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When the stress of life gets to you, it’s important to recognize when you just need a personal day to relieve stress and center yourself.

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Are your fantasies fulfilling your desires? Are your dreams and hopes being fulfilled by thinking about them? These are real questions that we need to ask ourselves honestly. Many of us fantasize about a better life or better version of ourselves. We have been told for years to visualize success and you can achieve it. The problem is we often change the phrase to visualize success and you will achieve it.

Visualization is the first step. It lets us know where we want to be. It is the starting point that tells us we are not happy where we are and want to be somewhere different. However, unless we take action by planning and moving down the road, we will just be in bed dreaming about a possible future and never get there outside of our dreams. Thought and visualization with no action is fantasy and as fleeting as a dream.

If you have been on social media and seen videos and posts about recipes that sound and look good and said to yourself “I can make that,” but never did anything about it, what does that say about your visualization. You saw it, said it looked good, and said “I can do it.” Why haven’t you then? Don’t allow your comfort zone to keep you from trying to reach higher and try new things.

I got a Ninja Foodi last year and said to myself, “I am going to cook all my meals in this thing and work through the entire recipe book before I try something else.” I tried one recipe. The food came out exactly how I expected, but for some reason, I never did another meal in that kitchen device. I went right back to the fastest meal prep patterns I have gotten used to. 

We need to get to a point where we are exciting ourselves about taking actions towards our goals. Force yourself to do something, anything that you have wanted to do but never gotten around to doing. If nothing comes to mind, try forcing yourself to smile for 20 seconds. This simple action will cause endorphins to flow and make you feel more positive. Your simple action just improved your mood for a few moments. Your actions determine your outcome. Your visions help you determine a goal and find the road to your destination. However, without action your vision and thoughts are wasted.

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Why is it that we complain about our work life to people at home, but we complain about our home life to people at work? Isn’t that backwards? The people at home can’t really help us with our work and our work acquaintances can’t help us with our home issues.

Sometimes, our complaining could be just a way to vent our frustrations. It is common to go to someone we know will support us and empathize with our struggles. We will seek out the ones that are willing to help us and are willing to listen. The problem with this is that we are likely pushing our stresses onto other people who do not deserve them. Our wives/husbands will listen to our problems because they love us. They will offer the usual words of comfort or advice to make us feel comforted. What we need to make sure is that we are not dumping on our listener. Instead, try to make it a conversation and be open and honest about our negative feelings and experiences. Make it a discussion and remove the emotion from the issue so that you can work through the emotions and properly deal with the issues.

In other situations, you have people who bottle their feelings up. They are often the people who try their hardest to not bring people down. They are quick to offer the advice that they themselves may need to follow, but never seek out the advice because they feel like they might bring someone else down or be viewed as a hypocrite. It isn’t healthy to dump on someone else. However, it is just as unhealthy to bottle your emotions up. Share your feelings openly and honestly in a safe environment. Don’t dump on someone. Try to recognize the listener so that you know who you can trust and who will be able to help you recognize the path forward. Each person is different.

Don’t be like the cook who cooks for everyone else while eating fast food yourself. Be the kind of person that takes care of yourself the way you try to take care of others. If you are listening to others, make sure you take the time to find someone who can listen to you. If you share with others, make sure you listen to them. Venting is ok as long as you are not bringing others into a bad emotional state.

In anger management, I learned to find a healthy outlet for my venting. It was in video games and reading. Those activities gave me a chance to calm my emotional state and allow me to open rationally to others about my feelings. The next step is to make sure that you are addressing your complaints in a positive manner. If you have complaints about something at work, find a way to improve the situation at work. Seek advice from others, by all means, but instead of sitting back and complaining about it, work positively on it to find a solution so that is no longer something you need to complain about. Same thing for family issues. Seek counseling from others who have been down that road and found a positive solution, or look to professional help with the ability to help you get there.

