I didn’t know what anxiety was until about a year ago, when my boyfriend told me that was what I was feeling. Anxious. So strange that when you don’t know the word for something, you tend to look towards the things you already know to explain what’s going on. Anger. Depression. I was short-tempered, irrational. I was paranoid, I was crazy, I was bipolar, I was completely and totally wrong in everyone’s eyes. I have spent over a decade under the facade that I was just plain, inexcusably wrong, a lost cause with no end in sight. I thought about killing myself every year since I was 13, now 20. That’s not to say I didn’t have good days, there were many. Looking back through all my journals I had kept since somewhere around 2006, I realized that almost every page was stained with tears, pouring out feelings I didn’t understand. I had all this pent-up rage towards my family, riddled with problems, from an absent father to an equally emotional mother. They never taught me what anxiety was, even though my mom now claims that she’s had it her entire life. I believe her, but I wonder why she never helped me through my own mess.
My depression came in waves. Months would go by and, if you asked me, I couldn’t recall one thing that had happened. I seemed to have a fuzzy cloud of drama following me around the many different schools I attended; bullies attracted to me like flies. I found myself becoming a bully because it was the only way I found I could get through them, but of course it made everything worse. I hated who I had become.
Good things somehow came out of all that negativity. I fell in a deep love with metal/rock music my freshman year in high school. I had a new and unlikely role model and I wanted to be just like him, teaching myself guitar by ear for hours on end. I’d get home from school, grab some food and head right upstairs, and that would be about the only time anyone saw me. I somewhat hesitantly say I know upwards of 50 System of a Down songs… oh, high school.
I moved to California at 16 from my home town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, with my Mother and Step Father, where he had a job opportunity, but we really moved because I wanted to pursue my career in music. One thing I was blessed with was parents that were supportive of my career choice, it’s pretty rare for young musicians. However, I met a boy far too early and dropped everything for him. It wasn’t until senior year of High School that I remembered I was my own person, and I started trying to write music again.
There was a problem, though: I didn’t know what kind of artist I wanted to be anymore. Metal wasn’t really on the scene anymore, neither was rock. It had all been replaced with this weird, hipster-pop music that I couldn’t relate to, even with my previous love of pop/rap music before metal. I was out of place, irrelevant.
About a year and a half after my (then) longest relationship, I met my current boyfriend. I’ve always seen myself as very independent. When I used to think of myself in the future, I was always single, unmarried, alone, but better off. I thought of myself as very masculine, controlling, definitely not “wife” material. But my current boyfriend, he changed that for me, and I’m not even mad. We’ve been together for almost two years, and it’s the most beautiful friendship and love I have ever experienced. I have a theory that you can’t fall in love with anyone until you start loving yourself. My senior year of high school I began to understand what loving ourself really was, and then I met him right after graduation. I’m still in the process of understanding how to love oneself, but I don’t think I could have had a successful relationship before this without this new relationship with myself. I don’t like to lean on anyone to make me feel better, especially when my anxiety gets ahold of me, so he gives me my space.
I’m now trying to find new ways to write music, which is my true love. I’m a communications major & honors student at El Camino College, and I am applying to UCLA this fall. I work part time as a social media, programming & design assistant for a yoga clothing company called Jala Clothing, which I am more and more grateful for every day. Having a routine and eating healthy/exercising (yoga specifically) are also absolutely vital to keeping my anxiety and depression at bay. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows even now, but I’m working towards a better me, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier in my life.
If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me at savv.pm@gmail.com.
This is an excerpt of a speech by Leonardo DiCaprio addressing the UN Climate Summit in his new role as U.N. Messenger of Peace. A friend shared it on Facebook, originally from CBC News, and when I found it the video already had over 30,000 likes and 87,000 shares. Everyone was jumping to watch and share this video because a famous celebrity was in it. Here’s the truth, people: this isn’t news. We already have known every single thing in DiCaprio’s speech for a long time, at least in the last decade. Although I’m annoyed with people for only jumping on the cause now because a celebrity is endorsing it, I hope it can help people to realize how important this topic actually is.
