Hi Tomodotchi’s,
Have you ever noticed that during our hardest moments we feel our weakest? Personally, these moments are filled with emotion, anxiety and irrational thoughts. During these times, it’s hard to find our inner strength and confidence, the two things we need to get through these tough times. As we reflected on these challenging moments in our own lives. We wanted to share 3 mindset shifts that we used to develop a more positive mindset and regain our inner strength.
Shifting our mindset is a skill that needs to be practiced, but it helps us understand and recognize the importance of self-awareness to understand our inner strength. Thinking with a more positive mental attitude helped us gain inner strength and get through the darkest of times. We hope you can relate and use our experience to your advantage during your next challenging moments.
Remembering the past to build inner strength
Recently, we were going through a really challenging moment in our life. One of those moments where you just want to drop everything and quit. You know the feeling. That feeling of hopelessness and being weighed down. Feeling like everything you do is pointless or impossible. A moment that you view as one of the hardest moments of your life and something that you just aren’t sure if you are going to overcome.
This moment is what got us thinking about how to change our mindset from a negative to a positive. As we were reflecting on our life and all the hardest times that came before, we had an epiphany. Our life has been full of hardest moments. We can remember as kids studying until 3 am and feeling like complete failures from not understanding anything. As teens, we remembered our first real bout of OCD and true depression. During that time the hopeless feeling of having no control in our own life and the fear of life itself consumed us. In adulthood, we remember a job where we had to drive 3 hours one way to work and then work a 12-hour day 5-6 days a week. The long hours and the tough work culminated to a mental breakdown.
The point being, at these different junctions we felt that each of these moments were the hardest of our life. The overwhelming feelings of anxiety and depression. The thoughts of just wanting to quit and without a care of consequences. Each time we truly felt like these were the most difficult moments of our lives. After all, problems don’t disappear as we get older, they only change forms.
Our epiphany was this, life is going to be full of hardest moments! However, there has never been a time that we have not been able to meet the challenge and move on. Realizing this, we changed our thoughts from negativity to positivity. We were assured in knowing that we have always gotten through and this time will be no different. Even if the worst comes to pass, we have weathered and made it through before and we will again conquer.
As cliché as it is to say, time truly does heal all wounds. We know this doesn’t actually solve the problem, but it should offer some solace to know that even if the worst happens, you can and will get through it. Regardless of the situation, once enough time passes, it will just be another scar that proves how strong you are. We need to recognize in our hearts that we have the inner strength to move on and this moment is just another rep to increase that strength!
Speak kindly to yourself
In a similar vein to the above, another critical component for our positive thinking was recognizing our choice of words. We have found that it’s far easier to put ourselves down than it is to talk ourselves up. Afterall, we are taught that it’s self-servicing to build ourselves up!
Also, in a world where we compare ourselves to others, it’s easier to think we are nothing special in comparison to others. We convince ourselves that small wins are ordinary and are not worth any special recognition.
In life, we tend to speak to ourselves without any positivity. For example, when you wash dishes, you think “ok, I washed the dishes”. Alternatively, we can say “awesome, I really didn’t want to wash the dishes, but I did and totally succeeded and now the kitchen is clean!”. Life isn’t going to be full of life changing spectacular moments. It’s important to recognize the little wins and successes.
So often in life we view our daily lives negatively or with no emotion. We all know the struggle of getting out of bed on a Monday or cooking a meal instead of ordering out. These aren’t trivial wins; these are valid successes that we should recognize. Pushing through small struggles are genuine victories.
We define our own successes in life. Simply speaking to yourself more positively can have a big change in your attitude. Recognize that it’s not easy to do tasks you hate, especially after a long day. Being able to get out and do things that make us uncomfortable or annoyed is a win!
For those of us that deal with anxiety, a good week can simply be not having episodes of anxiousness. Speak to yourself with kindness and recognize the good that happens in your life. You’ll realize that you have a lot more to celebrate than you realized!
Recognizing that you aren't alone
Finally, it’s important to recognize that we aren’t alone. For those moments where you can’t recognize your own strength, it’s ok to lean on others. At Tomodotchi, we have a Facebook group, which anyone can join. In this group we aim to build each other up and support one another through our hardest moments. It is so easy to be unkind to ourselves and sometimes we need others to help us recognize how accomplished we are. Community and friends are there to hear and see you. They can help you feel validated and cared for. It’s much easier to see progress and wins from the outside looking in.
Another key aspect of this is to learn to speak to yourself as if you were a friend. If your friend was going through the same problems and anxieties, what would you tell them? You’ll find that the words you use are much kinder. You’ll also likely see that you would try to build that person up with recognizing the ways they have succeeded. It really helps to write out your advice to yourself as if you were an outsider. Send the message to yourself and recognize the benefit of an outside opinion!
Life isn’t made to go it alone. We are but one person in a world of billions. We all need to co-exist with one another. It’s important to recognize that we don’t always need to appear perfect. We’re all broken in our own ways and we need to be able to accept the help of others. We are truly only better together.
Self-awareness is critical
We hope you can recognize that it’s important to be self-aware. Recognize the moments in your life and the strength you already have shown. Be aware about how strong you are and have been. If you can speak to yourself with kindness and remember your pasts, you will realize there is nothing you cannot get through. When you need help, there are always others out there who recognize you. Just remember, today is the wisest you have ever been.
Hopefully, this message resonated with you. If you enjoyed this content consider joining our Facebook group! There are no strings attached and we are building a peer-to-peer community of Tomodotchi’s who support and care for one another. If you are interested in increased self-awareness, we have a post about understanding different personality types for better communication! Further, we also have a post on the top three things we recognized that affect our mental health positively and negatively.
The final piece, is we have an open letter to those dealing with anxiety and depression. If you are having a difficult time and need a reminder how amazing you are, hopefully that can help!
Until next time,
Your Tomodotchi
TLDR;
The key to finding your inner strength is self-awareness. Recognize how strong you are and speak kindly to yourself. In your weakest moments, seek out a community who supports from the outside and recognizes the good in you. There is nothing that cannot be overcome in your life.
Extras
As an added bonus for our readers, we like to include a game of where are the Tomodotchi Pets. They’ve been hidden in 2 of the pictures within this post. Can you find them all? See below for what they look like!
