No.1 Numbing Negativity
How do you cope with negativity? What do you do when you fell frustrated or unmotivated? Many people try to numb their emotions by distracting themselves. They fall victim to temptation using all kinds of distractors to avoid worry, fear or self-doubt. Now you might for example play video games to distract yourself from a recent breakup or maybe you eat sugary foods to quiet your anxiety. These coping mechanisms seem to work in the moments. You feel a little better for a few minutes, but in the long term, they’re incredibly destructive. The problem is you’re not dealing with your problems or feelings. You’re not resolving any of those negative issues instead you’re placing them on the back burner. You’re delaying those painful emotions. But eventually, you’ll have to confront your feelings. That’s the primary issue with this terrible habit. You find yourself jumping from distracter to distracter. When one temptation ends, you immediately search for another and that way you can stall you stress for hours or even days. It feels like each distractor spares you a painful moment. But it doesn’t. The truth is, your’re not resolving anything, you’re not doing yourself any favors. You’re simply saving your negativity for later. So don’t run away from your problems any longer. If you distract yourself to numb your negativity, well it’s time to give up this bad habit. Instead, address your emotions as they happens. Confront your negativity and experience your stress in real time. Yeah, it may be painful, it won’t be as fun as playing video games or watching TV, but you’ll overcome through negativity much faster if you just stop running away.
No.2 Recycling Toxic Relationships
Do you spend your time with toxic people? Do you fall into the same destructive patterns over and over again? Many of us are drawn to the wrong people. We choose partners who take us for granted. We select friends who don’t value our time. We go out of our way for people who hurt our self-esteem. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Countless people fall into these traps every single time. But it’s time to leave this painful habit behind. How do you stop yourself from choosing the wrong people? Well let’s think about why you fall for toxic partners in the first place. In the beginning, toxic people throw up red flags left and right. But we rarely notice anything’s wrong. Well why is that? Because we’re infatuated by the idea of this person. In your head, this person is everything you’re looking for: attractive, intelligent, kind, funny. All the traits that comprise your perfect partner. Right? Well without realizing it, you fall in love with that mental image while ignoring the cold hard truth. You over look the red flags, you pretend not to see the signs, you’re so excited by glimmers of hope that all their frustrating behavior, well, it doesn’t seem so bad. But no matter how hard you try to change them, a toxic person will always be a toxic person. When you realize how toxic someone is, it creates a whole new problem – how do you end that friendship or relationship? How do you find the courage to release yourself from those toxic binds? It can be really difficult to stand up to a toxic partner, especially if you’re still attracted to this person. But let’s say you find the courage to break things off. You finally rediscover your confidence and independence. You start to feel happy again. Now that your toxic relationship has faded into the past. But then you meet someone new, you become infatuated just like before. You start to see red flags, but you ignore them all over again, and soon you’re stuck in the middle of yet another toxic relationship. Yeah you’d be surprised how ofter this happens. Despite experiencing a bad relationship, you make the exact same mistakes. So what’s the answer? how do you avoid repeating the same toxic patterns? How do you avoid another toxic friendship or relationship? You have to learn how to gain perspective. It’s challenging to look objectively at your relationships. But that perspective gives you a clearer picture of who this person really is. You might ask yourself questions like: are they angry all the time? Do they betray your trust? Do you experience a strange gut feeling every time you see them? There are countless different reasons why a relationship may grow toxic. You may have experienced some of those reasons in the past. And you may experience others in the future. But the worst thing you can do is ignore the past. You need to learn from your mistakes, identify repeating patterns, and make an effort to improve. If you have a habit of recycling toxic partners, well, it’s time to end that painful cycle.
No.3 The Pitfalls Of Cramming（临时抱佛脚的陷阱）
Have you ever procrastinated something until the night before? Do you rush to finish your responsibilities moments before they’re due? This terrible habit has a tremendous impact on your mindset and productivity. Many people argue procrastination isn’t all that bad. Some say they work best under pressure that they over perform when they’re pressed for time. While pressure and deadlines can be motivating. Procrastination is never something you shoud do on a regular basic. Procrastination places a huge amount of stress on your brain. Each responsibility looms over you like a weight hanging over your head. It may seem easier to put off your responsibilities but you’re creating more stress each time you delay your work. As you get closer and closer to that deadline, your stress will snowball in the back of your mind. It’s a little noise that’s getting louder and louder until suddenly that noise is the only thing you can hear. So what creates all this stress? Why does procrastination have such a huge impact on your brain? There are three reasons why: uncertainty, ill-preparedness and self-doubt. When you procrastinate, your brain becomes more and more unsure that you’re going to finish. You feel less prepared and you worry that you’re going to fail. Those thoughts create all kinds of excess tension, so your stress skyrockets. Now luckily this destructive habit is more than fixable, but you need to make a conscious choice to be proactive, to plan ahead, to change the way you approach your responsibilities. Instead of creating stress and uncertainty, proactivity increases your confidence, improves your performance and helps you stay organized. But proactivity isn’t something you do just once or twice, like procrastination, it’s a habit you maintain in all areas of your life. So don’t wait until the night before to tackle your responsibilities, don’t try to cram everything into the last five minutes. You may think you work better under tight time constraints, but your brain doesn’t. You brain needs time to think, analyze, and most importantly, relax. So start early, plan ahead, and stay on top of your responsibilities.
