Op-Ed: New COVID strains are coming. It’s no time to let down our guard.
I always have a list. When I’m having trouble meeting my wife’s needs, or feeling frustrated and down a bit, I’ll pull together my list of things I need to do, check them all off my list, and feel better. Of course a healthy dose of self-reliance is also a part of my list, and the list doesn’t stop there; it goes into every conceivable aspect of my life.
I thought I had pretty healthy routines and routines I don’t really need to look at, because they’re basically just generalizations, but then, I guess I didn’t really think about them as lists.
The point of such a list is the same as saying, “Don’t be afraid to be the best you. Be your amazing self.”
The list is a simple form of self-talk that takes the power out of trying to change something. The whole point of creating a list is to put off the hard decisions. The problem with just looking at one aspect of life is that eventually, your list will get pretty long, and when you look at all the aspects, you realize you’re not getting any closer to your goal.
However, there are a series of simple solutions that you could implement, that would make the most significant impact on your life and would have a more lasting impact. These three simple fixes would allow you to avoid making the same mistakes you would have made if you stopped at “just fixing” a few aspects, and it would make you a better version of yourself.
1. Practice selfless love.
This first suggestion would involve giving up on yourself. This would only be done in emergencies. Selfless love doesn’t mean to abandon all things in life. But if you’re feeling down and you haven’t had a good response to the situation at hand, then you realize that you’re not feeling the selfless love that you want to give. And by that point, the situation is pretty well defined.
It’s no great loss to not be able to fix your problem at hand. But it’s better to be at your wits end, knowing that you’ve tried everything and nothing works