Tag: self-improvement
How to get out of a downward spiral in life
Now, more than ever, we face one of the most challenging periods in our lives. Many people are having or fear facing a period when many things can go wrong quite quickly and easily.
Unfortunately, these are also when spiritual self-improvement can take a back seat as we can get overwhelmed with too many things. Sure, some of us will use this opportunity to go deeper spiritually, but the chaos and challenging times usually take too much of a toll on our attention.
And so, more often than not, things begin to deteriorate on many fronts. We start getting into a downward spiral, a vicious cycle where things start getting worse progressively.
Not all downward spirals need to be severe or earth-shattering. Some or even most can be the slow degradation variety and can also be in a particular facet or aspect of our lives.
The problem is that we don’t realize we’re in a downward spiral until things have gotten terrible. We are unlikely to take corrective action until we see severe outcomes.
For instance….we may find we’ve been eating unhealthy and skipping exercise over many months. Our relationships may be strained for a long time and at the point of breaking. Our finances may be slowly deteriorating as the savings begin to go down. Our jobs may feel stale and not motivating enough. None of these have to necessarily happen simultaneously, but they certainly can in isolation.
Or, the most popular one for those pursuing self-improvement – our interest, motivation and progress on spirituality and higher pursuits is waning continuously, and we’re hitting new lows every now and then.
So, how do we break out of such periods of downward spirals in our lives?
A healthy and special dose of spirituality is the only real way to motivate our physical, mental and emotional selves to get out of the rut.
The Fight for Continuous Self-Improvement
Time never stops for anyone. We get old all the time though we may only focus on reversing our aging or arresting the deterioration of our health at certain times in our lives.
Things get dirty all the time by default. But we only do cleaning intermittently, not all the time. Things are in constant motion in this universe. Human beings can either rise up in the upward spiral of improvement or when we do nothing, go down this same spiral. Nothing is stationary or constant.
There is a constant negative and impeding force working against our self-improvement. If we do nothing to improve ourselves, our higher pursuits in life simply degenerate. What’s a resilient strategy to ensure we keep going up the evolutionary spiral and improving continuously? We have some answers based on our experience as meditators.
Understanding Your Purpose in Life
We have all asked the question about the purpose of our lives. Sometimes, we ponder about the purpose of human life in general. At other times, we’re curious about the purpose of our own life as an individual and what we were born to achieve.
The pursuit of spirituality sometimes appears to have a strong connection with it, but that is only the means to an end. What after all is that end goal?
Self-Esteem Threatened? Hide the Credit Cards!
Some people attempt to repair their sense of self-worth by purchasing luxury items when their egos are threatened because they performed a task poorly or because they were told that they’re not as good as they hoped (or expected). And worse, they’re more likely to use credit cards to pay for these self-indulgences.
Since various studies have established that parting with cash can actually be psychologically painful, one study investigated whether people might be more likely to use a credit card when feeling badly about themselves (Pettit & Sivanathan, 2010).