Earth is our home. If we lose our home, how can we worry about every other little problem? War, genocide, racism, women’s rights, animal rights, they all matter. But the sad truth of the matter is that, if we have no Earth to live on, none of these problems will really matter, because we won’t be here. We will all be dead.Capiche?
We may have found planets with the possibility of life, (i.e.Kepler-186f) but those planets are hundreds of light-years away. We ain’t getting there anytime soon. So it’s vital that we make the most of what we have, while we still have it!
Here’s some examples of how dire our situation is. All pictures and captions come from this article on Climate.Audubon.Org
Famished: San Diego, California
This bloom of krill, pink, fast, and alive, is already a rare sight in the North Pacific. But with warmer seas, they’ll become even rarer, here and elsewhere. The tiny crustaceans live in a narrow temperature band just 6 degrees wide. As the waters heat up and krill die off, other dominos in the marine food chain will start to topple; all manner of seabird, fish, and leviathan feast on the three-inch creature. In California, the local—and endangered—Scripps’s Murrelet depends on krill as a diet mainstay. As swarms like these disappear, there is no telling how the murrelet will adapt. Photo Credit: Richard Herrmann/Oceans/Galatée Films
Flooded: Dorchester County, Maryland
The Chesapeake Bay, whose surf is spilling onto the roads of coastal Maryland here, has risen one foot over the 20th century. With water coming further inland, any squall is now more dangerous for coastal habitat and the wildlife living within it. The local American Bittern nests in the dense reeds of the area’s wetlands, but are now frequently battered by the waves. As storm surges around the world grow worse, it and other birds will soon find themselves without refuge. Photo Credit: Greg Kahn/Grain
Covered: Rhone Glacier, Switzerland
The Rhone Glacier has steadily shrunk for over 150 years. At this point, the situation is so dire scientists have resorted to covering the glaciers with heat-protective blankets during the summer months. Projects like this one at the Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps prevent the glacier from retreating further while also stopping glacial melt from entering the local watershed. The blankets are now common practice in many icy regions of the world. Photo Credit: Olivier Maire/EPA/Corbis
Punctured: Antarctic Ice Sheet
It’s not just atmospheric greenhouse gasses that heat up the earth—the bright white of the polar ice caps should also reflect solar rays back into space. But these snow-covered caps are increasingly interrupted by pits like these, whose black mud bottoms of rocky sediment called cryoconite drastically reduces polar surface reflectivity. As the ice is increasingly punctured by cryoconite, more and more heat is captured, melting increasing amounts of ice in a feedback loop that might spell the end of pack ice—one of our most important defenses to runaway climate change. Photo Credit: Nick Cobbing
Fracked: Bakken Shale, North Dakota
The oil rush of the Bakken formation—the massive oil and gas-rich shale underneath Montana and North Dakota—is a new kind of environmental hazard: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The encroaching degradation shown here is just the surface wound. Fracking pumps chemicals and sand into the earth and explosively shatters the rock formation, releasing fuel that often finds its way into adjacent watersheds. Evidence is mounting that fracking can even induce earthquakes. The critically endangered Baird’s Sparrow is a denizen of this once pristine landscape. As oilrigs devour its habitat, its chances for survival grow slimmer and slimmer. Photo Credit: Tristan Spinski/Grain
Disbanded: Central Highlands of Iceland
Iceland has seen average temperatures increase by about 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1975, a rate four times that of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. These opalescent streaks are actually rivulets of glacial meltwater, making their way from ice caps to the sea. The milky appearance comes from all the dissolved sediments, known as rock flour, once locked away in the ice. The tiny rivers’ beauty conceals a dark reality: The country’s more than 300 glaciers are losing 11 billion tons of ice a year. Photo Credit: Solent News/Splash News/Corbis
Overstocked: Arizona
Industrial farming now accounts for 80 percent of water usage in the United States alone. On top of water waste, livestock cultivation releases up to 94 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere globally, not to mention the millions of metric tons of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. The cattle seen in this field lot, stretching as far as the eye can see, both consume and produce CO2. As the global population grows, further agricultural intensification is inevitable. Photo Credit: Peter McBride
