How to Stop Settling for Less
If you are dissatisfied with how your life is going, the hope is that you can shift it in the right direction anytime you want. The key is to analyze your own actions and reflect on the changes that you need to make in your life. Once you do, your life won’t change overnight, but you will see incremental changes that empower you to find personal fulfillment over time, be it with relationships, your job, or your health.
Stop explaining away the bad behavior of others
How many times have we all said something like this? “He’s just having a bad day.” “She isn’t usually like this.” “They didn’t mean it that way.” Here is the first thing to remember: bad behavior is simply bad behavior and should never be rationalized. Whether we have a terrible day at the office, are in a car accident, or suffer from childhood trauma, none of us have the right to take it out on other people. You will continue to experience what you are willing to tolerate from other people. So, a good first step to no longer settling is to refuse to put up with anything inappropriate.
Understand that confidence is not the lottery
I once read that a certain Hollywood star had won the genetics lottery, meaning she was drop-dead gorgeous because she had the genes the rest of us don’t have. This is only true if we believe that it is. Beauty, or attractiveness, is 100% subjective, so if someone else is considered beautiful, why can’t the rest of us be, too?
It is the same thing for confidence. Every person has the right to feel good about themselves – it isn’t something reserved for the lucky 1% of the world. Your future will look very different once you understand that independently of what anyone else believes, you have the right to feel confident.
Remember that the future changes as soon as we change our thinking
Does the past predict the future? No, not if we don’t let it. Think on this idea: only our actions today affect what happens to us tomorrow. That is because no matter what happened in the past, we can shift our lives in a completely new direction by changing what goes through our minds.
As an example, if you truly believe that nothing in your life will ever get any better, then you will have no motivation to try. You will be defeated before you even think of making changes. If, however, you believe that while your past has not been easy, you can change your future, then you will take action.
Become more confident about expressing what you need or want
There are basically 3 types of people: those who struggle to convey what they want, those who can assertively advocate for themselves, and those who bulldoze over everyone else. Which one are you?
If you have a hard time verbalizing what you want to do, then speaking up more often will feel foreign to you. It may feel like you are swinging to the other extreme, which you definitely shouldn’t do. In the middle, however, you can find a healthy balance: speaking up for yourself while respecting that here and there, you will have to compromise.
If you don’t want to do it, don’t agree to do it
Have you ever found yourself agreeing to do something that you don’t truly want to do? While everyone has to help with a work project that’s less than thrilling or eat something blah at a dinner party, you should never agree to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable or disrespects you as a person. And remember: while compromise will always be necessary in any relationship, you should never be the only one doing it. Sometimes it really will be your turn to choose the restaurant, and whoever is with you will just have to get over it gracefully.
You can see from these suggestions that the key to not settling for less lies within you. You must believe that you are worth more and that you deserve more. You must believe in yourself, and the more you do, the more the life you really want will materialize for you.