No.4 Materializing You Worries
Have you ever panicked so much about something your worries came to life? This is another bad habit you need to quit immediately. Imagine you’re flustered about a speech you have to give tomorrow. You’re panicking about all the mistakes you might make, the words you might mess up, the jokes that might not land. You bury yourself so deep in your anxiety and self-doubt that you end up sabotaging your own performance. Thing don’t go the way you wanted them to. Why? Well because you brought your own worries to life. Coping with anxiety and self-doubt is a difficult thing. You grow absorbed in those swirling negative thoughts. It’s incredibly challenging to break free. In those moments, your worries are all you can think about. You find yourself struggling to wrap your head around anything else, anything, even small mindless chores. As your worries spiral out of control, small fears transform into overwhelming catastrophes. You grow convinced that each mistake will be a complete disaster. But a mistake is just that. It’s a mistake, everyone makes mistakes every day, and most of the time, they’re not that bad. All right, now, let’s go back to your speech, what if you do mess up a sentence or two? What if you tell a joke that doesn’t land? Think realistically about what could possibly happen next, step back and analyze the reality of the situation. Something may have seemed like a disaster at the time, but in reality, it’s not even worth worrying about. So don’t let your worries push you around and remember that a worry is just a worry. It’s not the truth, it’s not a fact, it’s unrealistic, it’s exaggerated and sometimes, it’s downright impossible. So whenever you’re drowning in a pool of negative thinking, just take a breath, realign your thoughts and take a more logical approach. By thinking logically, you can separate real consequences from your brain’s catastrophic fantasies. Now. of course, it’s not always easy to stop a downward spiral. But there are tricks you can use to block your worries from taking over your life. One psychological trick, uses scheduled blocks of time to control your worrying. Psychologists recommend a 30-minute period dedicated to worries, fears and doubts. In those 30 minutes, just let your mind run wild, think freely about all the things that might go wrong. But when those 30 minutes are up, you take control over your mind, you silence your worries and you save them for tomorrow. Yeah this trick sounds a bit strange but it really does work. It limits the amount of time you spend worrying every day, and it keeps your doubts from interfering with the rest of your life. Alright let’s say you schedule your worrying block from 8 to 8:30 every night, whenever you worry outside of those bounds, you simply tell yourself: hey, I’ll worry about this later. Hey, not only will this help you concentrate, but worrying blocks minimize the risk of a downward spiral.
cope v.处理 frustrated adj.懊恼的，沮丧的，失望的；失意的，不得志的；无效的 numb v.使麻木；adj.麻木的 temptation n.引诱，诱惑；诱惑人的东西 breakup n.崩溃 on the back burner 被搁置：指某件事情处于不会立即得到关注和行动的位置 stall v.拖延 spare v.抽出，拿出（时间、金钱等） drawn v.拉，拖，吸引 trap n.[计]陷阱；圈套 infatuated v.迷恋；使糊涂（infatuate 的过去分词） trait n.特性，特质，性格 realize v.了解，意识到 over look v.忽视，忽略 glimmer n.微光；闪光；少许 stuck v.粘，贴；把……放（某处）；刺，戳，插（stick 的过去式和过去分词形式） objectively adv.客观地 gut feeling 直觉 tremendous adj.巨大的，极大的 mindset n.观念 loom snowball v.滚雪球 excess tension 过度紧张：指身体或心理上的过度紧张，通常会导致身体不适或情绪失控 skyrocket v．急速上升 fixable adj.可修复的 organized adj.有条理的 tackle v.应付，解决 cram v.塞进，挤满 constraint n.[数]约束；限制；约束条件 stay on top of your responsibilities 做好你的本职工作 flustered adj.慌张的；激动不安的 end up 最终到达/陷入 sabotage v.蓄意破坏 absorbed v.被吸引的 swirling v.盘旋 spiral 持续加剧的上升 overwhelming adj.难以抗拒的，巨大的，压倒性的 mess up 搞砸：指在某件事情上犯错误或处理不当，导致结果不如预期 realistically adv.现实地；实际地；逼真地 unrealistic adj.不切实际的；不实在的 downright adj.adv.（强调反面的或令人不快的事物）彻头彻尾的，十足的 drowning v.淹没；（使）[外科]淹溺；浸没（drown 的 ing 形式） downward adj.向下的，下降的 dedicated vt.致力于，献身于 interfering v.妨碍（interfere 的 ing 形式）
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