Drained: Baja California, Mexico
The Colorado River delta once sprawled over 2 million acres in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. These days severe drought, compounded by local agriculture’s profligate irrigation techniques, has slowed the river to a trickle by the time it hits the border. Follow the waterway to its basin on the Gulf of California, shown here, and much of the year all you’ll find is a desiccated riverbed. Since 2004 the 244,000-square-mile Colorado River watershed has lost 65 cubic kilometers of fresh water, mostly groundwater, or about three times the river’s yearly output into the gulf. Despite water-sharing pacts aimed at quenching the parched earth, the wetlands needed by birds like the Ridgway’s Rail could soon be a memory. Photo Credit: Peter McBride
Blighted: Central British Columbia
The forests of central British Columbia, where the Varied Thrush and Red-naped Sapsucker breed, are under attack. Warmer winters and unrelenting drought in western North America have led to a rampant mountain pine beetle outbreak, with no end in sight. The insects, which have infested more than 46 million acres in the United States alone, kill trees, creating vast quantities of kindling that feed wildfires, like the one whose scorched remains are seen here. Despite mitigation efforts, 7 million acres of infested pine trees still bear the blight’s telltale red foliage, and the province expects to lose 57 percent of its pine stands by 2021. Photo Credit: Nina Berman/NOOR
Torched: Rancho Santa Margarita, California
The U.S. wildfire season lasts a full two months longer than it did 40 years ago, and the heat is only going to intensify; brush fires charred 9 million acres in 2012 alone. Fire tornadoes—also called fire devils—like this one in Orange County, California, commonly form at the leading edge of blazes, shooting out burning debris. Their core temperatures can reach 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and their wind speeds can hit 100 miles per hour. Wildfire can bring new life—birds such as the Black-backed Woodpecker thrive in recently burned areas—but for the California Gnatcatcher, a threatened species limited to Southern California and Baja California, it means only trouble. Photo Credit: David McNew/Getty Images
Melted: Chukchi Sea, Arctic
Black-legged Kittiwakes, seen here gathered on a melting ice sheet in the Chukchi Sea, breed in the Arctic. These seabirds, whose North American populations are decreasing, have better breeding success when sea ice cover is greater and the cold waters beneath produce more forage fish. As the region warms, kittiwakes are in store for more assaults, including new shipping lanes and increased oil and gas development—an estimated 350 billion barrels of oil sit beneath the Arctic seafloor. The threat of oil spills puts kittiwakes and other wildlife on even thinner ice. Photo Credit: Florian Schulz/Visions Of The Wild
Starved: Novaya Zemlya Island, Russia
The Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate, and summer sea ice may disappear entirely within a few decades. This rapid retreat is stranding polar bears far away from seals, their main quarry. The bears, like this adolescent male scavenging Thick-billed Murre eggs on the cliffs of Russia’s Novaya Zemlya Island, have had to turn to new prey. It’s a seismic shift in the food chain, one polar bears may not be able to withstand: It takes 88 Snow Goose eggs (another newly susceptible species) to deliver the nutrition in one meal of seal. As for the murres, their hard-to-reach breeding sites have largely kept predators at bay. Until now. Photo Credit: Jenny E. Ross
“What’s a zero day? A zero day is when you don’t do a single f******g thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on. No more zeros. I’m not saying you gotta bust an essay out everyday, that’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make is that you have to make yourself, promise yourself, that the new SYSTEM you live in is a NON-ZERO system. Didn’t do anything all f******g day and it’s 11:58 PM? Write one sentence. One pushup. Read one page of that chapter. One. Because one is non zero. You feel me? When you’re in the super vortex of being bummed your pattern of behaviour is keeping the vortex goin’, that’s what you’re used to. Turning into productivity ultimate master of the universe doesn’t happen from the vortex. It happens from a massive string of CONSISTENT NON ZEROS. That’s rule number one. Do not forget.”
