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I don’t think there is anyone in this world who doesn’t experience the wrath of tough life. I have been the victim of this ‘disease’ many times in my life, especially before I started pursuing psychology to find myself. I saw this one meme on Instagram which said, “I want to do psychology = I am going through psychological issues”. This was my reality 12 years ago and that’s when I learnt about NLP. Immediately, I completed all levels of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and found a new perspective in life. Today, I would like to share with you a part of that perspective, and things you can do for sure for yourself, especially when life gets tough.

1. Walk: Walking helps clear your mind. It offers you some solutions by pushing the mind as you are pushing yourself physically to walk. The rhythm of walking helps very well with the rhythm of mind and helps you arrive at a decision.
2. Indulge: Take a day off to spend a whole day doing exactly what you want. I know this for sure that we neglect ourselves the most when we are on the conquest of certain self/others defined goals. That ‘me’ time is extremely important in the day when you do something that you find fulfilling in your life.
3. Be generous: Give something fruitful to a total stranger or some animal. Acts of giving make us feel warm and fuzzy inside.
4. Sit in a coffee shop or a busy street and soak up your surroundings. You don’t have to talk to people
5. Educate yourself: Research what it is you are experiencing. Arm yourself with knowledge and the resources to tackle the problems head-on. Your quality of life depends on the available resources that are there for you at a given point in time. If someone can do something very well, everyone can learn to do it. And of course, the quality of your life depends on the quality of your communication.
6. Preparation: Write the day’s to-do list the evening before. Make sure you are on the top of things. Make sure you are proactive. This should be the Gospel’s Truth of your life that you will never go anywhere without research and preparation.
7. Strengths: Write down the list of 20 of your strengths, even if it means writing mediocre strengths like sleeping for long hours. This will help you know yourself better and you will back your strengths, especially when it comes to dealing with challenging situations. Your adversity quotient will improve.
8. Keep going forward: Keep taking small steps, no matter what. Being stagnant doesn’t serve you. It makes you rigid. It compels you to keep cribbing. Whenever you feel that something is not working for you, you ask yourself a question, “What can I do abut it”? Thinking results is much better than being stuck in reasons of why you can’t achieve things. Being at the solution end of the equation is always better, isn’t it?
9. Have a hobby or re-visit an old hobby: If you don’t have a hobby create one. This helps you build your creativity and adversity quotient. It also diverts your mind which might only be thinking off one thing and, hence limiting your potential.
10. Prioritize: If you haven’t read Stephen Covey’s book ‘7 habits of highly effective people’, I think it is high time you read it. The book has a useful lesson of prioritizing to make your life sorted. As a rule of thumb, always do the things which are urgent and important first. Then do things which are important and not yet urgent. With such strategy, you will never fall short of anyone’s expectations. You will always be known for proactiveness. Also learn to say no to extra obligations. This is where Assertiveness is very important.
11. Sleep: Get enough rest. Sleep 7-9 hours each night. In fact, find out how much sleep you need and sleep according to that. If you want to know about sleep better, then go through my blog on sleeping disorders.
12. Be silly: Do something that you did as a child. Sometimes it is good if life is not taken seriously. These are some of those instances in your life where you say to yourself that it is a bit silly to this, but not being silly may not always be right from the emotions perspective.
13. Cry: Crying is a natural response to when you become sad, similar to laughing is a natural response when you hear a joke. We used to be quite expressive when we were young. We would easily cry, shout, laugh, jump as toddlers. And then, through subsequent teachings, a lot of us were taught to suppress our emotions. It is important to release the emotions for a healthy life. Suppressing emotions affects organs like heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas etc. It is often said that heart problems are not heart problems to begin with, it is often ‘head’ problem. Hence express yourself, cry when you feel like. You will feel better.
14. Check your self-talk: You are what you think you are. Your perception about yourself will reflect in your achievements in life. Make sure you are having a positive, empowering self-talk about yourself. Negative self-talk doesn’t serve you.
15. Journal: Develop a habit of journaling. This will help you free your mind. Maintaining a diary gives you another channel of expressing yourself.
16. Remind yourself that life is a journey. Remember that what you are going through is temporary. It will pass. It always does.

Follow these 16 commandments and beliefs in your life, especially when life gets tough, and you will be able to sort yourself easily. These have helped me in my life, and I am sure you will benefit too.