How to Heal From Psychopathic Abuse With 2 Simple Mind Tweaks
By: Simona Rich
Tags: Abuse, Self Help, Relationships, Domestic Violence, Psychopathy

The first tip explained — How not to make someone else the number one in your life

Not making my ex the number one in my life saved me from being completely broken after the breakup. My identity was not tied to his; I still had my days full of activity and meaning, so the breakup did not leave a huge hole in my existence.

It’s a big mistake to hope that someone else will fill all the gaps of emptiness in your life. Only you can do it.

It might feel that someone else may fill those gaps; But this can only happen temporarily, and then emptiness comes back again.

I believe that many divorces and breakups take place because of this very reason — people hope their loved ones would infuse their lives with meaning, and when they prove to be simple mortals, disillusionment sets in.

Thus, in order not to place someone else as your personal savior, as some figure giving meaning to your existence, you need to fill your life with significance and purpose.

Answer these 5 questions to fill your life with meaning

You can make your life meaningful through being of service to the world. But how to know what exactly should you be giving in service?

Let’s figure this out now. It will only take five minutes.

Take a pen and a notepad. Spend a minute on each of these questions and write down all that comes to you in response.

Ready? Let’s start:

What are you good at? What are your personal strengths? What do you like doing in your free time? What unique quality do people notice about you? What skill or activity comes as second nature to you?

Once you have your answers, carefully consider each unique quality you have noticed about yourself and decide which line of work it suits best.

Some examples to make this easier for you

If your answers to the five questions included words such as “painting”, “design”, “writing”, “creative”, “taking photos”, that obviously points to artistic expression.

This means that such qualities will be most suitable to be realized through the work of a designer, photographer or another kind of artist.

Should you have, instead, chosen the words such as “managing”, “perseverance”, “organizing”, “stubborn” and “leading”, that, of course, points to a managerial or entrepreneurial position in the corporate or other business fields?

What this exercise does for you

By listing your unique skills and strengths in such a way and then viewing them as a bundle, you’re helping your mind to quickly suggest suitable spheres of personal expression.

Your answers, if taken as a total, will always have a general vibe about them which will point to a particular field most suitable to express your unique qualities.

What to do if you’re still unsure about your strengths

After answering the five mentioned questions, it usually becomes very clear what service you can provide to the world.

But sometimes your unique qualities are so second-nature that you just can’t identify them.

If, therefore, you’re still struggling with seeing your strongest points, use other people to help you see them.

Pay attention to what people say about you, or directly ask them what they think you’re good at. You may want to ask what makes you different from the rest — what makes you unique.

For example, you can ask these questions:

“What surprises you about me?” “What stands out in my behavior?” “How can you describe me in three words?” “What do you see in me that’s different from the rest?” “How would you introduce me to a new friend in two sentences?”

Pose these questions to as many close people as you have in your life. If you’re comfortable, you can even ask these questions people whom you consider acquaintances only.

You can find ample opportunities to do so.

For example…

When you’re on the phone with them, casually throw these questions at them.

Ask a thing or two about how they see you halfway between your face-to-face conversation.

You can even ask them a thing or two about what makes you unique if you happen to meet them on the street.

If you have your own blog, this task becomes much easier. Simply email your readers the mentioned questions or include them in your blog posts. Usually readers can provide many insightful observations which even family members miss!

Never worry about how you would be perceived as a result of such inquiries; you may even discover that people find such questions fascinating, as they’re not the usual ones they hear.

Also, this makes you seem more approachable and humble, because you’re not afraid to reveal your wish to understand how you are perceived.

If you go ahead with this suggestion and ask as many people as you can the mentioned questions, pretty soon you will start noticing trends in what they say. This will surely help you decide on the best way to give meaning to your life.

What to do once you know your skills

Once you know your unique qualities, it will be easy to come up with ways to serve the world by employing them. I will give you an example from my own life.

After leaving school and moving from Lithuania to live in the UK, I found myself stuck in a job I abhorred. I knew that I disliked working under anyone, so it was pretty clear that I had to strike out on my own.

Since all my life I was a loner and my focus was on the inner me rather than the outside world, I was pretty much well aware of my skills and strengths already.

