Category: Self care

The greatest strength lies inside your mind.

If your reading this blog it is probably because your mind currently, or at some point during your life, seems to have taken control of itself and your life, and you feel like you can’t stop yourself from feeling a certain way or doing certain things.

I know when I was feeling my lowest that I thought there was no way out. I thought that the only way I could escape my mind, which had run free and messed up so many things in my life, was to take my life. It seemed impossible at the time, that the very tool which was destroying my life was also the only tool that could build up the life that I want to live. The mind is key to success. Whether that be setting up a business, pulling yourself out of depression or climbing mount Everest. You can’t do any of those things without your mind, a positive mind-set is a catalyst for success.

There are so many things that I do or don’t do in my life, that I want to do or to not do. Let me give you some examples. I have got much better at managing my money, ensuring that I am not left with absolutely nothing for any period of time but I’d really like to save and I’m not hitting my savings goals at this moment in time. There is only one reason why. I haven’t got the right mindset yet. I know what I want to save for, but I do not have the determination to fully commit. I have stopped myself from buying expensive things that I don’t need, but I still end up spending unnecessarily, usually on food. If I want to save money, I need to have the willpower or it will never happen and willpower comes from the mind.

Let me tell you where I have practiced this successfully. In some of my other posts I mention the break up that happened almost 2 months ago with my ex boyfriend. I kept saying, and kept thinking that I wouldn’t ever be able to love again. And, if I am to be completely honest I am still not sure that I will. However, what I have done is changed my mind-set, and I am using my emotions and heartbreak to my advantage. Let me tell you how. I am very afraid, to let anyone else in after all of the past experiences that I have had, but, it is my dream to have a loving relationship, to settle down and it always has been. I am a really family orientated girl, very maternal, and my idea of happiness sits comfortably in the family life regime. So why should I remain a single parent, with only one child, when my dream is to have more than one child and to marry? I shouldn’t. Just because I have had my heart broken, I shouldn’t run away from my dreams because if I don’t then at least I have a chance of reaching them right? Okay so this is what I have been doing…

In the 2 months that I have been single I have only felt well enough to talk to another male in the last two weeks. I discussed it with my councillor and she and I developed a few things that we should do in order to help me get back into the world of dating, but protect myself from making the wrong choices. One thing that I mentioned to her was doing things too soon, from getting intimate, to becoming in a relationship and introducing my child. So I have created a list of 5 questions that I must ask any man that I am seeking that kind of relationship with. It is not an interview so they will not be word for word, and I will be slipping them into natural conversations where they are applicable. This is to help me to identify at an early stage whether the person has the traits and personality that I am looking for, before things start to get to complicated.

Now I feel myself drifting away from my actual intended point here, the power of the mind, but methodology is important too. So basically what I am doing is taking things very slowly, and ensuring that I am finding out the important things sooner rather than later. If you have read my earlier blogs you may know that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I want to explain a little bit about how that has affected my relationships, and particularly my sex life so that you can understand why I feel I have made great progress over the last 2 weeks. My experiences as a child made me grow up feeling like no more than a sex doll, sad, but its true. Now some survivors go the opposite way, they have a fear of people going anywhere near them or touching them physically and so become afraid of sex following the trauma. For me, the experience was very different. Due to re-victimisation very shortly after the first spate of abuse I entered my teenage to adult years feeling as though I was worth nothing more than sex. Like that was the only thing I was good at, the only purpose that I had. My brain had also programmed itself into believing that my opinions, my desires, what I wanted, had no significance. Therefore, if a male wanted me, I would often consent even if I didn’t truly want to. Many will say that this makes me a slut, but I am not offended by their thoughts or comments because they don’t understand what I went through and what it did to my head. I no longer have to be ashamed because I have discovered the issue, and I have addressed it and now I have put my plans into action using nothing but my mind. On every occasion that I have seen this one guy over the last two weeks I have gone no further than to kiss him. I regret to say that this an achievement for me. No matter that I had alcohol in my system, no matter that he was trying to persuade me to change my mind. I went into his company telling myself that I was not going to give any sexual contact and I stuck to my guns every single time. Part of this is to see if he respects my wishes, or whether sex is all he wants. Part of it is to make him chase and see him put in the effort. But do you know what the most important part of it has been? Showing myself that I CAN do anything that I set my mind to. I don’t have to be a slave to sex as the males of the past made my mind believe. I can be whoever I want to be. I deserve more than giving myself up straight away, I deserve to grafted for, but I have to make that happen.