– User ryans01 in the Get Disciplined subreddit, in response to a fellow Redditor complaining about a lack of motivation. Article originally found on 99u.
In other words, do something. ANYTHING. Every day should contain one task completed, even if it’s putting on your jeans instead of your comfy I-don’t-give-a-$*@! sweatpants. Or maybe it’s swapping that ahmazing piece of chocolate for a… differently… delicious apple. Whatever. Just do something. Each tiny step – no matter how small – is another step in the right direction.
I’m realizing that, although when I made this quote image in photoshop earlier today, this quote has more weight to my life than I knew before. It’s true, you really can’t spend time trying to explain and defend yourself to people who are wrapped up in their own thoughts or their assumptions about you and/or the situation. It’s an endless battle.
I’m also realizing that teamwork is harder than I initially thought, and maybe I’m not as good at it as I thought, either. I really want to get better at working as a team versus alone.
Being both super creative and introverted, I’m used to excelling most when I hole myself up in a room, completely removed from the world and reality altogether. I excel in silence, in loneliness, and truly am my own best friend.
I shut down and build walls when people criticize me because I was verbally abused as a child and it is all I know to defend myself. Saying sorry is impossible because I’m stubborn, but being told I’m stubborn hurts me to my core because I was always told I was just a stubborn little girl, just like her dad.
I want to be my own person. I want to be free of any assumptions and the only way to do this is to not let myself be effected by them. It is my duty not to take things so seriously and personally. These people love me, they are not attacking me. This is something I know I will learn more as I get older, but for now I must continue to grow stronger, better myself as a person, and treat those close to me with unconditional love, as they are meant to be treated.
“Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s study, 1968, into the Pygmalion Effect is one all teachers should know about. Teachers were told by researchers that a group of students were expected to be ‘spurters’ (an interesting turn-of-phrase I know!) over the coming year and should make significantly more progress than their peers. In fact, these students were chosen at random. The findings in shocking: these students really did make more progress than their peers even though they had no ostensible advantages. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: teacher expectation had had a genuine impact on learning. Rosenthal and Jacobsen posited four reasons for this: teachers create a warmer climate for those they believe to be more academically able; teachers teach more material to these children than they do to those they label as ‘dumb’; teachers also give them more chance to respond verbally; and teachers give them more feedback.”
Due to my experience in both public and private school, and by experiencing several public schools in different states, I have truly seen a wide range of teachers. I have learned that teachers sometimes can be very, very biased, even when they think they are completely fair. I have watched smart students fail classes that should have been easy for them, only because the professor saw them in a different light than I. I’m not saying every professor is like this, – there are many amazing, life changing professors out there – but I have seen my fair share of both.
For this reason, I believe the school system is completely flawed and, with no thanks to unions, some teachers coast through their careers making material harder for students to learn, only because they’re bitter about themselves or hold unconscious biases.
As the new school year springs – or lumbers! – into life, I have been thinking about the beliefs I have about my students. Like all dedicated teachers, I would vehemently argue that I have the highest expectations for each and every student I teach. How dare you suggest otherwise!
But do I really? And more to the point: is it possible for any teacher to have genuinely high expectations of every student?
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking Fast and Slow, shares the following experiment. Participants were given this question:
An individual has been described by a neighbour as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a…
Ok, so I may not be a woman of color, but this is pretty awesome. I don’t normally go to buzzfeed for articles with a lot of depth to them, but this one really makes me think. It’s amazing how something can simply not occur to you because you don’t have the problem yourself. It never occurred to me for a day in my life that the color “nude” didn’t apply to everyone. In my mind, it’s nude; neutral. The fact that many women’s “nude” is different should be completely obvious to me, but because nude was always my nude – that it was never my problem – I never thought that it might be a problem for someone else.
