Life is not always carefree and fun. It can be stressful and difficult, it can even start to feel so tiring and difficult that a person cannot bear all the weight on their shoulders.
Things go wrong, people let us down, and bad things happen. Sometimes it is as if everything that can go wrong is doing it at once.
When you feel like you’ve been through a hurricane and have run out of patience, it’s incredibly important not to give in to the temptation to become bitter and angry.
As difficult as it may be, you have to try to focus on the lighter side of things and not give up your optimism.
Bitterness is an ugly thing, and it only ends up hurting us and the people we love in the end. It benefits no one and adds even more unpleasantness to a world already loaded with a lot of negativity and challenges.
1. Hold on to grudges.
Carrying personal injuries with you in life gets heavy. It casts a shadow of negativity over all your thoughts and feelings, and can directly impede your ability to progress or improve.
When you refuse to let go of a grudge, you are not receiving any kind of revenge against the person you are angry with, you are only hurting yourself.
2. Using drama to attract attention or sympathy.
Because they are unable to make friends in a positive way, such as through friendly conversation, they tend to cause dramatic situations and problems to connect with people.
Obviously this is an unhealthy form of companionship and can only last as long as the problem may be at the core, so it is always temporary.
It can be tempting to try to win friends this way because it seems easy at first, but if you find that the conversations you have with someone always focus on complaints, annoyances, or negative talk about other people, you need to change your tone.
“Friends” of this type only amplify the bad energy around you.
3. Constant jealousy and envy.
There’s a good reason we refer to this as a monster. It is one of the most destructive and ugly emotions of which we are capable.
One of the first signs of true bitterness is the inability to be happy for others when good things happen to them.
If all that comes to mind when you hear someone else’s good news is how much more you deserve, you need a reality check.
4. Always expecting the worst.
Sometimes it can be a real battle to stay positive, even when you can’t seem to get a break from problems, but it’s essential to avoid falling into cynicism.
This can become a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.
You do your best and still lose a couple of times, so you stop believing that the result will never be bad.
Unfortunately, this mindset ultimately sets them up only for the failure they want to avoid.
5. Focusing only on the negative.
Some things in life are just not in our control, this is something we all have to accept.
What is always within our control, however, is how we react to these things and what we choose to take away from them.
The human brain is built to survive, so we do have a tendency to be more attentive to negative or worrying things than to positive things.
That’s why it’s so important that we make positivity a priority. We need to be willing to put in the energy and work it takes to take stock of the good things in life.
