acknowledging that it did occur, although you aren’t going to stress about it anymore.

Everyone has experienced pain, but some project their hurtful feelings onto others. Forgive them so you can move on and be okay.

10. Staying in an unhealthy relationship

Staying in an unhealthy relationship can wreak havoc on your mental health. If your partner is verbally (or even physically) abusive and they refuse to change, it’s time to make a plan of escape. Otherwise, it’ll destroy your mind or even kill you. No one is worth that!

You don’t deserve that, and only you can save yourself.

If you can’t break up with them and leave, then write down all the obstacles in your way. Then write about how to solve them. Don’t give up until you address each one. Then write out the steps you need to take to escape into freedom.

11. Regretting the past

“A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.”

— Mark Twain

Don’t dwell on what could have been. Any thought that starts with “I should of” is going to tear down your happiness. These thoughts are harmful to your mental health, and they accomplish nothing. The only thing you have control over is what you do from now on. So, when a regretful thought comes up, shut it down immediately.

There’s no use in torturing yourself, especially since you have spectacular experiences waiting for you on the horizon.

“You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life.’”

―Wayne Dyer

In short, one by one, you can eliminate the above habits with dedication and patience. They won’t disappear right away. So, keep working on them. Soon you’ll approve of yourself, let go of the past, and forgive so you can be free. Don’t just read this article, take action today. It’ll also help if you have free, life-changing motivation emailed to you every week. Sign up here! What bad mental habits will you overcome?

11 Toxic Mental Habits That Crush Your Well-Being

Originally published at https://motivatedprogress.com on June 22, 2020.