That’s why I’m super excited about this new lingerie line, Nubian Skin, that is redefining “nude” for women of color. The article brings to attention that many women struggle to find undergarments for under their blouses and pants, as well as neutral toned makeup. Although cosmetics were starting to appear on the market for women of color in 1973, it is clear that the industry still has a long way to go.
“It took Eunice W. Johnson to create Fashion Fair Cosmetics in 1973 for black women to really have an adequate choice in finding makeup colors to suit them. In the 1990s and 2000s, mainstream brands began to realize the value of providing to women of color, and despite the billions we spend on make up each year, there are still brands that have chosen not to provide an offering for us.” – Nubian Skin’s Founder (who declined to be named)
Needless to say, Nubian Skin is a huge step in the right direction for women of color, and just for women as a whole. It shows that the fashion industry is starting to cater towards women’s needs rather than place expectations on them as to what they should wear; what society deems acceptable. It also shows that the fashion industry is starting to get a lot more eclectic, and we like eclectic. Yay for women!
I originally read this article by Kate Bartolotta on The Huffington Post a while back, and what can I say? It stuck with me. I clicked on it for the usual reasons — probably the same reasons you did — you’re unhappy with yourself. God, aren’t we all? But, do you ever get tired of being unhappy with yourself? Do you ever wish you could just be happy in your own skin, without care of what society says is right and wrong?
I do. All the fucking time.
Pardon my language. But if you’re really tired of feeling like a stranger in your own skin and even more strange when around other people, feeling out of place, feeling not good enough… this article is for you. I sincerely hope it helps you the way it did me.
1. Stop believing your bullshit.
All that stuff you tell yourself about how you are a commitment phobe or a coward or lazy or not creative or unlucky? Stop it. It’s bullshit, and deep down you know it. We are all insecure 14 year olds at heart. We’re all scared. We all have dreams inside of us that we’ve tucked away because somewhere along the line we tacked on those ideas about who we are that buried that essential brilliant, childlike sense of wonder. The more we stick to these scripts about who we are, the longer we live a fraction of the life we could be living. Let it go. Be who you are beneath the bullshit.
2. Be happy now.
Not because The Secret says so. Not because of some shiny happy Oprah crap. But because we can choose to appreciate what is in our lives instead of being angry or regretful about what we lack. It’s a small, significant shift in perspective. It’s easier to look at what’s wrong or missing in our lives and believe that is the big picture — but it isn’t. We can choose to let the beautiful parts set the tone.
5. Stop with the crazy making.
I got to a friend’s doorstep the other day, slightly breathless and nearly in tears after getting a little lost, physically and existentially. She asked what was wrong and I started to explain and then stopped myself and admitted, “I’m being stupid and have decided to invent lots of problems in my head.” Life is full of obstacles; we don’t need to create extra ones. A great corollary to this one is from The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz: Don’t take things personally. Most of the time, other people’s choices and attitudes have absolutely nothing to do with you. Unless you’ve been behaving like a jerk, in which case…
6. Learn to apologize.
Not the ridiculous, self-deprecating apologizing for who you are and for existing that some people seem to do (what’s up with that, anyway?). The ability to sincerely apologize — without ever interjecting the word “but” — is an essential skill for living around other human beings. If you are going to be around other people, eventually you will need to apologize. It’s an important practice.
7. Practice gratitude.
Practice it out loud to the people around you. Practice it silently when you bless your food. Practice it often. Gratitude is not a first world only virtue. I saw a photo recently, of a girl in abject poverty, surrounded by filth and destruction. Her face was completely lit up with joy and gratitude as she played with a hula hoop she’d been given. Gratitude is what makes what we have enough. Gratitude is the most basic way to connect with that sense of being an integral part of the vastness of the universe; as I mentioned with looking up at the stars, it’s that sense of wonder and humility, contrasted with celebrating our connection to all of life.
