Successful Mindset: An Empath’s Guide to A Successful Life

Life as an empath is a balancing act. On one hand, empaths have fantastic strengths – compassion, intuition, and the ability to feel emotions deeply and fully. On the other hand, being an empath means it’s easy to absorb the negative emotions and energy that surround us daily. But when it comes down to it, empaths are human and want the same success that any other person wants. They may just need to travel a unique path to find it. Read on to learn more about how to find success and master personal growth as an empath.

Learn How To Manage Stress

As an empath, it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by day-to-day anxiety. Arguments with loved ones, stressful commutes, being stuck in crowds, or even wearing the wrong clothing can cause stress in empaths, so it’s important to learn to manage this stress in a healthy and mindful way. It’s easy to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like overeating or isolating yourself from friends and family when things get to be too much to handle. 

While it’s true that you need time alone to recharge and renew yourself, don’t isolate yourself from the people who care about you. Learning to communicate your needs clearly can be a hurdle, but you should never ignore your own self-care to please someone else. 

Empaths need to recognize what triggers their stress the most, and what to do to manage this daily. Some stress is very difficult to avoid, but taking a few minutes every day to reset and relax can make a huge difference. Meditation, exercise, journaling, creating music or art, and deep breathing can all help when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Empaths also find it easy to connect with nature, so make sure to set aside a little time every few days to spend outdoors. 

Choose a Great Career

Empaths have a unique set of skills that are particularly useful in some areas of the working world. Below is a list of suggestions that you can tailor to your own interests and needs.

• Nonprofit or Charity Work – because empaths are often inclined to want to help others, nonprofit work is a great career choice. You can find a niche that’s particularly interesting to you (i.e. animals, community development, children, etc.) and work in a nonprofit that serves that particular niche.
• Entrepreneurs – empaths are great at thinking outside the box and coming up with unique solutions to problems, which are great qualities to have when starting your own business.
• Medical Professions  – empaths often thrive in medical professions because they can see the impact of their work every day in the patients they serve. Becoming a doctor, nurse, psychotherapist or physical therapist can be a great choice as long as empaths work hard not to absorb any negative energy from their patients. 
• Teachers – empaths are often great at understanding things from others’ perspectives, which makes it easy to find effective ways to teach students. Classrooms full of children can be stressful to some empaths, but there are also options to tutor one-on-one, teach adult classes, or teach at a college.
• Freelance Work – the ability to have a flexible schedule and potentially work from a home can be great for empaths who need to work outside of a traditional office environment. Writers, web designers, graphic designers, and personal assistants can all work from home on a flexible schedule. 
• Creative Professions – empaths can be profoundly creative, so a career in music or art is often very fulfilling.

Understand Your Limits

Everyone has limits, and it’s not uncommon for empaths to want to push themselves past their comfort zone. However, emotional exhaustion is a real thing, and it’s important to recognize your limits. Think about the situations that make you uncomfortable and set clear boundaries so that you can avoid those situations whenever possible. Boundaries are essential for your own mental health and should always reflect your values as a person. No one else can define your boundaries, and it may take a little bit of self-reflection to find exactly what is and is not acceptable to you. 

Figure out what drains your energy. Maybe it’s really difficult for you to be in crowded spaces for more than a few minutes, or maybe certain noises or smells trigger anxiety reactions in you. Every empath has different limits and finding yours is the first step towards getting a good handle on growing as an empath. You cannot grow if you’re pushing yourself too hard or not recognizing your hard limits. 

And don’t feel bad about having limits, either! It’s perfectly normal, and though you may find that you want to please others, always put your own wellbeing first. It’s easy for empaths to blur the line between their feelings and others’, so part of setting your limits is to recognize when the emotions you’re feeling aren’t your own. Though you may still allow yourself to feel others’ emotions, don’t let them control you.

Love Who You Are

As an empath, you’ve probably realized that you have a very special gift. This gift comes with a unique set of challenges that can sometimes bring frustration and self-doubt. You’ve likely second-guessed yourself, and maybe sometimes you even feel like you aren’t enough. Empaths often feel that they don’t quite fit into social circles, or they find that others think that their feelings are “weird” or “abnormal.”

The truth is, being an empath is precious – you have the ability to feel things so much deeper than the average person. You are compassionate, driven, and creative. Though you may feel pressure from society to act a certain way or pursue certain goals in life, only you can decide how to live your life. And you’ll find that as long as you take time to understand what you’re feeling and prioritize your own needs when you must, being an empath has more pros than cons.  

Empaths have a lot to be grateful for and can make a huge impact on the world at large. They are able to connect diverse sets of people by recognizing and nurturing the emotions that make us human.