The Single Most Important Lesson, Never Give Up
Healing Journey Part 3, click here to start at part 1
Just imagine a blur. It’s blurry, fuzzy, foggy.
Going faster with every second, sight becomes a blur, on a speeding rollercoaster of confusion!
“Oh wait, actually it’s pretty clear, I feel clarity.”
“Neverminded, I feel depressed again.”
“Well actually, now I feel elation, imagination & joyous feelings!”
What a roller coaster?!
I don’t know if that sounds familiar to you or not, but that’s what my life was like. Honestly I know you can relate, you’re only human and we all have our own roller coaster rides we’re strapped into unknowingly. After all, how much time do we give ourselves to process it?
Well, that was no augment for me, I spent tons of time processing, tons of time on me, taking care of myself in every way I knew how. Yet, all the things they say about self-care, “heal yourself, heal the world,” just slow down and spend time on you, none of that stuff was working.
In fact, I was so tired of taking care of me that I simply gave up!
At this point (in the spring of 2020) I was giving up all the hard work I’d put in towards my wholeness and wellbeing. It was shortly after I had made and posted a video about how much I’d learned & the tips and tools that had helped me up until that point. And while everything in that video is very relevant for healing and important stepping stones towards wholeness, I was missing one very important...and I mean super important, extremely, extremely important piece of the puzzle, and that piece is: To Never Give Up!
When I’d “fallen” into a depression again, I felt even more like a fraud because I’d talked about my healing journey in that video. Thankfully this time I wasn’t too hard on myself because I knew that what I had shared were steps that did help me & might help someone else too.
Turns out there were just more steps!
But I was so done with those stinkin’ steps! Why couldn’t I just flip the page and be on to my new life without all the struggle!?!
Originally, I thought I gave up because I was exhausted from all the work I was putting in to take care of myself. Later on I found out that I gave up, not because I was too tired to do the work, but because I did not believe it was possible that the work I was putting in would actually create any lasting change. I had no motivation to keep trying or to keep practicing.
At that time I was “stuck” in a belief that it would always be hard work.
And what is this work I’m talking about? I’ll explain more about it here, but basically it is watching your every thought and having the self-control to say, “No” to any thought that brings you pain. It is some of the hardest mental work & it’s not something anyone wants struggle with their whole life! But it’s also the most rewarding work that is most definitely worth it! But don’t worry if you don’t know what the mental work is, at this point in the story I didn’t either.
Anyways, I was lying to myself and telling myself that I was always gonna be struggling, that a life without anxiety didn’t exist for me, that it was not a possibility for my life. That I’d always be stuck as the same old person that I didn’t want to be.
So after I decided it wasn’t worth it, that all the work wasn’t making a difference, I gave up and I fell into a depression right after that DECISION. Little did I realize I was deciding to be depressed, it was so subtle that only hindsight has revealed the truth. In fact, at the time the real decision and thought process that led to the depression had nothing to do with giving up at all. Only later did I realize I had given up.
The real thought process went like this,
“It sure has been a lot of exhausting work to watch my every thought and guard against negative thinking all the time, I’m just gonna stop all the work and take a break. I’m just not gonna think about any self development stuff for a while. I don’t really think it’s worth all the work anyways, I’ve been trying for a really long time and haven't gotten very far, it hasn’t gotten any easier and I have no proof that it ever will. Maybe there’s another way that doesn’t involve so much work.”
So you can see I didn’t deliberately decide to give up, but when I decided to stop all the self development work and not watch my thoughts, that’s when the depression hit, because all the thoughts were now flooding in unchecked.
The time when it would have been best to double down on the work, I was doing the opposite. I was guarding against any self-development thoughts that came up and not letting those new positive thought patterns run….because I was lazy & disbelieving!
No doubt I was in a pretty bad place when I made this decision to “take a break” but isn’t it interesting how tempting and appealing the egoic mind can make something out to be. “Take a break.…” came the lies, “it’s not worth it anyways”. Complacency is a shiny golden apple, it plays on laziness and the need for instant gratification, don’t fall into the trap!
Pushing through and not giving up requires some motivation, some belief that it will be worth it!
So let me be your motivation and proof that you too should not give up, the work is worth it and in the end gets easier! This last statement of truth came so graciously to me from another, find out who in part 4!