I knew I was artistic and definitely not into any exact sciences. I also knew that though I was good at painting, this pursuit would make me sad for some reason. So I knew that this was something I would not want to make into my career.

There was another activity, however, which I was good at and enjoyed the whole process. It was writing a diary. I could fully express myself in writing and this engagement allowed me to better understand my motivations and behavior, as well as process everything that happened each day.

So I knew that writing was it, but then I was faced with the question of how to make this hobby helpful to the world.

Soon enough I realized that only a small shift was required to do that — instead of writing a private diary, I started writing a public one. Instead of helping myself to figure out my motivations and behavior, I shared my successes and failures with the world so that others would avoid making the same mistakes enabling them to have a less problematic personal growth.

That’s how my blog was born.

It’s been 11 years of blogging now, and still, every day feels like a holiday. This is the power of discovering something you’re good at and making pretty much your whole life about it.

How you can become of service to the world

So now it’s time to apply this strategy to your life. Think about how you can make your possessed bundle of skills of service to the world.

For example:

If you realized that writing is your thing, be helpful about the way that you write on your subject.

If you realized that maths is your thing, you can consider publishing teaching videos or offering private tuition.

If you discovered that painting is your strong point, you can share your artwork online for public appreciation, and you can even charge for the use of a large format or certain pieces.

So as you can see, when you find your strengths and make your bundle of skills into life’s work, your existence becomes filled with meaning; because it’s not only in your free time that you enjoy yourself, but when you do daily work as well.

One more thing to keep in mind

I haven’t yet mentioned another thing that’s equally as important to have your life filled with meaning and purpose. That’s giving of yourself fully.

If you don’t do this, you will never experience total satisfaction with what you do and who you are. This is very obvious to me from my own life and the lives of those who truly love their existence.

For example, the more I give of my service to the world, the happier I become. And whenever I feel sad, it’s always because I think about my Self rather than how I can be of service to the world.

I’ve noticed that in the lives of many successful people. Eckhart Tolle is one of them. His whole existence is about giving spiritual talks, and I’ve never felt any tinge of unhappiness in his self-expression.

To give of yourself fully, follow these steps:

When you work, put 10% more of your energy into what you do than usual;

Give 10% more value than what you usually give;

Put 10% more care into answering your readers’ or customers’ inquiries than what’s normal for you.

By increasing your usefulness just a little bit, you’re forming a lifetime habit of being better than the current version of you. This is what fills your life completely.

But how to do this? How to expend a little bit more energy, give a little bit more value and show a little bit more care?

That’s easy. Here’s how to apply all these three suggestions:

1.When you’re finishing work, go through it one more time to make it a little bit more perfect. Tie up all loose ends, check for errors, view your work after a break.

Here the motivation is this — if your work is more perfect, it will provide more value to customers, and in turn, you will benefit more too as you will receive more recommendations, sales, favors and so forth.

2. During your work think a little bit more about how to make it more useful to the end consumer. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about how to dye your hair at home, make it a little bit more detailed for readers to apply your tips with greater ease.

3. When your customers, readers or other people you’re involved with asking you questions, switch off automatic responses but listen to them with great care and attention, and then answer their questions by being as useful as you can.

For example, if someone asks you “How do I use this nourishing shampoo?”, instead of saying “You should apply it for a few minutes and wash it out”, you can reply:

“At first you need to make sure that your hair is properly wet. Then apply a small amount of shampoo all over your hair and wait for three minutes. Wash it out with cold water for best shine.”

You can achieve more only if you are better than you are now, and to truly fill your life with joy you should provide that joy to others through your exceptional service.

Giving of yourself completely prevents extreme heartbreak

When your life gets saturated with meaning by following the advice given in this article, you will not suffer too much if a person whom you loved decides to leave.

Your life will be full already whether you share it with some person or not. By giving of yourself completely to the world, you get so much appreciation in many forms from the public, that you simply can’t feel much emptiness if someone no longer shares your life.

I’m not saying there won’t be any shock or unhappiness; but such feelings will certainly be not as deep and not long-lived. And this, of course, saves you from having your life ruined, as you wouldn’t be basing it on anything or anyone but yourself.