8. Be kind.
Kurt Vonnegut said it best (though admittedly, and somewhat ashamedly — I am not a Vonnegut fan): “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'”
Kindness costs us nothing and pays exponential dividends. I can’t save the whole world. I can’t bring peace to Syria. I can’t fix the environment or the health care system, and from the looks of it, I may end up burning my dinner.
But I can be kind.
If the biggest thing we do in life is to extend love and kindness to even one other human being, we have changed the world for the better.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
1. Carry a notebook everywhere you go.
Steven Johnson, author of the book Where Good Ideas Come From, carries a document with him wherever he goes that he calls a “spark file.” Although Johnson encourages us to carry a digital spark file, I like the idea of carrying a notebook instead. If you don’t like to carry a big purse, you can get notebooks small enough to fit in your pocket, like this one. I’m a sucker for Moleskines, personally. Review your spark file once a month to remember all your great ideas.
Free writing is normally used as a prewriting technique in which a person continuously writes without regard for spelling, grammar, or topic. I like to think of it as continuous strain of consciousness writing, because you are literally writing whatever comes to mind. This technique is super helpful for writers block because the writer loses any criticisms for himself he previously had.
I’m an advocate for unlined pages in the notebook I use for this technique because it encourages more free-flowing ideas that don’t have to be just words, but pictures as well. This is also helpful for writing down any of your ideas and hunches, not just for this technique alone.
3. Collaborate and get feedback.
It’s important when trying to create that you surround yourself with other creative people. Not only will they help inspire you, but they might offer some creative feedback that you wouldn’t normally think of. These creative people will also help you stay open to new solutions for any of your creative problems.
4. Make lists and create a framework.
Making lists help you break that daunting task into a few simple steps. For example, if you’re trying to write a song and you only have the melody figured out so far, write down what else you need to do. It would look something like this:
Write lyrics. Break the song down into different sections (figure out how many verses I want, how many chorus’s, if I want a bridge, a solo, etc.). What genre do I want this song to go in? Rock, electronic, country, classical? Think of accompanying instruments you want to embellish your melody with, based off what genre you want your song to be in.
I’m sure there are more things that could be on this list, but this is just an example of what you would want to do.
As for creating a framework, I view this as a more general idea of the persona you want to create, or your entire project as a whole. Say you’re trying to lay out your career, and everything you need to do to get there. This might be a more visual version of a list, like drawing a circle in the middle of your paper with the name of the position you want in the middle. Then, you would draw smaller circles connected by a line off of this main bubble, where you would put all the things it takes to get there (getting a B.A. in your field, landing an internship, making connections, budgeting, staying motivated, etc.).
5. Take chances. Make mistakes. Get Messy.
I can’t stress this enough: mistakes are okay! When you make a mistake, it means you’re trying, which is all it takes to have your eureka moment.
Upon trying 10,000 different materials to make his ingenious, world-changing lightbulb work, Thomas Edison did not let his failure hold him back. In fact, he didn’t see it as failure at all.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
6. Finish something.
Something. Anything. Just make something, put it out there and see what happens. Really, what happens if you put yourself and/or your project out there? Ok, some people might not like it. Whatever. You are your own biggest fan, so anyone’s opinion shouldn’t stop your creativity or make you feel insecure. Odds are someone will like what you’re doing, and whoever doesn’t will give you feedback that you can learn from and apply to whatever you finish next. Learn to not take any of this feedback personally, as personal as it may be. By letting other’s criticisms roll off your shoulders, you become invincible.
Every so often, we want a change. Things get boring, stagnant, or just plain ordinary. We usually expect the things around us to change. In extreme cases, this is called a midlife crisis. It often doesn’t occur to us that maybe we’re the ones who should change, not everyone and everything around us.
Here’s a simple exercise anyone can do to see themselves in a new light. Write down your answers to these questions and give yourself enough time to think through your responses.
