Living For Yourself, A Reminder
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, l want to shed light on how how far we’ve come in recognizing the importance of mental health. I’m sure we’ve all been affected by some degree of mental illness; whether you’ve seen it within yourself or others, it’s apparent that it’s an issue in the world we live in now. There are many things that can affect our mental health, but one reason I’d like to address is not being able to live for ourselves.
We can be restricting ourselves from doing what we feel in our hearts either because of responsibilities, relationships, religion, society, work, or simply not knowing how; the list goes on. Using family for example, they taught us how to live most of our lives, but once we find a sense of self and discover what we actually enjoy doing is different than what we’ve been taught, wouldn’t you agree it’s uncomfortable making the decision to do anything different? Work as another example, you may feel limited because you can’t fully live the way that you want because what you enjoy doing on your leisure time, doesn’t necessarily align with your day job. It may be that you are a corporate employee who enjoys heavy metal concerts, but society says that doesn’t fit the “picture” of how a corporate employee should behave, so you suppress that side of you because living with the uncomfortable emotions of feeling judged or living with shame would be too much to handle. Seeing things on social media is another way we are influenced on how we think we are supposed to live and what the perfect life looks like, at the perfect time. In reality, we are here to experience our own unique journeys and there isn’t a “perfect” way to live except when you are living for yourself.
We’ve been taught or shown how to live for so long that maybe when we get the opportunity to live for ourselves, we don’t know how or what to do. It’s a cycle we can get stuck in because as humans, we are scared of the unknown, but really “we” are not scared and that inkling feeling is exactly what we are excited to do; the ego is what’s scared. Although, our ego means well by only wanting to protect us, it can very much hold us back. Life is all about growth and it’s OK to out-grow things we’ve once knew, but most don’t take that leap of faith for whatever reason. It is a hard thing to overcome and even when you take the leap you can be in waiting period or dealing with many challenges before new change can come, and that can make a lot of us want to go back to what you already know.
Starting today, I encourage you to take some time and think about what it is that you truly love doing and if you don’t know, that’s a great opportunity to try something new. Try one thing that you’ve always wanted to do that will make you step out of your comfort zone; join that club, class or meetup, or go to the movies alone because you’ve been dying to see the new Spider-Man movie and you have no one to go with. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you are doing it because that’s what you want regardless of what people or society tells you to do. Remember that healing is not linear. You will have your ups and downs, but stay strong, give yourself compassion when it’s needed, and keep your goals in sight.
Brenda