This past year has sparked a lot of growth and healing for people, sometimes by bringing to light very starkly what isn’t working in, or maybe is even hindering, their lives. But leaving toxic situations can be emotionally difficult, even when you know it’s what you want to do.
Something as simple as a new hobby is very helpful with the process. Getting lost in something you enjoy kind of changes the subject in your brain. Not only that you’re thinking about something else; but that you’re changing the emotional habit of thought in your mind. If you know you want to move away from a situation in your life, you have probably been suffering with it for a while, and your brain has gotten into the habit of suffering and everything it associates with it, depending on your personal triggers. Then, the expectations set in place by those triggers continue to fulfill themselves, and you feel like you’re stuck in this situation, or ones like it, so you may as well stay with the devil you know, and you might well talk yourself out of leaving.
And your brain can decide all of that for you in a single moment, without your conscious consent.
Hobbies are often meditative in their practice, so when you’re doing something enjoyable and mindfully consuming, you’re not only taking your mind off the situation that’s been hurting you, you’re giving your brain an alternative for something to think about, and also a new way to think.
When you become consciously aware that you’re ready to let go of a person or situation, you’ve done the hard work of the growth that it took to get there. Now you’re just breaking a habit.
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