13 Things Mentally Strong People Don\'t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success pdfdrive com

TROUBLESHOOTING AND COMMON TRAPS
If you spend all your time looking in the rearview mirror, you can’t look out the
windshield. Staying stuck in the past will prevent you from enjoying the future.
Recognize times when you’re dwelling on the past and take the steps necessary
to heal your emotions so you can move forward.
WHAT’S HELPFUL
Reflecting on the past enough that you can learn from it

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Moving forward in your life, even when it may be painful to do so
Actively working through grief so you can focus on the present and plan
for the future
Thinking about negative events in terms of facts, not emotions
Finding ways to make peace with the past
WHAT’S NOT HELPFUL
Trying to pretend the past didn’t happen
Trying to prevent yourself from moving forward in life
Focusing on what you’ve lost in life without being able to live in the
present
Replaying painful events in your mind repeatedly and focusing on how
you felt during them
Trying to undo the past or make up for your past mistakes

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CHAPTER 8
THEY DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES
OVER AND OVER
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
—JOHN POWELL
When Kristy entered my therapy office, the first thing she said was, “I have a
college degree and I’m smart enough not to yell at my coworkers. So why can’t I
stop yelling at my kids?” Every morning she made a promise that she wasn’t
going to yell at her two teenagers. But almost every evening she found herself
raising her voice toward at least one of them.
She told me she yelled because she felt frustrated when her kids didn’t listen to
her. And lately, it seemed like they hardly ever listened. Her thirteen-year-old
daughter often refused to do her chores and her fifteen-year-old son wasn’t
putting any effort into his homework. Whenever Kristy came home from a long
day at work to find them watching TV and playing video games, she told them to
get to work. But they usually talked back and Kristy resorted to yelling.
Kristy clearly knew that yelling wasn’t good for her kids. She recognized that
it only made the situation worse. She prided herself on being an intelligent and

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successful person, so it surprised her when she struggled to get this area of her
life under control.
Kristy spent a couple of sessions examining why she kept making the same
mistake over and over. She discovered that she really didn’t know how to
discipline the kids without yelling, and she wasn’t going to be able to stop yelling
at her kids until she had a plan about what to do instead. So we worked on
various strategies she could use to respond to disrespectful and defiant behavior.
Kristy decided she’d offer one warning, and then follow through with a
consequence if her kids didn’t do as she asked.
She also needed to learn how to recognize when she was getting angry, so she
could step away from a situation before she started yelling. Her downfall seemed
to be that when she lost her cool, her rational thoughts about discipline went out
the window.
I further worked with Kristy to help her find a new way to think about
discipline. When she first came to me, she admitted that she felt it was her
responsibility to make her kids do what she said, at all costs, because if they
didn’t, it would mean they won. But this approach always seemed to backfire.
Once Kristy could let go of the idea she needed to win a power struggle, she
developed a new outlook on discipline. If her children chose not to follow her
directions, she took away their electronics without arguing and trying to force
them to behave.
It took some practice for Kristy to change her parenting strategies. There were
times where she still found herself resorting to yelling, but she was now equipped
with alternative discipline strategies. Each time she found herself slipping, she
could review her triggers and identify strategies to prevent raising her voice
again the next time.