Mental Health
Lessons from 7 Mental Mistakes That Made My Life Miserable
How I corrected them and transformed into a happier and healthier person
Introduction
None of us is perfect in this world. Our mistakes make us human. Learning from mistakes and not repeating them bring us many benefits. Like everyone else, I made many mistakes.
These mistakes gave me 12 debilitating health conditions.
My mistakes came with significant ramifications. However, when I identified and corrected these mistakes, I transformed my physical health, mental health, and overall well-being.
In hindsight, I believe these mistakes were meant to happen for me to experience life fully. Each error created some pain and caused lots of suffering. However, they increased my adversity quotient significantly.
My mental health improved with adversity quotient and new experiences. My brain was rewired for joy and happiness after a half-century.
Since identifying and correcting these mistakes brought me many benefits, I’d like to share them with you, hoping some of them may resonate. I keep them short, focusing on critical points.
Mistake #1 — Consuming Misinformation
As the adage goes, garbage in, garbage out.
I was hungry for information and learned to consume a vast amount of useless information, like drinking from a fire hose.
Misinformation, particularly in health and fitness domains, created havoc in my life. I suffered from metabolic syndrome caused by excessive consumption of carbohydrates. Sugar was killing me, as evident in my blood work.
Misinformation about cholesterol, the danger of saturated fats, vegetables, and fruits being essential for health, and meat causing cancer are just a few pieces of misinformation that I had to relearn.
Later I experienced that The More Nutritious Fat I Consumed, the More Belly Fat Got Burned.
When I identified faults in these problematic information pieces and relearned them from trusted sources, I made substantial progress in my health and fitness journey.
Mistake #2 — Unchallenged Beliefs
Beliefs can be very powerful. They affect us at mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.
Related to misinformation, my beliefs and not challenging them caused many problems. Even though I had a science and technology education at a younger age, beliefs played a massive role in my life choices.
Reading self-help books, especially from best-selling authors and influencers, I believed their words without challenging the truth. They sounded so lovely and comforting.
MANY VALUABLE THINGS STARTED MANIFESTING when I consumed information with a critical view and challenged my prior beliefs with proven knowledge constructs.
The prominent effect was on the improvement of my physical and mental health. My emotional maturity significantly increased. Thus, my relationships improved.
Mistake #3 — Suffering from Confusion
Misinformation and beliefs caused a lot of confusion. As a result, I struggled to make sound decisions.
Due to confusion, I could not make timely decisions and act on my plans. Even planning was difficult.
Complexities caused a majority of my confusion. I was my own worst enemy by making my life more complicated with excessive information resulting in analysis paralysis.
When I found ways to simplify my life, things dramatically changed. The most significant impact was by removing clutter in physical and mental formats.
Mistake #4 — Hedonistic Tendencies & Instant Gratification
From a young age, I had an obsession with certain hedonistic emotions. I thought life was just about having fun at all times. As a result, I neglected the negative aspects of life.
Taste was the primary factor in food choices. For example, sugar and fried foods tasted so well that I got obsessed with them. However, as some of the healthy food did not taste well, I neglected them.
The exercise was strenuous and painful, and I thought it was not essential for health, so I only did minimal movement and chose sedentary life. I was focusing on whatever felt good at the moment. Instant gratification was leading my life.
Instead of dealing with pain naturally, I tried to find easy and quick ways to suppress it. Using painkillers and antacids are two prime examples.
Too many hedonistic activities led to mild depression.
Reducing my hedonistic tendencies and learning to tolerate pain provided a more balanced life. Pain and pleasure are like yin and yang. Understanding this polarity gave me new perspectives.
Mistake #5 — Wrong Priorities
Even though I have always been goal-oriented and set strategies for my profession and personal life, I struggled to choose the right priorities to help me reach my destination.
Excessive useless information was the root cause of selecting wrong priorities. For example, I thought work was the most critical priority in my earlier life. Due to too much focus on work, I neglected my health.
Excessive work causes chronic stress and inflammation. These conditions severely affected my physical and mental health. The mistake manifested as trading off my health for work.
Instead of managing time, I learned to manage my priorities for my goals. Once I learned to set the right priorities and act upon them, the speed of reaching my desired destination increased.
Mistake #6 — Addiction and Obsession
I believe I possess addictive genes. As mentioned in item #4, I quickly got addicted to hedonistic activities and substances. Any sort of addiction might pose a risk to mental health.
Worst of all, getting addicted to work and being a workaholic caused a lot of health issues. My chronic stress and inflammation passed the threshold.
My emotional stress hit the roof. How Not to Be Cracked by Toxic Emotions and Chronic Stress at Work: A structured framework to deal with emotional toxicity and prolonged stress
Dealing with knowledge created unusual experiences. Even though some might say obsession with knowledge is a positive thing, too much of anything can be harmful.
When I got rid of my addictions and learned the importance of moderation, I experienced substantial improvement in my life. The correct dose for anything became a new principle for me. I focus on the optimal rather than the best.
Mistake #7 — Unrealistic Expectations
I expected more than necessary from my investments and relationships. These expectations were the causes of my persistent optimism. I thought everything would end with positive outcomes.
When I faced adverse outcomes, I suffered from painful disappointments. However, I still remain optimistic but not at an unrealistic level.
Lowering my expectations and staying in the reality zone saved me from disappointment.
I learned how to move from comfort to the stretch zone. What Does It Take To Live Above And Beyond? Choosing the optimal zone to operate seems to be the answer.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Making mistakes is essential for growth.
The more mistakes we make, the more we learn about ourselves. Mistakes can increase our adversity quotient and immunity to negative aspects of life.
The important point is to be brave to make mistakes and fail fast.
Failing fast and recovering quickly can bring many tangible and intangible benefits. We grow with experimentation and learn to thrive.
Identifying these mistakes and understanding the symptoms and root causes of problems helped me resolve my 12 entangled health conditions and transformed my life into a happier and more satisfied person.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
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As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
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