The things I need to KNow

✓ Pay attention to language. Replace words like ‘must’, ‘need’ and
‘should’ with ‘prefer’, ‘wish’ and ‘want’.

✓ Limit approval seeking. Can you manage to have a satisfying life even
if you don’t get the approval of everyone you seek it from? Specifically,
you’ll feel more confident in social situations if you recognise your preference
for approval rather than viewing approval as a dire need.


Understand that the world doesn’t play to your rules. In fact, other
people tend to have their own rulebooks. So, no matter how much you
value considerate behaviour, your friends may not give it the same
value. If you can give others the right to not live up to your standards,
you’ll feel less hurt when they fail to do so.

✓ Retain your standards, ideals and preferences, and ditch your rigid
demands about how you, others and the world ‘have to’ be. So keep
acting consistently with how you would like things to be rather than
becoming depressed or irate about things not being the way you believe
they must be.

When you hold rigid demands about the way things ‘have got to be’, you have
no margin for deviation or error. You leave yourself vulnerable to experiencing
exaggerated emotional disturbance when things in life just don’t go your way