27 May 2017 -Growth & Self Awareness Part 4

The Sun will rise. No matter how dark the night, no matter how loud and scary the demons, PUSH ON, push through until the sunrise. 
Every nightmare will end. With the coming of the sun, is the coming of a new day.

Initially this, like everything was a learning process. Some things resonated with me immediately other things took a little time for me to realize they helped. I have done a lot of reading and experimenting in the last year to get to this point. Guidance from the Demon Hunter (Psych Doc) for other suggested reading as well as her guidance and prompting through out.


I am going to break for a second and say that this is what worked for me. The conclusions i came to. This is an ongoing process. So by no means is this over. I just have tools now that when applied and carried out regularly with discipline keep me in a healthy mindset and have me searching for happiness again. Setting short and long term goals, which is what i was missing. As well I had little to no sense of accomplishment. Most of my identity was stripped away from me, and huge parts of my life were out of touch for me or worse still I pushed them out of my life as the depression set in. This included friends, family and a larger social circle.

So in order to figure out how to rebuild, sometimes you need to tear everything down and look at who you are and what is ultimately important to you. Which is fucking terrifying and can be quite painful at times because for the process to work I had to stay with it the whole way.

As with any I research that I do,  I look for common themes or ideas. If the same idea comes up more than once from different sources usually it is a good indicator to me that I may be onto to something. Just to be clear I mean this more when it comes to actual books. Internet research can lead, at times, to whatever conclusion you want to be bias towards in the first place.

A Side effect of all this is I find myself eating less emotionally or eating out of boredom. 

Some of the reading that resonated more me in the last year has been In Pursuit of Excellence, The Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck, and 10-minute Toughness. All of them brought different aspects that I needed or was searching for direction on. I did read some things that either thought offered ideas and theory yet no solid way to institute those theories into practice.

My main goal at first was to simply get all of the noise out of my head and onto paper. I have filled nearly 3 lined note books in the last year. At time the writing was fast, frantic and scribbles. Other times the words would come quickly, clearly and concisely. My hand writing at times would reflect my thoughts by how I was actually writing the words on paper which is interesting to go back and look at.  Over time things would quiet down allowing me to sleep and focus. A lot of this noise in my head came from inaction and too much alone time.

Summed up: Stop playing the victim, Take full responsibility for everything in your life.

So step one was keeping a journal. Not in the dear diary this was my day sense, think more, this is the random garbage that is on a tape real running in my head.  When I got away from writing that tape real would run on repeated loop. At times this could begin to feel overwhelming. So the search for me was HOW DO I SHUT THIS OFF? I am not always in a position to write things down. I had read a good deal of theory yet not a lot of actual tactics for shifting the mental state when it is caught on an idea. So no, the idea of think positive thoughts, doesn't work. Everything else I do has a program and a plan to make it better, so mental resiliency or mental toughness should be the same.

This is not the be all end all. It did give me more than theory of how to alter your thought patterns. It gave me concrete activities to apply almost immediately. 

This came in the form of performance statements. Now this is not standing in front of a mirror and psyching yourself up for the day. This is either a short phrase or key word that when I feel things starting to slip it breaks the cycle getting you trained to focus on what you need to do rather than thinking of what could go wrong, quickly. The book was primary written for sports, the tools and techniques can and do work in the rest of life as well.

One of the examples from 10 minute toughness was a baseball one for a hitter. World series game, hitter has had a bad time with a pitcher all season, game is on the line. Before his mind starts thinking about all those previous at-bats and how terrible they were (which is totally natural and normal) the player re-cites his performance statement which is a couple key words to remind him how to generate his best swing. So now as the hitter is stepping into the batters box he is not focused on the situation or the pitcher, he is focused on optimizing his best swing. The rest will happen as it may, except now the player is more likely to have a better performance because he is relaxed and focused on what he needs to do rather than everything that could go wrong. 10-minute toughness covers this is much better detail.

Learning to focus on my breathing multiple times a day. This is something i could do anywhere and at anytime. I have made a point of at least 5 minutes of mindful meditation a day focusing simply on my breath. I do 10-20 minutes of yoga 3-5 times a week. This has helped my hip mobility immensely and allowed my mind to settle. It is not always a focus on a mat with instruction thing either. Sometimes I just take 5-10 min before i cook a meal. This allows me to figure out if my body is holding tension anywhere which is an indicator I need to take more time to reflect and pay attention to my mind.

Sleep. I will keep this brief. Get 7 to 8 hrs of quality sleep a night. If you can't get the quality figure out a way to make it better. Sleep right now is something I keep track of. I struggle more when I do not get 7-8 hrs. The CPAP machine has done wonders for my quality of sleep as letting me know every morning how long I had the machine on or in other words roughly how much sleep I got.

Movement. Multiple times the Demon Hunter has said to me "Movement is the enemy of Depression." Simply by getting up and doing something no matter how down I felt it would shift my mental state. Sometimes it might be to stop what I am doing and do something else.

Becoming a lot more self aware that I have emotions and I need to listen to them. They do have physical manifestations and sometimes I may need to dig to get past the initial thinking of what I am feeling a try to determine what I am ultimately feeling. I have learned I cannot fully control them. I have learned to accept them and let them pass on. This is a little harder to explain in writing. The easiest example I can give is when i feel anger I try to think past it and think or see what the underlying emotion is that is causing it that i am ignoring or not paying attention to. In the past few months this has lead to some break downs in an isolated personal setting.  Saying you accept something and actually emotionally believing it are 2 totally different things. This has lead to a lot less outbursts of anger when something does not go as planned or if i do get angry it is a lot shorter as i try dig to figure out why i am pissed (Quite Honestly, Usually my own damn ego and need for control). Do not get me wrong, Anger is a very valuable emotion, simply put uncontrolled it is a waste of energy and time. Simply focusing the energy caused by the anger is more productive.

Reaching back out to friends and family. I am re-extending to my old social circles and creating some new ones. I am in a crappy work situation for social interaction working shift work for several more weeks and I am facing a new work situation after that. Ultimately I now realize I need to make the effort and not allow myself to become isolated.

 I need to be challenged, I need to feel "uncomfortable or out of my comfort zone" on a regular basis. The natural anxiety that comes from those situations has never bothered me enough to keep me from doing things. It is something I have done all my life and I need to bring it back on a regular basis. This will have me feeling like I am moving forward with a purpose. Set the odds in your favour and "Roll the Hard Six" if you will.

I need focused learning on a regular basis. I need to see growth in my life and in myself. To do this I am setting goals again. Some of them will change with time. If I achieve them I will celebrate the success (something I did not do in the past) and then set a new one. If I fail to achieve a goal it may mean I did not want it as much as I initially thought or my priorities changed. Ultimately though, the take away from any failure I realize now is that I need to learn something and then apply it in the future.

 I will briefly touch on meds. The psycho therapy worked very well for me, I continued to move through and change my own situation (doing what was asked for homework, hip surgery, CPAP, daily meditation). So in my situation it was not a required option, I am not special it simply was not something that was going to boost or assist my process in recovery. Everyone is different.

None of this process is going to stop anytime soon. In fact it should never stop. I have learned physical activity daily is important, the earlier in the day the better. Being Mindful of my breath, my body and my emotions. Taking time daily to do my own personal 10 minute mental workout to build my mental toughness, applying through out the day as necessary. Taking time to look around, see, and experience what is going on. Taking time to be as self aware as I can while still enjoying the life going on around me.

So although I may have found myself in the middle of an ocean at times treading water. I realized if i simply started swimming, no matter the direction I would find a shoreline. Sitting there treading water was not improving the situation I needed to swim.

Thanks for reading.