When Bad Things Happen You Can Either Dwell On Them Or Move On, The Choice Is Yours

We’ve heard it a million times: Life is hard, but you have to keep calm and carry on. It is impossible to go through life without getting caught in rain — sometimes, torrential thunderstorms.

Breakups, rejection and failure all present testing times to which we all react differently. Some of us eat and cry and some of us drink more alcohol. But eventually, we all get over it.

Sometimes though, people cling to a setback for so long that it becomes a part of their identities, embedded in their minds for years.

These people are losers, as they choose to waste their lives allowing external situations to dictate their self-perceptions. Truly, they are losing out on experiencing life.

Consider the girl who can’t be happy in a committed relationship because she’s so concerned about getting hurt. Her ex broke her heart when he decided to sleep her friend, so now she pushes people away and prefers to remain in her comfort zone of self-pity and despair.

Consider the girl who failed her finals and now sees herself as a failure, wasting time lying in bed, dwelling on the past. Dwelling never solves anything, but people do it because it’s comfortable.

Yes, plenty of people endure unfortunate incidents, but, upon choosing to feed their insecurities, these people only continue to be insecure. People have two choices upon facing adversity: dwell or move past.

It’s easy to listen to your failures and choose to give up, but don’t allow your failures to become reflections of who you are, because they simply aren’t.

While on some level, it’s natural for a past experience to shape your perception of the world, you run the risk of allowing yourself to believe that’s all the world can offer. The comfort of allowing past experiences to follow you only holds you back.

As comfortable as it is to agonize over a situation and feeding your broken heart, just know that the world owes you nothing and everything depends on your perception.

You have the choice to either identify what’s holding you back, deal with it and live for you, or spend your entire life wishing you had.

Sure, sometimes you’ll tell yourself to be strong and not to worry, as everything will to turn out okay, yet you wake up feeling sick, unable to sort your feelings. Rejection and heartache has impacted your self-esteem so negatively that you feel weak and useless.

You will never be immune to this emotional roller coaster. However, you can decide which side to take. So, pick. Are you the failure or the fighter?

Are you the girl who lets setbacks define you or the girl who makes sure they never will? This is the decision that will out outline your identity. It’s the decision of whether or not to be sure of yourself.

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