After the Festive season is over, a lot of people often choose to take time to reflect and think about themselves as the New Year begins. For some people, this comes naturally, however, for others, they may struggle to find the time to commit to this worthwhile activity.
This can lead to them experiencing feels of self-doubt or being unable to take a different perspective later on when they need to.

That’s why we’ve created this handy five-part guide on how to change your perception of yourself, both mentally and physically. Use these tips and you’ll find your perspective will shift dramatically, putting you in great stead for 2019.

Understand how you view yourself

The first part of changing your personal perception is understanding exactly what you perceive yourself to be. Although it sounds silly, self-esteem is important and a lot of the time, people fail to give themselves enough credit for what they do. On the other hand, some people think they are immune to flaws and choose to hide any and all criticism. Both of these are equally unhealthy.
To understand how you view yourself, take a Self-Esteem check-up. Write down five strengths and five weaknesses on a piece of paper and then next to each one, note down how you can improve your positives, whilst lessening, or eliminating your weaknesses. Be patient though, neither of these changes will happen overnight.

Step out of your comfort zone

Whether we like to admit it or not, most of us are guilty of falling into a routine and trying to stick rigidly to it. Although a regular pattern can sometimes be good, it is often dull, monotonous and traps you into a cycle which leaves you demotivated and unenthusiastic. Your challenge here is to break that cycle, even if it is only in a small way. Instead of driving into work, why not walk in or cycle once a week? Or instead of putting it off, why not try out that new local martial arts class you’ve been eying up? Remember, you don’t have to instantly be good at what you do and you might find out that after trying it, you don’t necessarily want to continue. But until you give it a chance, you’ll never find out.

Flip your glass

The terms ‘glass half full’ and ‘glass half empty’, although useful, are inherently limited. By only focusing on the positives or indeed the negatives of a particular action, you’ll give yourself a skewed mindset and this can be problematic in many situations. Instead, try and flip your glass and focus on the aspect that you didn’t previously consider. If someone, for instance, offers you a free cup of coffee, and normally you’d think ‘Great!’, consider the negative that someone else more needing could have that instead. Or, if you end up cancelling plans at the last minute, instead of dwelling on the negative that you won’t be doing what you expected, focus on the fact you can do something else equally rewarding instead.

Ruminate less

Inevitably, things go wrong in life and there is nothing you can do to stop that. However, when we feel disappointed, upset, stressed or embarrassed, we find ourselves naturally replaying these events, wondering what we could have done better. Instead of solving our problems, we just shift and enhance feelings of shame, guilt, anger, awkwardness or regret onto ourselves. Rather than ruminating, try and actively solve your problem. Once you work out what went wrong, you can change the question from being ‘Why do I do that?’ to ‘What will I do next time?’ By being constructive, rather than self-destructive, you can quickly amend whatever the problem is.

Accept while improving

You shouldn’t force yourself to change dramatically. Change should be a gradual process and there is nothing wrong with trying to slow it down in order to make it easier. Life should be exciting and you want to get the maximum number of opportunities out of it. At the same time, you don’t want to set unattainable goals and then feel worse because you didn’t achieve them on time. The ideal balance is accepting and embracing who you are – your core personality – and looking towards the future to see how you can grow. Think about what you want to achieve and why this matter to you. By promoting self-growth, you’ll make the most out of your skills and find that everything else comes easy.

And of course, if you ever need a friendly face, or just want someone else to have a chat with, you can always rely on Beyond Storage. We have a variety of sites across the UK and we’re ready to go above and beyond to help you fulfil your storage solutions.