Mental Health

I’m not feeling great today if I’m honest. I’ve got my set of morning rituals to get myself going, to motivate and energise me; journaling, goal setting and working out, but today is still difficult.

Every day it feels like the reset button is pushed and it all goes back to zero. Each morning I wake up and I use Mel Robbins ‘five second rule’ to start the battle and actually get out of bed. A battle to get going, a battle with my mind knowing that I cannot let the negativity draw me back in, that I MUST live for today and not start my new day dwelling on everything that has already happened, carrying that forward from the past and into my future. I force myself to find my gratitude and something to be positive about. This morning I ache and I’m tired, it all adds to the battle, making the task harder. I put my morning habits in place to drive me forward, but it’s genuinely like being a recovering alcoholic. The siren song of the known and comfortable negativity is overwhelming sometimes. I must resist, always resist, don’t slip back into self destructive thought patterns and habits. The self flagellation, the self doubt, the stress, the fear, the anger, the self loathing and feeling sorry for myself. I know that place, I know it only too well, for too long and I know I don’t want or need to go back there. It’s like a magnet and it takes enormous effort and will power EVERY…SINGLE…DAY to maintain, let alone move forward. Some days I manage to boost myself to a point where I feel good, even great. I feel positive and upbeat and hopeful and I know that life is good. That fire burns, sometimes it rages all day, but over night, the fire dies and every morning I’m blowing on the near dead embers, trying to coax a flicker of a flame again, to warm me through another day. Sometimes just the sadness of remembering the good days makes another good day seem improbable if not impossible. It’s tiring, it takes time and effort every day to NOT slide back, to NOT give in, to NOT allow myself a ‘it’s OK to not be OK’ day, but occasionally it wins and I have a lazy, feeling crappy kind of day. When I slide THAT low again, I know it really IS OK and I know it happens, but I also know that the climb back up is that much harder to get back to any kind of acceptable level, that it will take me days of consistent, persistent effort to lift myself out of the doldrums again, rather than sip from the devils cup of negativity and wallow back in the dark. So every day is a choice. A choice to carry on forward with hope, with faith in…something of a future, each day a new step, each day renewed efforts but ultimately that choice has to be made every morning or there’d be no more mornings worth anything. So I wake up, I make my choices and I find my attitude of gratitude and I smile. Sometimes my smile barely veils the pain inside, other days it beams from the heart. Those days we celebrate, the other days we tolerate, but every day is a battle we must win.