{"id":1541,"date":"2015-07-01T21:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T21:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chadstutzman.net\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2015-07-01T21:00:53","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T21:00:53","slug":"six-guideposts-for-an-emotionally-healthy-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/?p=1541","title":{"rendered":"Six Guideposts for an Emotionally Healthy Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wholehearted\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Living an emotionally healthy life is incredibly freeing.\u00a0 Yet it is very difficult to do because we all grow up learning unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy emotions.\u00a0 Think of it like pieces of armor that we put on growing up, defense mechanisms, ways of handling conflict, how to treat other people, what we think about ourselves, others and God.<\/p>\n

In order to get healthy here are a six guideposts that can help us all get healthier emotionally and live with freedom and joy.\u00a0 Many of these guideposts come from researcher, author and speaker Brene’ Brown.<\/p>\n

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  1. Cultivate authenticity and let go of what other people think – \u00a0 <\/strong>Authenticity is a choice and must be practiced every day.\u00a0 It’s letting ourselves been seen for who we really are and also setting healthy boundaries in our lives.\u00a0 It’s being able to say no in a kind way yet stay firm when pressured.\u00a0 It’s choosing to have a hard conversation instead of stuffing it and letting resentment fill us up.\u00a0 It’s paying attention to what we are feeling and why and dealing with the truth.\u00a0 It’s speaking up instead of holding it in.\u00a0 It’s taking our mask off and being our true self, imperfections and all.<\/li>\n
  2. Cultivate self-compassion and let go of perfectionism – <\/strong>Perfectionism leads to frustration, anger and a host of other unhealthy emotions.\u00a0 It also leads to negative self-talk and keeps you from moving forward in relationships and projects.\u00a0 It can feed fear and keep us paralyzed.\u00a0 To let go of perfectionism we need to be able to practice self-compassion or being kind to ourselves.\u00a0 It’s allowing ourselves to deeply feel what we are currently going through and understanding that we are not alone in our struggles.\u00a0 Others have gone through similar things and survived.\u00a0 We must be able to love ourselves before we can love others.\u00a0 It’s giving ourselves a break from having to be perfect and always doing the right thing.<\/li>\n
  3. Cultivate a resilient spirit and let go of numbing behaviors – <\/strong>This involves knowing who we are and how we are wired.\u00a0 It is the self-awareness to know what our numbing behaviors are and a willingness to get help to avoid going there.\u00a0 It’s understanding our purpose in life and God’s plan for our lives.\u00a0 When we grow spiritually it strengthens our spirit and allows us to bounce back much faster when troubles come.\u00a0 It’s having a healthy outlet for venting frustrations and pain.\u00a0 Allowing people close to us to know us and be vulnerable with them about what is happening.\u00a0 numbing behaviors include things like spending hours on Facebook or social media, watching TV, video games, working.\u00a0 It can be drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking or watching porn.\u00a0 It can also be focusing on our phone and not being fully present with the people around us.<\/li>\n
  4. Cultivate gratitude & joy and let go of scarcity & fear – <\/strong>It’s not just having an attitude of gratitude, but actually practicing gratitude.\u00a0 Keeping a gratitude journal and actually telling others how grateful we are for them and the things we are grateful for.\u00a0 It’s living with an eternal perspective and knowing we have a higher purpose in life.\u00a0 It’s noticing the little things in life and being able to live in the moment and just be.\u00a0 It is being comfortable in our own skin and not trying to be somebody we are not.\u00a0 It’s having an abundance mentality, and not a scarcity mentality.\u00a0 It’s being generous with our time, our money and possessions and our abilities by helping and serving others.<\/li>\n
  5. Cultivate intuition and trusting faith and let go of the need for certainty – <\/strong>Certainty is not real but uncertainty is.\u00a0 Our intuition comes from the experiences we have had in life.\u00a0 To cultivate intuition we need to think about and learn from our experiences.\u00a0 It’s also important to grow in our faith and keep searching for answers to life’s questions.\u00a0 Yet it’s also being OK with not having all the answers.\u00a0 Many people would rather be miserable and certain than emotionally healthy and uncertain.\u00a0 One way to cultivate intuition and trusting faith to create time for silence and solitude.\u00a0 Building time into our schedules to connect with God, feed our soul and nourish our minds.<\/li>\n
  6. Cultivate creativity and let go of comparison – <\/strong>Every human being is creative, some people practice using it more than others.\u00a0 Unused creativity turns into unhealthy emotions like anger, judgement, rage and depression.\u00a0 When we start comparing ourselves to others our creativity goes down because of fear.\u00a0 Often because of something someone said or did to us as a child we avoid being creative because we fear not being good enough.\u00a0 When children get to be in the 4th and 5th grade their level of creativity goes way down because that is when their art begins to get graded and compared to others.\u00a0 To cultivate creativity we need to start doing something we gave up or thought we were no good at.\u00a0 Start drawing, painting, sculpting, writing, taking pictures, making videos.\u00a0 Finding our creative side and exercising it will bring joy, freedom and energy into our lives.\u00a0 Do something creative today.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Start pursuing an emotionally healthy life by cultivating the good and letting go of the bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Living an emotionally healthy life is incredibly freeing.\u00a0 Yet it is very difficult to do because we all grow up learning unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy emotions.\u00a0 Think of it like pieces of armor that we put on growing up, defense mechanisms, ways of handling conflict, how to treat other people, what we think about ourselves, … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Six Guideposts for an Emotionally Healthy Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,3,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change","category-character","category-emotional-health","category-faith","category-personal-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1544,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}