The above example may be un-relatable to many of you reading it, but the point that I want to get across is that you can change lifetime habits, you can change habitual thinking patterns, cognitive distortions that have been instilled in you since a very young age. The key is the mind. You must use your mind, you must adapt your mind-set. The behaviours and everything else required for your success will follow once your mind has found the right path.

Believe in yourself, challenge yourself. You are your best supporter and your worst enemy. Once you unlock the full potential of your mind, you can be unstoppable.

I hope this post inspires you to test the powers of your own mind, success is like dominoes! Once you achieve one goal, you believe, and once you believe, you can begin to smash all of your goals one after the other in succession.

Good luck.

Until next time.

Saturday night – face mask, dressing gown and motivational speeches!

So in my last post I said I was going to start doing three things each day to take better care of myself. Brush my hair (seems a simple task I know, but not so simple for those who suffer with depression), uptake a skincare regime, and go to the gym. So far so good, I have been doing all of these things and I am already starting to feel better about myself.

Time is such a precious thing, but often we do not use it wisely, and often we don’t even consider how we are using it. I was thinking the other day about all the things that we don’t do, like taking off our make up, because we choose not to find the time. And of course all of the things that we do find time for, like scrolling through social media, that may not be so important. Let’s face it, brushing my hair and washing my face will give me many more benefits than looking at my Facebook newsfeed. It suddenly occured to me that there is time for everything, and that we should make time for everything, even things that may be considered wasteful. Everyday does not need a scheduled timetable that must be adhered to but why can’t we give it a basic structure. I spoke in my anxiety checklist about finding the time each day to meditate. I have now decided that there are three categories that I want to make sure I include in every day. All of these things are ” me time ” , whether you get half an hour, an hour or three hours of ” me time ” each day I think this is a really good way to utilise the time that you have.

The first category is self care, as I discussed in my last post, skincare, excercise, meditation, massages, facials, manicures. Anything that you can do or like to do to take care of your health, your image, your well-being. Hence why I’m sitting in bed with a face mask, I’ve already removed my make up, washed my face, now I need to wash off the facemask and apply my night cream.

The second thing I want to utilise my ” me time” with is something with purpose, something important or inspiring. Something that’s going to help you go forwards in life. Whether it be listening to motivational speeches, researching something, writing a blog, looking into ways to make your dreams a reality. Whatever it is that is going to help you keep moving forward, rather than get stuck in the present without being able to make the changes needed to really achieve your goals.

And finally, junk time. It may seem a little unfair to call it junk, because, to us its entertaining. Whilst it may not be useful to our future, whilst we may not learn anything, entertainment is needed for our well being. We need to have a laugh every now and then, free our minds from everything and just relax, a little like a child again, that knows nothing but playing games . This could be watching a film, reading a fiction book, scrolling through social media, going out for drinks, video calling a friend, playing a game. I think this is the category that often many people don’t struggle to find time for, but spend too much time doing these things and neglecting the other things needed in life for a healthy balance. Some people are quite the opposite and do not find any time for their own entertainment and this adds more stress and unhappiness to their lives. If we work hard we can play hard right? But you have to be doing the work, you have to be caring for yourself, and you have to be doing things that are useful as well as playing if you want to be successful and happy. There’s no point in watching every film on Netflix but feeling like your going nowhere in your life and complaining that you didn’t have time to paint your nails.

Make time for everything that’s important, and also make time for those who things that are not so important but nonetheless vital to stop us from becoming insanely over worked.

Until next time.