Getting in The Right State (2015)
Chapter 3 - Changing to the Right State
If you’ve observed that you’re not in the right state, don’t prolong the problem. As mentioned, not being as conditioned as necessary has disadvantages. Facing the unexpected is daunting. You aren’t certain if what’s coming is something to anticipate with happiness or is something you need to be worried about. To get past it, you must be all set when offered the chance to let go of any ill practices.
Though daring to brave new feats is far from easy, it’s best to find the courage to move along. Moving forward may be stressful but remaining in your place doesn’t promise you anything good. As soon as you can, dare to be an improved version of you. It may seem challenging but don’t worry; you’ll learn to cope eventually.
- Reasons to Change into the Right State
If you can change into the right state, it means you can control your behavior. It is important that you are the one who gets to have the final say in how things turn around. Furthermore, you know exactly how to proceed. During the process, you’re eliminating unnecessary problems. In cases of you being unprepared to face the obstacle ahead, you’ll be troubled less.
- You are more objective.
- Your reasons aren’t something you’d want to take back.
What Can Lead Us to the Right State?
There are different factors that can lead you to the right state. The most basic things we encounter are among the instruments we can use for the better. Read on to understand how each factor can guide you.
- Appreciation
Appreciation can lead to the right state as it aids people in experiencing more optimistic emotions, savoring good encounters, enhancing their health, facing adversity, and forming strong relationships. By appreciating even just the little things, you end up getting familiarized with reality. Sometimes, you only have problems if you refuse to recognize the good that has been surrounding you all along.
- Exercise
Researchers believe that exercise brings out chemicals in your brain - endorphins - that make you feel happy and good. You tend to be physically stressed when you undergo a series of stretching, running, jumping around, lifting weights, and other activities. However, it’s a good kind of fatigue. Frequent exercise can also raise your self-esteem and help you in sleeping, concentrating, looking, and feeling better.
- Food
The food you eat not only affects what you feel physically; it can massively impact the manner you feel and perform mentally. How does it affect your state? Simple: If you’re hungry and you’re not nourished with proper food, you don’t function as effectively as you would have been if you were full. Images start to blur, you don’t have energy for your usual activities,and you tend to be irrational and forgetful.
- Loved Ones
Through intervention, loved ones are given a well-thought-out chance to make amendments before situations get even worse. Even if you don’t see them as essential as they are when it comes to your mental well-being, their roles are actually among the most vital. They affect your state as they interact with you, sometimes as frequently as every day. They help make you feel better, and they have the power to make you feel worse.
- Meditation
Meditation works in a way by helping you acknowledge your experiences — and that includes painful sentiments — rather than respond to such experiences with avoidance and aversion. It also helps you accept whatever arises in your consciousness at each moment - including being caring, more assertive, and lenient toward yourself. Though you meditate way before you react to unexpected scenarios, you actually prepare yourself for any incoming complication.
- Rest
Proper rest plays an essential part in good health and well-being all through your life. It has an effect on how well you react, think, learn, function, and work well with others. Having insufficient rest will affect your state. You find yourself tired even at times you’re not supposed to be. If you’re groggy, you can’t do your work properly and you end up turning in an output you’re unlikely to be proud of.
To have the right state faster, it’s best to recognize that there are multiple factors. You’ll reap the benefits sooner, and people around you will immediately take notice of the changes that happen within you.
- Things to Try
- Be connected. Communicating with other people makes you exposed to various personalities and helps you understand how to deal with them better.
- Be constantly active. Being stagnant won’t help you mentally or physically.
- Volunteer for charity work. Being generous has its benefits. For one, it helps you appreciate what you currently have.
- Keep learning. It’s fun to acquire new sets of knowledge every day. To add, you learn not only through books, but also through life experiences.
- Stay observant. It pays to be watchful of what’s going on around you.
These activities bring a lot of advantages. They make you learn a lot of things, gain new friends, and add more to your list of experiences. You might be tired at the end of the day but the fulfillment and the achievements you’ll gain won’t be available to you any other way.
Common Therapeutic Approaches
There are various types of therapeutic approaches that help you get the right state. Read on and see which may suit you best.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapeutic medication that helps patients identify the feelings and thoughts that prompt various behaviors. CBT is frequently used to handle a wide variety of disorders that include addiction, phobias, anxiety, and depression.
This form of therapy is generally temporary and simply focused on assisting clients in dealing with a very particular concern. During the course of therapy, people understand how to recognize and modify damaging or disturbing thought patterns that influence one's behavior negatively.
- Intrapersonal therapy
The philosophy behind intrapersonal psychotherapy is that instead of dealing with external forces in your life, you concentrate on your internal formation of awareness. Therefore, instead of dwelling on why people around you hurt you, you take the situational struggle intrapersonally and put meaning to your own choices.
Instead of accusing other people, intrapersonal therapy will let you deal with internal suppressed issues that you may or not be aware of. To add, intrapersonal therapy will permit you to choose a situation and understand why you are shaken by it.
- Psychodynamic therapy
Psychodynamic therapy, also referred to as insight-oriented therapy, centers on unconscious procedures as they are revealed in a person’s current behavior. The aims of psychodynamic therapy are a patient's self-awareness and comprehension of the effect of the past on people's present behavior.
In its short form, a psychodynamic tactic allows the patient to study unresolved symptoms and conflicts that result from past dysfunctional affiliations and show themselves in the desire and need to abuse substances.
- Music Therapy
Music is often connected to a person's state. A particular song can make us sad, happy, relaxed, or energetic. Since music can have such a massive influence on a person’s state and wellness, then it should no longer come as a shock that music therapy has been examined for use in handling a number of medical conditions.
