April 19, 2023
I am constantly thinking about others in a tough spot, and how they might improve their situation. I am staunchly against giving advice, as well as receiving it. Recently I’m having my own difficulty facing obstacles in life, but how can I reinforce ‘practicing what I preach’?
I don’t want to be a hypocrite, but I think most of us are, whether we want to be or not.
When I’m feeling good, I’m on top of the world and I feel like the concept of having a single problem is laughable. On the other hand, when I’m struggling emotionally I feel like a child who didn’t study on a test day (this is a fucking gross understatement by the way).
I know what I’m capable of, but on tough days everything seems impossible. Rather than dwell on it, I know that I’ll never move forward without facing the negative feelings and coming up with a plan.
My tentative plan is as follows:
I know that I need to do this, but I’m currently looking for tips. More than likely I’ll search Youtube.
I am not a fan or proponent of either journaling or meditation. I’ve seen a bit of personal success meditating, although it was short lived and became tedious. Journaling I’ve found to be pointless, and a really difficult habit to pick up. I have found affirmations to be quite helpful in the past, and I will try to pick that back up as well.
My current writing plan is as follows. Journal daily for about 5 minutes with the intent of getting negative thoughts out of my head. This will either consist of me writing down all of my negative thoughts and never reading them again, or writing down positive things instead. One exercise I quite like is David Goggins’ ‘Cookie Jar‘ idea. I will create 3 personal affirmations and read them daily, and the affirmation that I deem to be the most important I will write down over and over again Bart Simpson style in a notebook.
The actual journaling I will tackle digitally, my weapon of choice is Evernote, and all else will be written by hand. I will try this for 30 days and report back on my results. To make sure I stay on track I will use Habitory.
My main focus is to find out exactly what’s troubling me and create ways of dealing with them instead of sporadically feeling bad for a few days. Obviously we’re not going to feel all rainbows and sunshine all the time, but during difficult periods it seems more pragmatic to face it than to live with it until it’s over.
If anyone has any tips of their own, please share.