What if you were thinking "if only ...": 7 Tips

If only... I did (a) to the university.
If only... I have taken (a) an invitation for cooperation.
If only... I do not parted (las) with her (him).
If only... I stopped (and) say 'if only'.

"If only" - the most common form justification for their failures and missed opportunities. And it is so attractive in terms of the very calm and diversion eye of our conscience, that some people manage to completely build in this life. They live in the country, "If it were just-lyandii".

If you noticed a bad habit of repeating at least mentally "if only ...", it means this is the first bell, and it is time to take serious action.

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The most terrible thing for me in this "if only" - is the awareness of a missed opportunity. If my head had such a thought, then I missed a chance. Since that, we were not particularly need these thoughts in my head do not appear.

1. Use your unfulfilled dreams, disillusionment and "what if" as steps to a brighter future. Failures that happen to us, it is better to process and consider to what extent the positive aspects. So you've got a bad experience and now know exactly what "it would be if you were ..." - no silly hopes in the style of "what if, if I did (a) it is, I still would have happened?". The experience of failure is not as valuable as a good experience. It may become necessary to layer on which your bright future will be built.

The best thing you can do - is to act and make the most of today than to recycle their "yesterday".

2. Those who are stuck in "if, yes if only", it is very difficult to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that they made in the past. Especially now, when it seems so obvious, and then in the head such clever ideas for some reason did not come. The ability to forgive ourselves is vital for those who want to move forward in life, not be stuck in the past, remembering and turning over his old bones errors. Saying "if only the youth knew, and old age could" certainly contains a lot of folk wisdom, but do not focus on it and make it an excuse for their failures.

Forgive yourself for what you did not know everything in the world when you were five!

3. Remind yourself that no one knows what would have happened if he had decided to take a different path - it could be worse! Each time thinking about what you choose a different path, perhaps it would have been much better - a futile exercise, which takes mental strength and spoil the mood takes you precious time that you could spend a to execute the selected option.

People, for some reason, tend to think that the unselected option probably would have been better! They especially do not think that in fact it could be much worse. And because it could have, and still like!

4. Stop constantly blame myself for everything happening. There is another extreme - people who constantly feel guilty for all the misfortunes, and actively punishing yourself for it! And they pull from the past what they think causes their current failures. Of course, constantly seek excuses for their failures in others - is not very good, but this bend even more detrimental to your future. Since you're not just stuck in their past (oh, here I am in the Soviet Union was Ooooh, and I was under the Soviet Union uuuuuh!), You are stuck in their failures. And in such a situation, your chances of success tend to zero the speed of light.

In his best-selling book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People» (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) Kushnir Harold (Harold Kushner) stresses that the world is unfair, and sometimes even very good people bad things happen, and not because they deserve it, but because the world just unfair.

5. Realize that Fixated on 'if only', you get bogged down in unproductive regret. Regret can be productive and useful only in that case, if you learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. Try to find a balance between productive and unproductive regret. Unproductive you will focus on how life would be better if it chose a different path. A productive regret will help you make the right choice in favor of a better future.

6. Allow yourself at least sometimes be in a bad mood. According to the classification of Dr. Kubler-Ross, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. All of them are necessary for the release process (failure) from past expectations in order to clear the way for a new dream.

So do not worry if you feel angry, you feel sadness and sometimes try to make a deal with yourself, others, and even God. Just be aware and accept the fact that all these steps are necessary to complete the process of blowing the tears of the past and the adoption of all the events. All this will eventually help you to enter into the inner world of the fact "that it" instead of what "could be."

7. Take the "theory of life in the style of a Swiss cheese." Realize that life can not be uniform and smooth as cream cheese. Rather, it is more like a Swiss cheese with all its characteristic holes and hollows. It is believed that the less homogeneous with Swiss cheese, so it tastes better. The same analogy can be made with life - the more "holes" (failures, errors) gets in our way, the more seasoned and experienced we become. We receive the necessary immunity and skills, which even in the most unpleasant situation will help you find the positive points and use this experience in the future.

Small otsutplenie personally from me for this rather topical theme. The author has written a post about what people tend to think that if they still choose another path, then everything would be much rosier than happened in the end. From my own experience I can say that if you think about future plans, we are a little scared, we tend to envision a terrible picture. In my case it was a trip to tropical Asia, with a small child. I was really scared, despite all the reassuring information that I read about Thailand and heard from people who have lived there with small children. I was scared that he was sick, that is around dirty and full of all sorts of unknown disease, we will be difficult, etc. and etc. I clocked myself so much that image in my mind would be a good scenario for a mediocre film horror.

But the interesting thing is that if I did not calm down their excessively rich imagination and because of their fears refused to trip, and then, in the future, I would think of it as a loss of a golden opportunity, which may no longer Nicodemus again. And it would not be represented Thailand as a country of the old fighters in the "Rambo" style (the jungle, monkeys and mud) as well as the interesting and beautiful country rich in culture, friendly people and stunning kitchen. Yes, I would imagine all elbows sgryzla of regret, and it would have poisoned the rest of my life.

But now I know exactly what to do if in my head there is at least one thought, which begins with "if only";)