No one can ever claim that he or she has not fallen off the road in the journey called life; it happens with everyone. But the problem is not falling off the road or falling down, problem is in not trying rise again after every fall. It happens with many people; they remain stuck in their past, they keep waiting for ship which has already sailed. If you are stuck in this type of situation, here are nine tips from my side to bring you out of it. These are steps to bounce back in life, may or may not be in order but these are solid steps to help you.... from my own experiece.

Becoming a better you is a process of many steps...not one day exercise....

You know what stops you from becoming better you at the first place???? Bitterness...

Bitterness about life...

Bitterness about people...

Bitterness about events of the past...

You know it but probably you might not have given it a thought...Bitterness is all about past...something which has already happened and you can't do anything about it.

You have no choice but to move away, ahead and beyond what has already happened.

First step of moving away, ahead and beyond from bitterness is acceptance of fact that you are bitter and it is consuming lots of energy which you could have spent on something better...

Second step is identifying the trigger of bitterness ( what exactly happens before you are launched into bitterness) is important...what makes you crave for bitterness...

probably your present personal and professional status is poor and when its acknowledgement makes your condition miserable, you are automatically launched into the zone of being bitter about past to maintain the strength and uniform story of your mind....

No...I am not blaming you.

Our brain automatically does so...its prime duty is to protect everything of the body it lives in..

But choosing this route as a permanent solution depends on us...

If we do it quite often, the our brain takes it as very important for our existence and makes it prominent among our actions...

If you have allowed yourself being bitter about everything, then coming out won't be easy even if you have accepted that you are bitter about everything and what launches you in bitterness....

Here comes the third step....make your picture of tomorrow beautiful and start working for it today. Our mind always prefers good things over bad things...

If your present actions are not strong and picture of future is not beautiful, then you won't be able to defeat the state of bitterness. Your actions towards making your future beautiful can pull you out of bitterness.

How to break from the cycle of misery

What happens when you fail once?

You get up, dust out and move forward as nothing happened…

What happens when you fail twice?

You get up, dust out and move forward but a small doubt creeps in your mind which you normally ignore and forget….

What happens when you fail thrice?

You get up….but this time, the doubt which you ignored last time starts taking shape of a serious question…..

And….What happens when you fail multiple times?

You become turtle….Instead of engaging with the problems, you shut everything off. This becomes your coping mechanism. Unless and until you are poked in a wrong way, you don’t respond to anything.

This situation becomes even worse when you are a man, because neither your hormones help you nor your social upbringing.

It creates a cycle of misery.

You start catastrophizing everything happening not only with you but happening around you. You are making everything more miserable than actually it is or could have been…

You start believing that everyone wants you to be in misery and that’s why they are either contributing to it or avoiding you.

Then you start mixing these two and shut yourself up completely and become relationship wise, opportunity wise and money wise miserable.

How can you break out from the cycle of misery?

Acceptance:

Accept that you can be in control of what is going inside you, but you can’t in complete control of what is happening outside all the time.

Accept that when there are multiple dimensions of a problem and multiple people are involved, they also need to be made part of the solution. Everything can’t happen on your terms all the time and shutting off is not a solution.

Engage:

Engage with the problem.

Engage with the people who are part of the problem and believe me, there will be fewer in number or absolutely none.

Engage with the people who can be the part of solution and believe me, there will be many in numbers.

Action:

Find pattern of past and work on what led to wrong.

Find pattern of present and work on what is leading to inertia.

Find pattern of future where are aiming to go.

Shutting off is not an option, shutting off is not action; it leads you towards inertia and cycle of misery. Follow the above mentioned steps of AEA(Accept, Engage and Action) to break free and bounce back in life.