I used to dread having birthday parties for my daughter. I would feel really anxious the whole week leading up to the party and even more anxious the day of. I would stress about all of the details and become really irritable with everyone because I was stressed out. It wasn’t as though we ever threw really big parties, but even the small parties containing under 10 kids would get me in a frenzy. I feared the awkward conversations with other parents that I didn’t know. I feared being judged and things going wrong. I feared not having enough food, favors, etc. I feared nobody showing up and having to see my daughter’s disappointment. I feared everything about birthday parties.
The reason I say this is because today was my daughter’s 6th birthday party and I see how far I’ve come. There was no stress this year. There was no fear. There was no dread. There was no worry. Honestly, I didn’t even think about the party after the date was decided and invitations were printed until I woke up this morning. We woke up, lounged around. Left the house around 11am to purchase favors and run a couple of errands, showed up at the trampoline park at 2:45pm and everything went fantastic. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this “Live in the moment” stuff.
I’ve learned to not get caught up in things that haven’t happened yet. I’ve learned not to consume myself with what is in other people’s heads. I’ve learned to relax and let life unfold in a way that I hadn’t ever done in my life. I’m no longer sweating the small stuff or enlarging the small stuff into large stuff and it is glorious. The present moment is all there is and we need not operate with our minds in the future or stuck in the past. That is when we get ourselves into a mess.
Looking back, when I used to dread birthday parties, all of the fears were irrational. I was operating in the future worrying about everything I could think of to worry about. I would work myself up by stirring up a nightmare situation within my own mind and then turn what should have been excitement and celebration into a dreaded obligation. I had incredible anxiety at that time and didn’t even realize it. I thought I was “normal.” I had never known any other way of being at that point in time.
It’s amazing that most of us operate in a way that we believe is “normal” until our “normal” sends us into a spiral that breaks us open to the fact that there is a better way of being.
When we operate in a state of high anxiety, high depression, or even addiction, many of us equate this state to being normal and we don’t see how to find our way out of it. We haven’t stopped to consider that there are alternative ways of being that may better serve us and that we might be able be able to teach ourselves those ways.
I’ve taught myself a new way of being. I’ve prayed, I’ve listened. I’ve sought out help with revealing and, if needed, altering my thought processes so that I could move out of these less desirable states into what I would consider a peaceful state. I’m working toward ultimate joy, nirvana, or full enlightenment, but I wouldn’t consider myself to have “arrived” yet. I can, however, say that I’m a long way from where I started when I began working for progress, which is really encouraging and inspires me to keep up the journey and see where it takes me.
Knowing that the life I was leading previously, wrought with high anxiety, despair, and so far from who I was, was all a big lie that I had created. I lived my life distressing over situations that hadn’t happened. I lived my life ruminating about things that had. I was rarely operating in the here and now, yet I didn’t even realize it when I was living in this manner. I thought that was all their was. I consider myself a “smart” person and yet it never dawned on me to check my thoughts, that maybe my thoughts weren’t healthy. I was consistently creating the hell in which I lived, but the moment I realized this, is the moment I became free from it all… or almost free.
Once I realized what I was doing to myself, then came the work of catching myself and resetting. Catching myself and resetting… repeat. Catch myself, forgive, repeat. I was creating thoughts that were creating fear, anxiety, depression, and misery. I was creating my own prison of hell and allowing myself to settle in there without ever even seeking the keys to the cell. I was complacent to sit in the cell of my mind-created dramas until finally I woke up. Christians call this salvation, some call it awakening, some call it a moment of reckoning. Whatever you want to call it, I was finally in a place where I realized I was in hell and decided I wanted out! When that moment came, I called on a higher power for help and things started looking up. Not immediately, but incrementally I would be graced with another facet of my unhealthy thinking that I needed to uncover, address, heal, and reprogram.
I like to think I’ve become really good at spotting the cruddy thoughts when they come. I’m aware of when I’m not operating in the here and now, then I call myself back to the moment refusing to feed the thoughts that will only bring me down to a place I don’t want to be. I am consciously choosing how I want to think and feel in any moment now. Being able to do this creates such a feeling of power and freedom that I want everyone to experience. I know what it’s like to live with depression, anxiety, addiction, and despair… I also know what it’s like to be on the other side of it. I know it is possible for anyone if they would only DECIDE and then seek out the resources in the form of people, books, environments, music, etc.
I’m proud of how far I’ve come and I want you to feel that same sense of pride in your own journey. I want you to seek out the resources you need. I want to remove the stigma from mental health and emotional healing. I want people to see how necessary and how brave it is to change your life for the better and work for progress within your own life. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is not as difficult as you think it will be either. If you feel you need help on your journey, I’d love to serve as a resource. Please reach out.