The past week has been one that has been challenging but in a good way. Even though I had a few days when my depression was trying to take me out, I have been able to take time to appreciate how far I’ve come.
The past few weeks, I have been trying to make some changes in my life to grow as a person with some new strategies to help manage my life. I have been working on trying to live my life differently. Even though I had a bad few days with negative thoughts and a day of staying in my bed, it doesn’t mean that I should quit on trying to get better. When I thought about it, it is a vast improvement from me a few years ago. I use to lay in bed so much that I couldn’t sit up when I was at home. I’ve lived an active life in front of people, and then I would sleep 12 hours some days or even more than that. The only reason I kept getting up is because I had appointments to meet people, and I felt like I needed to keep up my appearances. A few years before that, I spent an entire summer in the house and did not want to go outside. If I had quit, then I would not be doing some of the things that I have been able to do and meet the great people in my life now if I choose to stay in that mindset. Now when I go through different challenges, it means that I need to reevaluate my strategy and the combinations that I need to use to have more good days than bad days.
This morning, I was reminded of the mentality of my uncle. I have lived in the city my whole life, and where we lived, there is a bus system but back then they did not have routes for some locations and availability like they do now. I remember him needing to get to work and having to catch a bus and walk for miles to where he needed to go or some days not having enough money to get back home, so he walked about 7 miles. It made me think about the mental strength that he must have had to do that as often as he did. He probably wanted to hitch a ride, maybe take a long break, thought that he was not going to make it home, or thought about who he could call to get a ride back home. Despite those thoughts he just walked. One thing it taught me is you have to challenge your mind with different methods to stay encouraged until you can go long distances without being limited in your thoughts and your ability to keep going.
When you are making changes to your life, it is going to be difficult, and you are going to want to quit. Still, you have to find a different strategy to keep going until one day the negative thoughts don’t effect you as much. That is because you practice healthy thinking, and are now able to push through different situations. The hope I have for myself and you if that is something you are working on as well is to have more better days. I believe we all can one day see past the pain that has gotten us to this point to live a freer life.
What is coming up in February?
I am going to post different strategies/coping skills that you can consider trying for the month. It is important to remember to practice self-love to keep moving forward in wholeness and wellness.
Reviving Life's Journey 