We hear from life coaches and Instagram quotes that we need to identify our triggers to avoid negative and harmful behavior and situations. I do believe that’s true but there’s also something else we need to identify. Our indicators.
We live in a world where pain and struggle are being praised for no apparent reason. If you have eye bags, finish your 5th cup of coffee by 10 in the morning, always have troubled relationships you somehow feel validated in this world and I can say that I am also one to blame for this type of behavior because I do have eye bags, drink a gallon of coffee in the morning and go into one shipwreck of a relationship to the next.
Also, we became very detached from our emotional state and feelings. We just deal with negative feelings by ignoring them. We all live using the famous line “That’s just how it is”, “It’s no big deal” etc.
It’s not how it is and it is a big fucking deal.
We often ignore the notion of being in a negative, unhealthy situation just because we got used to it. We got used to feeling crappy, tired, exhausted, unmotivated… We became very mechanical in day to day life and forgot how to live and that’s why we need to find the indicators and patterns that help us realized that we are in a bad situation.
My personal indicators are smoking and writing. People who are close to me know that I have the tendency to obsessively smoke when something bad is happening to me. I tried breaking this awful habit several times but after two, three weeks, maybe even two months of not smoking something stressful happens and I just find myself buying cigarettes and looking like a chimney. As for my writing, when I put down something on paper I always read the whole thing in the end and I can sense the tone in which I wrote it and that is a strong indicator of the way I’m feeling.
Indicators are something like behavior patterns and you need to find them. When you catch yourself doing those things, repeating those patterns find the reason why and try to problem solve with logic the situation in which you are in. Indicators are mostly bad habits like smoking, drinking, binge eating etc.
I know it’s sometimes painful and hard to just get in touch with your emotions, with yourself and admitting that you are in a bad state but it’s necessary in order for you to pull yourself up and get stronger.
I hope this all made sense because I struggled with describing all of this and just find the words. Let me know in the comments what do you think and what are your indicators.