How do I find inner peace and focus my energy away from poison and reliving old traumas? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Neil Pasricha, NY Times Bestselling Author of The Happiness Equation & The Book of Awesome, on Quora.
The hardest time in my life was 2008/2009 when I was going through my divorce and best friend's suicide. I did three things that helped me:
- Found an outlet. Maybe Quora is your community, your outlet. For me I started up a blog called 1000 Awesome Things in about 10 minutes one night and started writing about one tiny little joy every day. It became my outlet. A place to vent. A place to put new thoughts. Something outside my 'regular world' for me to put my brain.
- Talked about it. For me, professional therapy was a lot better than well-meaning, but largely untrained, friends. I decided to swallow my reservations about therapy and started with two sessions a week and found my thoughts moving forward much quicker. I can't say enough positive things about therapy but I know you have the find the right person.
- Wait and repeat. Time helped quite a bit. Admittedly, lots of time. When I lost track of myself (which happened often) I repeated 1 and 2 above. Wrote a long blog post (even if I didn't post it). Booked an extra session. Tried to notice when I was ignoring the basics of self-care (i.e., eat, sleep, shower) and then focus on doing those.
I know how a lot of what I was doing is backed by happiness research (i.e., journaling, gratitudes, etc.) but at the time it was just self-preservation.
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