When it comes to your personality, and how you are as a person, it depends mostly on your mental makeup. Even though the world is becoming superficial with every passing day, with people focusing more on how you look from the outside, people tend to forget that a person is shaped up according to their mentality, and mental habits.
Every person grows with time, both physically and mentally, with some people experiencing their fair share of troubles, and hard times. This takes a psychological toll on them after a point, which sometimes manifests as resentment or bitterness. They might have their heart in the right place, but the pain of everything they have gone through overshadows that.
So, if you are one of these people, and you are actively trying to overcome this sense of bitterness, you need to look deep into how you think or how your mind works. The moment you realize all those mental habits that are making you feel bitter, you will slowly be able to work towards healing yourself and letting those habits go for good. Yes, it will take a lot of effort on your side, but the end result will be absolutely worth it.
Related: 3 Signs You Are Turning Into A Bitter Person and What You Can Do About It
Here Are 7 Mental Habits That Can Make You Feel Bitter
1. Failing To Forgive Yourself.
One of the biggest mental habits that make you feel bitter is not forgiving yourself. In order to be truly happy, and at peace with yourself, it is important for you to forgive yourself. It is important for you to understand that you are human, and your mistakes do not always define you, as long as you know that you need to be better.
Your inner healing can only start when you are ready to forgive yourself for your mistakes. Feelings like regret, shame, embarrassment, and guilt can eat away at you until there is no happiness left in you.
If you are constantly thinking about your past mistakes, and no matter how hard you try, you are not being able to move on, then you need to stop for a moment and explore those feelings. Once you do, you need to accept those feelings, face them, and finally let them go. The moment you are able to do this, those negative feelings will have no power over you, and you finally will be able to forgive yourself.
2. Failing To Forgive Others.
A common mistake that almost everyone makes when it comes to forgiveness is that they tend to believe forgiving someone or something is equivalent to forgetting that which caused you pain. That is why, even though they might say that they have forgiven someone, the truth is, they haven’t. At all.
True forgiveness is when you are able to face the fact that someone wronged you, and even though it hurts like hell, you are trying to not let that dominate your life. Once you accept and acknowledge what has happened, you will notice that all that resentment, and bitterness that you were harboring in your heart are slowly seeping away.
Forgiving someone does not mean that what they did, or made you go through was okay. Forgiveness actually means that you are not going to let their negativity interfere with your happiness and inner peace. Because when you choose forgiveness, you are also choosing kindness for yourself.
Related: 4 Simple Tips To Practice Forgiveness and 4 Ways To Go About It
3. Overgeneralization.
Overgeneralization is another one of those mental habits, that can make you feel bitter and negative in the long run. Even though you might not realize it always. Once you start having the mindset, that because you failed at one thing, you are going to fail at literally everything else, you are giving in to the toxicity of overgeneralization. Or because one person is evil/bad, then the whole human race is bad.
Overgeneralizing can make you feel paranoid, and you will end up actually screwing up things that you are genuinely good at. Your confidence and mindset take a direct hit from this mental habit and end up making you feel that you will never succeed, or worse, you are not good enough to excel at something. A few more side-effects of overgeneralization are that it can even lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, fear, low self-esteem, and trust issues.
If happiness and contentment are what you are looking to have in your life, you need to bid goodbye to this mental habit for good. Yes, the world is a dangerous, and unfair place, but that does not mean that life does not have anything good to offer to you, or that every person is out to get you.
4. Giving Into Hopelessness.
An extreme sense of hopelessness can potentially put people at risk of depression, and suicide, making it a very dangerous thing. Even if your sense of hopelessness is not as severe as this, giving in to this mental habit consistently can mess with your mental health in the long run.
Minor affirmations like “the world is getting worse every day”, or “my husband will never change his ways”, or “I will never get a good job”, or “I will never be successful like my friends,” can cause a lot of damage.
The best way to not let hopelessness take over you all the time is by acknowledging the fact that along with the bad, there are a lot of good things that life has to offer. Fixating on just the negative things is never going to serve you well. Can you imagine how happy and peaceful you will feel, once you start considering the good things about the one life that you have?
Related: The 5 Feelings That Stop You From Being Happy and How To Control Them
5. Lack Of Gratitude.
Gratitude is something that is always overlooked, and that is why people always complain about how they are never happy. Being grateful for the big things, as well as the small things shifts your perspective entirely. When you start practicing gratitude, you will see for yourself, how happy and content you feel most of the time. Acknowledging the good things, instead of only obsessing about the bad, will change your life for good.
Imagine, you are standing in a line waiting to bill your groceries, and instead of feeling impatient for waiting too long, you think about how lucky you are that you can afford to put food on your table, whereas there are people who don’t even get to eat for days. Now think about all that appreciation, and satisfaction you feel within yourself. That is the power of gratitude, and the more you invest in it, the better your life will be.
6. Having Extremely High Standards When It Comes To Others.
It is good to know your own worth, and have high standards. But it’s not really a good thing to hold everyone to a high standard, whilst failing to apply the same to yourself. If you continue to set impossible standards for people, you will constantly end up feeling disappointed.
Sometimes, you tend to criticize other people for their flaws, all the while not even realizing that you have the same flaws. The thing is when you see the same shortcomings you have in yourself in other people, it ends up making you feel uncomfortable, and you end up projecting your insecurities on them.
Instead of giving in to this frustration every time something goes south, take a deep breath, and try to understand what the problem actually is. Are you only focusing on their mistakes, but never yours? Are you always looking for problems, where there aren’t any? Getting the answers to these questions can help you get rid of this problematic mental habit with time.
7. Constant Feelings Of Helplessness.
Constant feelings of helplessness is another mental habit that ends up making you feel bitter in your life. Feeling helpless all the time, and thinking that you have absolutely no control whatsoever on your life, are sure shot ways of running headfirst into the world of bitterness. Furthermore, feelings of helplessness can also contribute to depression.
You might have been in situations in the past where things were out of your control (such as neglect, and abuse), but now that you have come out of those situations, and taken your power back, there is no point in dwelling on them. Yes, you were helpless once upon a time, but now you are not, and the more you focus on that, the stronger and confident you will feel.
Related: Victim Complex: 10 Signs Someone Has A Victim Mentality
Mental habits that cause bitterness might take some time to get over and move on for good, but you have to start from somewhere, don’t you?
If you want to know more about mental habits that make you bitter, check this video out below:
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