Only a few short months ago - I would wake up each day with a tight throat, a sinking feeling my stomach, a racing heart and the feeling of having thirty ferris wheels running around inside my head.
Initially it was a matter of dragging myself out of bed by going for a run or doing a Pilates session just to give me some motivation to actually get on with my day. I dreaded the thought of having to go into another day of work each and every day and into a place where I no longer felt satisfied or fulfilled.
This slowly grew into feeling severely unhappy, anxious, hopeless and not even being able to get into my car to drive myself to work - even with my 'false' inner cheer leader trying to pump up my mojo to put my pedal to the metal!
I spent my days in indecision; trying to figure out what to do with my life, what my interests were, what my passions were, how I could link my values and dreams to a career or lifestyle change. For anyone that has ever gone through a similar situation in their lives - its so incredibly exhausting to have a little mouse run on it's wheel thirty thousand miles an hour each and every moment of the day as it tried to figure out what to do.
The things that i now realise made this time in my life even more difficult was that my sense of hope had diminished to such a low point that I was listening to all of the negative voices and aspects of my current life that i began to believe it. To my impressionable mind, I had 'the worst life in the world'. It told my emotions to feel guilt, shame, unworthiness and a huge drop in confidence in my ability to take the steps needed to dig myself out of the deep hole of negativity.
For anyone that knows me - I am an optimist at heart. I am always the first person in the group to reply in passing comment with a "hey - it could be worse", or "well at least it didn't....." or "but look on the bright side....". So for my negativity and loss of hope to get so bad it took me away from my core beliefs, values and natural personality - it was certainly time to take action.
Some of the biggest things I have taken from that experience are as follows:
1) Take some time for yourself to let your creativity fly. For me, it was writing. I felt as if each time I wrote in reflection that a weight was lifted off my shoulders (yes - I'm actually starting to get a cheeky, 3 year old grin on my face as I write this!). I also made sure that every moment I spent driving in my car or sitting at home by myself, or even out walking in the sunshine that i sang! As ear bleeding as it sounds, get out there and release that tension through voice - TRUST ME, you can't help but start to feel a little bubble of satisfaction and release when you belt out your favourite tunes!
2) Get yourself into a routine as soon as you wake up. Find ONE thing that you love and makes you feel good about yourself and do that every morning. It kick starts your day, gives you a sense of achievement to lift your confidence and just reminds that negative nancy inside your head that 'hey - there are a hell of a lot of awesome things going on in my life!'.
3) Sit down and write down a list of things that you do that make you happy. These can be your go-to happy actions in times of need, as well as starting to uncover your inner desires. The biggest and most KEY thing about beating your negativity is to find your hearts passion. Without a passion, you will never find your purpose or the thing that gets you up everyday with some swagger in your step. Choose 5 things from your passion list to explore over the next 30 days.
4) From the list above (and feel free to add to it with time - as the more you tap into your optimism and sense of hope, the easier it will be to reach and the more the negativity will be buried), think about how your perfect life would be. Write this down in a paragraph. Be as specific as you can - what will it look like, what will you be doing, who will be around you, where will you be?
5) Learn to focus on the NOW, not the past or future - focus on right now in this moment. This will help you to be cleared from any inner guilt/shame/sadness from the past and remove the anxiety/fear of what will happen in the future. The old saying that "it is about the journey, not the destination' stands true in reminding us that each day happens for a reason and it will play a part in where we head in our lives. If we are focussing in on our passions, then things will just happen for us - provided we are open to taking the journey and accepting the things that happen to us as part of the process, rather than wasting our precious moments worrying about any mistakes that lets be honest - are in the past, we are in the NOW.
6) Push past your fears. It’s so seductive to tell ourselves that we’ll go after what we want when we have more experience, more money, or more time, but the truth is, that will never happen. We must identify these excuses as masks for our fear. It’s only when we get clear on our fears and recognize how they are holding us back that we can begin moving forward. Accept them as a thought and emotion, then LET THEM GO.
'Feeling hopeless is the fastest way to kill our passion and keep us form finding our purpose. Hold onto the hope that there is something GREAT out there for all of us!'
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