Complaining can be a healthy form of venting if done properly, but all to often, it turns negative and dangerous. For those with a “Victim Mentality” you will always complain without trying to find a solution. For those with a “Victor Mentality” you look for positive solutions to the issues you are dealing with.

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Are You Living Your Life Like A Gameshow? Are you even a main character in your own life?

Its final Jeopardy and the topic is Life. Here is your answer: “You do this to be successful.” If you are participating, you aren’t just shouting the answer at your tv screen like the average person does. This episode is all about making sure you aren’t being a side seat driver in your own life. Drive yourself towards success.

We all have seen a gameshow where we knew the answer or watched a sports competition where we saw the right play to make before the people actually involved did. We do similar things in our own lives. A great example is on how we are quick to offer advice for situations we wish we were involved in. “While your visiting New Zealand, make sure to visit Hobbiton. I always wanted to visit there myself.” Rather than living through other people, we should be looking to live our lives to the fullest every day. Try to make those things you want to do a reality rather than continuing to sit on the sidelines.

Part and parcel to this is personal responsibility. We all think we should be somewhere better in life. It is our dream to be better than we are, but we look to external factors to blame for why we have not made it. “I am uneducated today because the government did a poor job funding my schools growing up.” Are you telling me, that you understand that you are uneducated today, you understand that you are not where you want to be, but you haven’t done anything to fix that problem? You recognized a problem, but so far all you have done is point the finger at someone else saying its their fault. Great, you recognize, you have a problem, and that the other party is not doing anything to fix it for you. That only leaves one person who can fix the issue. You. You are a sum of all your past decisions. Once you get to that point where you understand that no matter whose fault you think it is, the only person that can directly change and affect your life for the better is you. You have the power to change your life for the better every day with making simple good decisions with what you are given, what you have, and what you can do.

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Neil Degrasse Tyson believes that there are three different types of truths; Personal, Political, and Objective Truths. We all experience these 3 different truths every day in our lives. These truths have serious impacts in how we conduct ourselves in our relationships, or careers, and our personal lives.

The easiest to understand is the Objective truth. It is something that is true for everyone, everywhere, at all times. As an example; “We need oxygen to breathe.” A Personal Truth is best seen in a religious truth. “I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior.” You may personally believe that but Joe down the street does not. Finally, we have the Political Truth. Political Truths are what society has decided to be true. An example of this would be in how society changes its views on what is right, wrong, moral, and immoral.

The problem with 3 different truths is that everyone ends up mixing up personal and political truths with objective truths. We allow ourselves to believe that what we view as truth based on our personal experience or what society says is true must be an objective truth. This causes conflict between us. Religions have gone to war with each other in history over personal beliefs. Its not healthy. Personal truths are not unhealthy unless we allow them to blur the lines of objective truth.

To keep the lines clear, we need to be able to clearly understand where our views and understandings of the truths are coming from. A feeling of frustration in your life can be analyzed. Yes, it is a personal truth. The objective truth is in finding out why you are feeling frustrated. Get to the root cause of your feeling to truly understand your personal truths. Why are you feeling frustrated? Why is the thing you stated causing annoyance or frustration to you?

A personal truth can be a very self-limiting belief. As an example, a person saying they can’t get out of debt because the system is rigged against them. As a person who has been in debt, I understand the negative feelings, the struggles, and the hopelessness that creeps in. It feels like you can’t get out, or that it is too hard to do anything to fix it. However, if you dig deeper into why you feel that way the objective truth is often hard to swallow. We made choices in many cases that put us in debt. There are obvious exceptions to that, but most debt is 100% avoidable. So an objective truth is “in many cases we could make better choices to avoid debt.”

For healthier, more fulfilling lives, look at why you believe what you believe. Look for an understanding so you can better recognize what is a personal, political, and objective truth. Stay mindful of your personal truths and keep them from blurring the lines of objective truths so you do not end up putting up roadblocks that hinder your progress or opportunities.