Music may be utilized with guided pictures to come up with modified states of perceptions that help reveal hidden emotional reactions and inspire creative insights. The improvement of children's language and reading skills can also use music.
Receptive methods require listening to and reacting to recorded or live music. The examination of their responses is considered to help people convey themselves in accepted ways within society and to assess personal issues.
Two Ways to Improve Your Right State
If you find that you’re already in the right state, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’ll remain that way from then on. Try not to aggravate any circumstance as it may only allow your mind to be introduced to things that it won’t blend well with. Rather than merely letting it be, try to care for your mental health by distancing yourself from anything that will affect it adversely.
Accept a Situation as It Is
Often, you may realize that your grip on things isn’t as strong as you thought it was. For instance, you planned on working on a chemistry project on your own and although weeks ago, you were informed that you’ll be committing to researches by yourself, your professor changes his mind out of the blue by assigning you a partner.
Instead of rebelling and being agitated at the impulsive move, it’s best to begin devising plans that will benefit you for a primary cause. To help you out, you merely have to avoid resisting whatever is bound to happen.
Learn a Pastime
Upon learning a pastime, your focus will be on something other than the little distractions there are. You don’t dwell on unnecessary issues - issues that, without you knowing it, can actually consume a lot of your energy. When you’re doing an activity you deem engaging and fun, the end game is you are pressured to adapt to stress on any given day.
What Kind of Hobby Is Best?
Crafting/Knitting
Crafting or knitting is actually a hobby that can help you de-stress and assist you while you’re on your way to the right state. With a set of yarns, needles, and your selected pattern, you’ll simply be sitting down and you’re on your way. During the process, your mind will be relaxed as it is kept occupied. Additionally, you can be productive too.
Puzzle Games
Taking part in games that allow you to exercise your mental abilities is an excellent hobby. With it, you’re busy being logical. You start to look for all the possible ways to solve a problem. Plus, scheduling a playtime introduces you to a rumble of fun.
Reading a Book
By reading a book, not only is information shared to you; you get to enhance your mental skills, too. Consider making it a habit, even. In a few months’ time, you’ll realize that you’re much more intelligent than you used to be. Especially if you wish to be busy and still get to keep up with academic demands, this particular hobby is suggested for you to try.
- The Importance of Being Busy
Being busy has advantages. If you have way too much time on your hands, the chances are high that you will end up nurturing your own mental well-being. Whether or not you are conscious of it, your ability to reason is improved and you achieve mental clarity. As your attention is directed at something, you eliminate thoughts that aren’t going to do you any good.
Better Memory
Studies reveal that if concentration is strategically distributed, the right state is reached. As a result of being occupied, particularly the part of your brain responsible for your ability to recall things, you subconsciously start to be more observant of what’s going on around you. You are more logical and you keep up with all the things you are supposed to do.
Stress Reduction
Not having extra time allows you to spare yourself trouble brought about by stress. During moments when you have no choice but to let your mind wander, you are tempted to somehow shoulder unimportant burdens. As you have nothing better to do, you tend to overthink and worry too much about random issues you encounter.
New Opportunities
Being busy entitles you to new opportunities. Contrary to the common belief that being occupied closes the door on possibilities that should enter into your life, you are actually in the process of learning about a passion you weren’t aware of at first. As you focus on one thing at a time, you get to discover which among them you prefer doing.
- The Dangers of Always Being Busy
While there are benefits to being busy, it also has drawbacks. It’s beneficial to have your mind occupied but if you let it be consumed by thoughts that are detrimental, you’re in for a lot of trouble. You attempt to be in charge of more than what you can handle. Rather than sharpen your mental abilities, your fate leads you to finding yourself less valuable.
Additional Clutter
Most of the time, the thing that causes you to be a victim of fatigue is the extra set of problems you’ve brought upon yourself. Regardless of their importance, you have to decide to let them go. As much as you want to resolve issues as you’re confident that you can, you have to accept the fact that sometimes, not everything is for you to worry about.
Less Time for People
Do you have sufficient time to ask your family members how their day went? Do you take a moment to sit down for a cup of coffee with your friends? As far as being busy goes, you’re probably too focused on other things. Though they matter too, it would do you well and help you avoid conflict if you spend your time cultivating your relationships with people. You may not be aware of it but you’re actually more functional when your bonds are intact.
Neglect of Personal Needs
If you’re too busy, among the basic activities you have limited time for are brushing your teeth, having a balanced diet, and taking a shower. As a result, you forget about fundamental things. Because of it, it’ll dawn on you that you’re always worn out and you are not in your best condition. You have to bear in mind that you have to keep everything in your life going well.
- Do Something Nice
This doesn’t intend to make you sound like the grumpy old troll. It’s simply the message of doing something nice as random acts of kindness can actually increase your happiness in a big way.
Have you tried doing random acts of kindness for strangers? It doesn’t have to be something grand; even just smiling to a person can work wonders. You can also do good deeds for your loved ones: make a cup of coffee, do the dishes, help with someone’s homework. These activities may seem trivial for most, but for some, this can mean a lot. And don’t you agree that being a Good Samaritan can make you smile as well?
Random Fact: Did you know that J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, battled with not problems that revolved around not being in the right at one point in her life? It may be hard to believe that a famous person like Rowling would even consider taking her own life.
She was then a single mother who lived in a cramped apartment. After her marriage got dissolved, she considered suicide but thankfully, she changed her mind after realizing she had to think of her daughter. Her daughter became her inspiration instead
Well, it’s a good thing that she was brought back to her senses. As everybody knows, Rowling’s now the author of a book series that has evolved into a multi-billion dollar franchise.