At some point I started accepting who and what I was and how my life was, and focused on the positive.
Weirdly when I stopped trying to change myself and started looking at what I do and wondering why, I started to find better ways to do things.
A really trite example: I used to get frustrated because I would try and fail to remember to hang up my keys. Once it dawned on me that I generally drop them on the hall table, I just put a pretty dish there and suddenly they were tidy.
I’ve done something similar with most aspects of my life.
I’ve tried and failed to improve myself, over the years. Self help books were huge in the 1990s. But once I started shifting away from self criticism to a sort of detached curiosity I became more aware of why these efforts fall apart.
Diets are another example. I’d start with great intentions and manage three weeks at most. I realised that there was a direct link between my hormonal cycle and the foods I desire. I thought about that and started paying attention to it and trusting that my body might be right. There are distinct times in my month when I want high fat, high carb foods. There’s a day when I lose my appetite altogether and there’s times I crave wholesome, nutritious, vitamin rich things. I wondered if highly processed convenience food, sugar and chocolate were messing with my body’s natural balancing and over a year and a half I’ve been gradually cutting those back and experimenting with healthier high fat (eg avocados) and high carb (jacket potatoes, rice, potatoes) and I feel that I’m achieving a healthy balanced diet now across a month, instead of at every individual meal.
I’m not a fast paced, energetic person. And I’ve noticed that when I push myself too hard I seem to get ill for a while on a rebound. I just need to do less, and go a bit slower. And sleep a lot. When I stopped judging myself for it, and started going with my own flow I got a lot happier. And, of course, there’s a hormonal link again. I have about a week to ten days when I’m full of energy and drive and three of four days when I need to slow right down. I started scheduling to my own energy levels and get things done ahead of those slump days, and save slower jobs for slower times. Before I really paid attention, I thought I was lazy, disorganised etc. But by organising myself around me instead of by external systems and standards, I get things done.
A lot of this grew out of practising mindfulness for anxiety and just became more practical over time. Even in terms of anxiety, I had far more success when I accepted that I have anxiety than when I would approach it as something to get rid of. I see it as a signal now that I need to take time and rebalance, or that I need to pay attention. But not as another battle to fight.
It’s really hard to explain in a post. It’s just an attitude shift really but it’s in every part of my life and I think on the whole I’m enjoying life. Of course there are ups and downs and annoyances and major problems but I deal with them as best I can and cut myself a lot of slack.