3 Bad Habits You Should Avoid In Your Early 20s

Since perhaps the beginning of time itself, people have been addicted to pointing their fingers at others for all the wrong things that happened in their lives. We blame our parents for not raising us correctly. We blame our income for the reason we’re not successful or happy. We blame our previous relationships from stealing away our youth.

But as fun as it is to blame other people for our mistakes, there comes a certain point where we have to stop blaming everyone else for how we feel, or the misfortunes in our lives. We can’t go through life obsessing about what could have been when we should be targeting how can we change it.

It would be like complaining to yourself about the fact you’re drowning in the middle of the ocean when there’s someone offering you help on a nearby cruise ship. Although you have a chance to escape death, if you continue concentrating on the wrong things, you won’t see the very thing that can save you.

And such as that horrible analogy, there might just be a boat waiting for you to answer their calls. All it takes is opening your ears and ignoring your initial negative thoughts.

Bad Habit #1

Don’t Label Yourself Incorrectly

No one’s perfect and as simple as that fact is, some people still have a difficult time accepting it. Once someone commits a wrong act, they tend to either consider themselves worthless or refuse to admit they’re wrong. It’s like when your friend did something that was disrespectful, but was too stuck up to admit they were wrong.

But there’s a dangerous road that’s created when you blame yourself rather than the foolish acts you committed. And by constantly blaming yourself, it lowers your self-esteem and you develop a tendency to avoid more responsibilities. It’s why supervisors who previously messed up on a project become too scared of ever trying something new again. It’s why people who fail tests see no point of taking them again.

And this bad habit is like whenever a student answers a question wrong in front of the entire classroom. Even if that student knows the next question the teacher asks the entire class, he’ll remember the last time he embarrassed himself and refuse to answer any more questions.

But as much as we like to hit ourselves for our stupid mistakes we made in the past, people can’t label themselves by those traits. Just as people who fail aren’t failures, those who make mistakes aren’t labeled worthless. Every action that you commit remains in the past and the only way you can control your future is by maintaining your present situation.

Sure, you might face a few consequences or setbacks if you made a few silly mistakes in the past. But those things wash over in time. If I were to slap my friend in the face, she’ll definitely get angry and attack me. But once her anger leaves and she sees how I’m trying to correct the situation, it creates a brighter future than if I were to pretend it was in my right to slap her.

Avoid labeling yourself as a loser, failure, or anything else that’s negative because you can’t determine your future. Just because you fail some test doesn’t mean you’ll fail forever. Sure, you might have to study a little more before you retake it, but that test doesn’t define you as a human. Your mom didn’t give birth to you just so you can take that one test your irritating Calculus teacher decided to hand out one afternoon.

The idea that you label yourself from your mistakes is a dangerous habit to develop. It’s like calling a man a criminal because of the evil deeds he committed in the past, and refusing to believe he can ever change because being evil is his very nature.

Sure, there are a variety of people who continue living a life of crime, but that doesn’t mean we should label everyone who has a criminal background as an automatic crook. Because once we label someone as a villain, a loser, or a failure, we help convince them that is who they actually are, and that they can never stop committing those deeds.

You may not have the best ideas at work, the best grades at school, or even the intelligence of a mice. But those traits don’t classify you. They only act as your background and nothing more. What determines your overall character is how you control the present, and act as the person you want to be.

Bad Habit #2

Don’t Judge Other People

It’s easy judging and making false assumptions upon other people. And at times it can even be fun. After all, who has the time to understand someone’s entire personality when it’s much easier to rely on the typical stereotype we give them.

If we see someone angry and acting rude, we automatically assume they were jerks the moment their mom gave birth to them. They probably even slapped the Doctor across the face and laughed at crying children.

But as easy as it is to label others the way we think, avoid that habit because it creates self-destructive tendencies. When you automatically assume someone’s bad because of their history, how they look, or their present behavior, you automatically become more hostile towards them. You close the door to understand that person as a human, and you label them as some one-dimensional character from a movie you hated.

Sure, there could be that one jerk who’s at your job or classroom you don’t like, but your belief about that jerk won’t make any changes. And by imposing your own beliefs on how that jerk should behave will only increase your own blood pressure and anxieties.

You may want that jerk to act the way you desire, but it’s a battle you can never win. You have a better chance at imagining how you’re going to spend your lottery winnings after your third date with Jessica Alba.

And although it’s tempting to fight that jerk, torture him, and tie him up somewhere whenever he acts negative, it’s not the proper way to handle it. Instead, try to understand why he’s feeling that way and see life from his shoes.

You might not feel his feelings or know his backstory, but the best way to reduce the anger in such people is to be a relaxing source near them. Unlike the times you lived with your parents, part of living in the real world is understanding that other people besides you have personal problems too.

Sure, we like to imagine the people we work with, go to class with, and even Facebook with have lives without any worries. But that’s only because we don’t hear about them. Unlike a television show we watch nightly, we don’t know every aspect of Jill’s day once she leaves work.

Someone at your job could be suffering from depression and barely holding onto life by a thread. Someone you eat lunch with can be dealing with loneliness and high anxieties. There is no logic in imposing our beliefs on how other people should behave because freewill exist. The best you can ever hope is to effectively show someone the proper way to act is by being the example yourself.

If you don’t like the way someone behaves, don’t let it dictate your emotions. Acknowledge the fact they have their own personal issues and forgive them for any rude thing they may have said. However, you still need to set limits and keep away from that jerk if and when he abuses you.

Bad Habit #3

Don’t Assume You Can’t Correct The Past

Whenever you feel depressed, at some level you’re assuming there’s a fault in you that can’t be fixed. Whether it’s your poor social skills, your intelligence, or your overall life in general, we sometimes tend to assume there’s no way we can fix it.

Sure, there might have been a point in your life where you tried to fix whatever was bothering you, but it didn’t go successfully. And from that moment on, you assumed you were bound to forever suffer from that fate.

But these false beliefs we create in ourselves can be changed. If you tell yourself, “I messed up speaking to that cute girl, therefore I am bound to be forever alone,” you’re giving yourself an automatic death sentence.

Instead, always see the situation from a logical perspective by observing your actions rather your own self. Tell yourself, “I shouldn’t have thrown up on her, but humans often make mistakes. The next time I speak to a woman, I’ll know what not to do.”

You’re not expected to fix all your problems in a fast pace. Sure, I’ll love to have the ability to suddenly approach any woman I like, but that’s a social skill that needs to be worked on daily.

It’s like giving a violin to a child and telling him to master it in only one day. But since this is the real world, he’s not going to be a great musician we expected him to be. He’s going to freak out and mark himself as a failure because he couldn’t master an impossible task.

If you want to overcome any boundaries in your life, it takes correcting your past errors through work and practice. Even when you don’t want to do it, force yourself to workout, speak to other people, or whatever else you’d like to work on.

For more like these,

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