Stop EXPECTING – nobody owes you anything. Be grateful for the time, interest, and generosity of other people. You have no entitlement to anything in life, everything is a gift.
If you’ve been born into a loving family, count yourself lucky, many don’t enjoy that privilege. It’s not like you did anything to deserve it, you were and are just really lucky that circumstances fell in your favour.
If you were born with good health – physical and psychological – you were and are just lucky, many people aren’t blessed in that way.
Be grateful for every day you’re above ground and in the company of people who choose to spend their precious time with you.
Even if you’re not born into a loving family, or you don’t have good mental or physical health, look for the things you can be grateful for. Do you have sight, hearing, are you able form and maintain relationships with other people, are there things you can do that others can’t? Are you free of pain, at least some of the time? Do you have anyone who cares about you?
It’s okay to Feel sorry for yourself sometimes, you should face your negative emotions, but don’t let them consume you, because it doesn’t help you to make things better. Prolonged negative reminiscing will only poison your mind and body.
Be grateful for even the smallest blessings. When you change how you think about the world, the world changes.
It’s important to understand that your attention and perceptions are goal dependant. When you task yourself with finding the great things in life, the world lays itself out around that goal. Your perceptions are motivated to help you attain whatever goal you set your sights on. Here’s a little game to illustrate how that plays out.
So you can pick the goal of playing victim and wallow in self-pity or you can empower yourself with the goal of finding light in the darkness, using gratitude, the choice is yours.