Feeling down, stuck, or disappointed happens to everyone. Sometimes life just feels like you’re stuck at red light, after red light, after red light. Even wildly successful people can feel down at times. The real secret to success in life is knowing how to feel good about yourself so you can move on and be happy no matter what.

After a divorce or break-up, it makes sense to have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. No one goes into a relationship expecting it to end so when it does it can throw you for a loop. You can start second-guessing yourself and your self-esteem can reach an all-time low.

If you’re struggling to even make a connection, it can feel like there is something wrong with you, like you’re broken. When things haven’t gone your way in love it’s easy to believe that love is for others but not you. Sometimes the longing for a meaningful connection with another human being can cultivate feelings of depression or cynicism about love.

Unfortunately, sitting around binging Netflix won’t help you feel better. What’s even worse is when you feel down, it’s likely that you’re not motivated to do anything, right? It’s important to remember that nothing will change until you take action!

Sitting around hoping that you feel better is okay only if you do it for a limited period of time. You can throw yourself a pity party, but just know that’s not how you feel good about yourself for the long term.

How to feel good about yourself is simple, you give yourself a deadline to stop moping and take action — then you’ll feel better. Life is full of challenges and there’s nothing you can do to avoid them, but you can approach them in a way that leaves you feeling empowered.

Don’t wait to feel better before you make changes in your life. Only by taking action will you start to feel better about yourself. Stop obsessing over past events (whether they occurred yesterday or decades ago) by taking these five actions and you’ll feel better right away!

How To Feel Good About Yourself And Leave The Past In The Past

1. Forgive Yourself, Forgive Others, And Move On

Forgiveness is not about the other person, ultimately forgiveness is for you. A well-known saying of The Buddha is, “Holding onto anger and resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Practicing forgiveness will free you from the energetic dance you’ve been doing with the people who have wronged you.

Forgive but don’t forget. Forgetting leaves you open to being hurt or being taken advantage of again. You can always reevaluate depending on the person but never allow a toxic person back into your life. This is a hard boundary that you should never bend so you can feel good about yourself.

Forgiveness allows you to free yourself and move on with your life. Without forgiveness, you are energetically stuck in the past and still connected to the person who hurt you.

Imagine there are strings and ropes of energy keeping you connected to each person and event that you are still holding onto. This energetic network holds you back from moving forward in your life. It’s like trying to drive forward while pressing on the gas and the brake at the same time.

Forgiving someone who hurt you doesn’t require you to have a connection with them, or to have any level of contact. You can forgive from afar so you can be free of those past events.

Beating yourself up for the bad choices you’ve made or taking responsibility for others’ unacceptable behavior will also drag you down. Forgive yourself. You were doing the best you could with the resources you had at the time. Now you know more and can make better decisions moving forward.

How do you feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past? Forgiveness is the first step. It allows you to get unstuck, freeing you from people and events that poison your soul and damage your well-being.

2. Honor And Value Yourself By Speaking Authentically

What is your relationship to your emotions?

Do you ignore them and put your focus only on the positive ones?

Or do you only see the negative and believe nothing good will ever happen to you?

Do your emotions build up inside of you until you can’t take it anymore and explode like a volcano?

Or are you so disconnected from your feeling state that it would be difficult to identify your feelings in this moment?

You’re here in human form to experience the full range of human emotions – positive, negative, and everything in between. When you’re disconnected from your emotional life, you’re disconnected from yourself.

It may feel like you won’t ever feel better when you’re stuck in a negative spiral, but your emotions are temporary. Only by allowing yourself to experience and express them can you create the space for a new emotion to appear.

Your emotions are momentary, they are important because they are valuable information. Being in touch with your emotions gives you access to your own personal compass so you can navigate through life grounded in your body.

Being able to identify your feelings is the first step. Speaking up and sharing them is how you create emotional intimacy with another person. It’s an essential ingredient to form a deep connection in an intimate relationship.

In contemporary society, your intellect is prized, and your emotions are all too often discounted. The only way to connect with others and create a deep meaningful bond is to share how you feel.

Speaking how you feel is like sending out invitations to a party. Some people will be able to meet you at that high vibration and some won’t be available to attend your authenticity party.

Whether the other person is able to attend isn’t a reflection on you, it’s only information about them.

Speaking how you feel is also how you honor and value yourself. You’re saying that you count and matter when you speak your emotional truth. When you discount your feelings, you diminish your experience.

Being authentic means one thing, and only one thing: Identifying and sharing your feelings with another person.

How do you feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past? Speak your truth and then evaluate how it lands on the other person. If they want to discount or downplay your feelings MOVE ON! If they meet you at the high level of authenticity and share their feelings you can work on the relationship.

