1. Ask yourself two questions and write down their answers.
Q.a What do you want in life?
Q.b What do you want from life?
Remember that these are two entirely different things. One depends on your own actions and one on the chance of your circumstances. Understand that answering these two questions clearly will help you see a lot of things in a broader perspective. Frame this and put it on a wall you see everyday or keep it in your wallet or pocket diary. When you have the slightest doubt about your smallest action, read your answer again and keep this little dilemma in the larger picture. It will help you decide where to go. Also allow the answers to change with your emotional and mental evolution.
2. There are times when you will feel utterly wronged. Times when you will not believe how someone could actually bring themselves to do what they did to you. It can make a mess of your mental health. And sometimes brooding over this becomes obsessive and addictive. The bitterness will dissolve itself into your blood and keep circulating through your entire being over and over again. Its venom you fill yourself with and the only thing its going to damage is you. You have three options in this case. Chose the one you are capable of. If you can write it down, scream it out, weep it away, talk it out, then do it. It may last for days, but do it. Take a break from everything, you don't have to carry the world on your shoulders. You don't owe anyone that. Just let it out until its gone completely. Do whatever you feel it will take to wash it away. Just don't resort to temporary relief providers, which kill the symptom and that too only temporarily. You will find yourself in a much bigger and impossible to get out of mess.
The other way is revenge. Give it back to the person. They deserve it. You will forgive them and they will forgive themselves.
Another very rare and hard to practice option is forgiveness without bitterness and revenge. This takes the longest time to come but stays forever. Its not an epiphany.. just gradual healing over a period of time which starts after you quit scraping the wound. It begins when you realize that you were made for better things, when you realize how much that experience has taught you, when you realize that what you have at present is so beautiful that you should not spend another momont in sorrow and agony.
3. Nurture yourself. Every single moment. For a while, stop looking at what the people around you are doing and concentrate completely on yourself. Disregarding the parameters set outside by your peer groups, colleagues, relative and everyone else..set your standards for yourself. Utilize each moment to do any and everything that makes you grow, that makes you happy. It should be such that when you go to sleep at night, you have something to your credit. Something..anything. Realize that this day in your life isn't coming back. Its going away forever. Give a worthy welcome and bid it a worthy farewell. And then tell me if you don't totally start falling in love with yourself. :)
4. Forgive yourself.
5. Always divide your long term goals into short term plans or you will tend to underestimate the distance.
6. Practice kindness everyday. In any form possible. Doesn't matter how big or small. Its the emotionally enriching and rewarding experience. And also, if you look close enough you will find endless opportunities to be kind.
7. Don't punish anyone else for anyone else's wrongdoings. Don't take out your anger, bitterness or revenge on the wrong people. You kill their hope and light. Its a great crime.
8. Don't limit your imaginations by the limits of other's imaginations, suppositions and opinions. Never be afraid to think, to create, to discover, to rediscover and to try. Your fears are your own contructs. They reside nowhere else but in your head.
9. If you are a woman. Punch the man in the gut or below when he says "Are you on your period?"
10. Move on and let people move on.
11. Never ever give in to emotional blackmailing (any blackmailing actually). Its emotional abuse and manipulation. No matter what happens, make yourself understand that you are making the decision for the right reason and you are not responsible for the actions of someone who stoops to that level. You owe no one but yourself.
12. Stop trying to change the things you have little or no power over. You are wasting your energy, your time and your life.
13. Don't deceive people about how you feel for them. Good or bad, love or hatred. Don't. You are trapping yourself and them in an illusion which is bound to break sooner or later.
14. Stop evaluating yourself by other people's standards. And stop defining yourself by what you have achieved or what you want to achieve. You are much more than that. You are the smile that comes on your face, you are the hug you give, you are the warmth you exude, you are the trust you build, you are the books you read,the songs you listen to, you are jokes that you find funny, the poetry you read, the places you love to go to, the people you bond with. You are also your anger, your selfishness, your greed and lust, your vanity and self obsession, your envy and indifference, your care and thoughtfulness, your illusions and disillusions, your dreams and despairs, your faith and betrayals, your truths and lies, your words spoken and unspoken.. you are all this and more. Not what you say, what you feel, what you do, what you think.. you are all this combined and much more.
15. As far as it is possible for you, avoid judging others. You literally have no idea.
16. In the hope of living a better tomorrow, don't forget to live a better today. It was a tomorrow you hoped to live once.
17. Its never ever too late to begin again.
18. Take some time out to stand and stare. Do something that keeps alive the child in you. Go sit on a swing, buy yourself candies, get a colouring book, buy balloons on your ways back from work, sing Happy Birthday to people when you call to wish them. Try and remember the birthdays and special days of your loved ones, do special things for them, sometimes randomly, without reason or occasions, do that to yourself too. Break out into a crazy jig, hug tightly, draw stick figures..anything.. just don't let the mundane engulf you.
19. Make amends if and when you can.
20. Don't let yourself go.