1. What are you? This can be how you see yourself, how others see you, and any roles you play in the world. Don’t be afraid to put positive and negative things, but don’t put just one or the other. Try to be as honest with yourself as you can. By listing these traits, you’re giving yourself a better perspective of yourself currently, and a starting point for the improvements you want to make. For example, I put:
Loving
Creative
Determined
Anxious
Sister
Daughter
Musician
Student
2. What do you want to be? In a perfect world, we’d all be different, right? Everyone has something about themselves they want to change, whether it be physical, psychological or circumstantial. First, I want you to realize that you are absolutely perfecthow you are right now. Any changes that you want to make should be for yourself alone, not anyone else around you. These changes should be to improve your wellbeing (for example, have a goal to cut down on high-fat foods in order to reduce your chance of heart disease, not a goal to eat less and get skinny because you want to get a boyfriend). Here’s what I wrote down:
Be more forgiving towards others.
Be more loving towards myself, and put myself first.
Exercise more control over eating and exercise habits.
Take myself less seriously, as this can be crippling to someone trying to create music.
Be more calm and thoughtful, and not react immediately and emotionally to things that might upset me.
Notice that everything I wrote was something that would improve my general wellbeing, not anything that I wanted to change so that I would be more accepted by others. Now – you can list physical objects as well. Say you want to get your dream car. That’s totally fine! You can work out a savings plan to meet your goal. As long as your goals are for yourself, not for anyone else.
3. Why do you want to be this way? Again, make sure you aren’t wanting to change for the wrong reasons. Remember, you’re already awesome, you’re simply improving your already awesome self. Love yourself, because you’re your own #1 fan! If you don’t love yourself, no one else will.
Here’s an example of what not to write:
I want to change my car because Brittany has a Porsche and I don’t.
Instead, write:
I want to put $100 per paycheck into a savings account to save up for a new Porsche because I’ve wanted one since I was a child.
4. What steps do you take in order to make these changes? Time to make a game plan. You didn’t think you were just going to keep daydreaming about these things, did you? You’re more than capable than making any changes in your life that you need to in order to maintain your goals. If you really want something, you’ll find a way to make it work.
For example:
Take night/weekend classes toward going back and getting your B.A.
Wake up 30 minutes earlier and jog around your block for 10 minutes.
Good luck with your goals, everyone! I’d love to hear about your progress in the comments section below. I’ll leave you with some inspirational words.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
“Half-measures avail us nothing.” – Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
It takes a lot of patience to work through mental illness, and honestly, I almost always feel like giving up. Sometimes I feel so incredibly weak but I know it’s all a phase and the disconnect is within my brain – not reality. In order to keep my anxiety and depression at bay, I have to maintain a strict, healthy diet, and work out at least five days a week. If I don’t stay active and fuel my body with healthy food, my mind goes down the drain and I actually feel like I’m losing my mind. It feels like you’re drowning, but you’re holding yourself underwater. I’m the only one who can change my attitude and control what I feel. I know I am in control of what effects me but putting this mentality into practice seems impossible.
This is one of my favorite quotes, and it keeps my head up and keeps me fighting every day. You can’t do anything half way and expect to get to the end. In physics, if you travel half the distance of an area from point A to point B forever, you’ll keep getting closer and closer to that point b, but you’ll never actually get there.
That’s why I love this quote. It reminds me that if I truly want to feel better, being strict with myself with diet, exercise, and writing music is crucial. I think this really applies to everyone’s goals though, whether it be having a healthier mind or completing a different goal. Persistence is key.
By the way, this is me in the picture. I love yoga and I’ve been practicing for over 10 years. It balances both my body and mind in ways that nothing else can. I highly recommend it if you have any sort of mental illness, or just stress, as it’s an exercise made for the brain just as much as the body.
Also, hi new followers!!! Thanks so much for reading my stuff. I hope it helps you with anything in your lives. Please feel free to ask me questions/send comments. I’m very open to talking about my experiences with mental illness and would love the chance to share some things I’ve learned with anyone who might need some help with their own stuff. You can email me if you want to communicate privately! 🙂
If you want to see more of my yoga stuff, check out my instagram!
The Savvp Journal 