3. Find Gratitude For All The Bad Things That Have Happened

Q: Why do bad things happen to good people?

A: To make them better.

This is not to diminish the tragedies in your life or in any way to insinuate that you deserved them or that they were your fault. However, reframing the challenges you’ve faced to see them as an opportunity to grow helps you build resilience and can bring deeper meaning to your life. It can also motivate you to make the changes necessary to improve your circumstances.

You’re not motivated to change when times are good, instead you grow when there’s a struggle or challenge to face. Just like you need resistance to build muscle, you also need resistance to overcome your negative programming.

Would you feel differently about the challenges you’ve faced if you looked at all the bad things that have happened to you as spiritual training on how to become a better person?

Can you look back over your past and find the Golden Nugget of learning that will allow you to finally feel grateful for what you went through?

Feeling bitter about your struggles only keeps you stuck in them, sucking away your happiness, and fostering feelings of hopelessness.

Challenge yourself to create some wiggle room in your emotional life. Stretch to find the learning in your failures or foster a feeling of appreciation for the people who’ve hurt you, or for the obstacle blocking your path. Find the spiritual lessons in your problems by changing your perspective.

Embracing a gratitude practice will change your life. You can start with the small things, the tiny daily frustrations you experience, and then work your way up to the bigger things like heartbreaks and soul-crushing disappointments. Decide now that all of those things happened for you, not to you.

How do you feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past? Find gratitude in the difficulties so you become resilient and able to overcome anything that gets in your way.

4. Laugh Your Past Troubles Away

You can’t change the experiences you’ve had but you can change the meaning that you give them. When you struggle to stay positive, you’re stuck in a negative emotional story that leaves you feeling disempowered or like a victim.

Troubling memories sometimes haunt you and leave you open to re-experiencing the situation in your mind over and over again. Being able to transform your memories of troubling events puts you back in your power and connected to the present moment.

You may think that your memories are accurate recollections of past events, but your memories are colored by your emotional state. They’re malleable. You can’t change the plot points of the past but you can reclaim your power from the past by transforming your emotional connection to specific incidents.

Here’s a laughter technique to lighten the load of your past and reclaim the present moment. This technique works because all emotions trigger chemicals to flood the body, and faking an emotion does the same thing.

Fake laughing will give you the benefits of real laughter so get ready to fake it until you make it!

There are 3 sounds that make a laugh: Ho, Ha, and He. Rotating them 3 at a time will give you something easy to work with. Place your hands on your low belly and focus on taking a breath into your lower stomach where your hands are resting and then begin to fake laugh:

Ha Ha Ha!

Ho Ho Ho!

He He He!

After a short amount of time, you’ll find that you’re actually laughing. That’s because laughter is infectious and contagious. Once you get a good laugh going speak the horrible event/memory out loud while laughing hysterically. Retell your story as if it’s the funniest story you’ve ever heard.

It may take some getting used to (just like learning to do anything) practice makes perfect.

How do you feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past? Practice re-telling your old wounding stories like they are the most hilarious skits you’ve ever seen and you’ll no longer be haunted by the past.

5. Focus On Progress, Not Perfection

As long as you’re striving to move forward in your life, learning from your past mistakes, and making corrections along the way, you are a success!

Don’t let some mythical idea of perfection get in the way of celebrating all of the small, medium, and large successes along the journey. Perfectionism, or even the striving for perfectionism, chips away at your well-being and happiness — because you’ll forever fall short.

Each night before bed write out five successes for the day in a journal book. Remind yourself of what you accomplished and leave what hasn’t been finished for another day. Beating yourself up because there’s more to do leaves you exhausted and facing an empty gas tank the next day. Instead, focus on filling your tank by acknowledging your successes.

Successes each day are relative, they need not be lifetime accomplishments. If you’re sick with the flu, making toast and tea for yourself goes on the list. You can take things right off your To Do List including household tasks like doing the laundry. Just write down five successes every night and end the day feeling good about yourself.

How do you feel good about yourself and leave the past in the past? You release your unrealistic expectations and allow yourself to make mistakes. You’re a human BEING, not a human DOING. Your self-worth doesn’t come from what you do, but who you be.

Feeling good about yourself isn’t something that will just happen when your outer circumstances change. The saying “no matter where you go, there you are” appropriately explains how important it is to nurture your inner self and to create a regular practice of self-care.

Knowing how to feel good about yourself and leaving the past behind you is a lifelong practice. Most things you want to excel at you need to practice, but you also might want a tutor. If you think we’re a good fit to mentor you to create a life alongside your beloved apply for a Soulmate Strategy Session by clicking here to book time in our calendar.