Being in a bad headspace. Being in a rut.

Understanding

As with anything understanding a rut can help us, deal with it more effectively.

What causes ruts?

Ruts are normal. Human beings experience them. No one is always perfectly on point, even though, we all wish we were. There are numerous causes to being in a bad headspace. Sometimes it has to do with the basics like sleep and hydration not being taken care of. And sometimes, it is a game that we lost, that tips us off, or a fight with a loved one. This may sound funny, but the weather can play a huge roll, as well hormones. We are incredibly complex beings, and everything that we are exposed to has an effect on us, therefore also everything we are exposed to might cause a rut. Sometimes a rut is caused by overwhelm. We have a lot to do and start avoiding it, which ends up getting us into a rut.

Our mindset in and of itself, will (most likely) not cause a rut, but if we tend to think negatively we are more prone to ruts and if we tend to overdo the positive thinking, we might overwhelm ourselves causing a rut as well.

How do ruts make us feel and act?

To be clear: A rut is NOT depression. While we can feel a little “depressed” when we are in a rut, this is still very different from actually being depressed. If you feel as if your rut is more than just a rut and seems to be more like an actual depression, seek professional help!

How a rut makes us feel depends on the person. Feelings of sadness, a lack of motivation, constantly being annoyed or very irritable are quite usual. It is also common to engage in some form of avoidance. I personally tend to sleep in and play Age of Empires all day long. We do tend to reach for our addiction of choice when we are avoiding. It helps to explicitly know that in order to be able to counteract it. We might also feel worthless, lazy and ugly.

How to get out of a rut?

I am sorry, I do not have a magic pill to cure a rut. Getting out of a rut can feel like very hard work. And there is no one-size-fits-all approach. I would even argue, that getting out of a rut, heavily depends on the cause of the rut.

Do a refresh/reset

Sometimes all it takes is a little change. This can be achieved a number of different ways. I would advice to try, what feels right for you in any given moment:

Physical

Change your environment -move furniture, change decorations-
Clean
Declutter
Wear different clothes
Shower
Have a new experience

Mental

Try getting into a different mindset
change up your routine

Remember the Goal/Make a plan

This is very closely related to a mindset refresh and it is highly effective. Remember who we want to be. Reevaluate our lives. Set a plan for the next 3 months. Maybe make a new habit tracker. But remember where we want to be going.

Sometimes, we just need to take a little action. I am not talking about moving mountains. I am talking about taking a shower, taking out the trash or writing the first paragraph of that essay that we have been putting off. Make a plan. But do not stop there, take action on the first item!

Opposite Action

This is a skill that is actually taught in DBT. It suggests that we do the exact opposite of what we feel like doing. That way, we conquer our inner demons and actually make meaningful progress. And therefore we end up with a positive memory.

Practice Self-Compassion

This is probably the most important of them all. Because ruts tend to make us feel worthless, it is very easy to be down on ourselves. And that will only get us down even more. Always remember that regret is only fruitful, if we manage to improve in the future. It is merely detrimental, if we use regret to self-loath. Try to assess your emotions rationally. They probably have some sort of reason. And they are valid. The trick is to not give power to sadness and self-loathing. Which is a lot easier said then done, but nevertheless, maybe there is something, that would make us feel better, and no matter if the emotion “makes perfect sense ” or not, we should definitely do the thing that makes us feel better. Sometimes taking a break is the only right course of action.

Start Small

This is especially effective, if part of why we are in a rut is that we feel overwhelmed. Learn to take your to do list one step at a time. Learn to prioritize. Understand that it is never big deeds that make us as a person. It is the small daily things that we do. They compound over time and turn us into the person we are. One run, does not make me an athlete. Nor does one glass of wine make me an alcoholic.

In Conclusion

Ruts are part of being human. They suck. But they are not the end of our lives. Taking a break, taking care of the basics, refreshing and tackling our to-do lists one piece at a time are incredibly powerful tools in handling a rut. And always remember: Our value as a person, does not depend on our emotion, nor on our current level of energy or on how good we think we are. Our value as a person is intrinsic. That means no matter what we do, or how we feel, we are still incredibly valuable

Taking Responsibility vs. Hating

I have found one highly negative pattern within myself: Every time I failed in any kind of way, I would use this very failure to fuel my self-hate. Why would anyone do that? It seemingly makes no sense. Seemingly.

Humans can get used to almost anything. Including hating ourselves. And humans also do not particularly like change. So once we have gotten used to hating ourselves, we do not want to stop hating ourselves anymore. So we start finding reasons to hate ourselves and we end up in a negative cycle.

The important thing here is that we act as if we wanted the reason for hate to vanish but not actually taking any steps towards it. While this may seem very hypocritical it is actually not something we consciously do. And even if we know we have that problem, it may be almost impossible, to get rid of it, because to do so, we need to catch this negative behavior in the moment.

This ties in with general negativity. If we are able to eliminate negativity from our lives, we also get rid of our self-hate. So how can we catch this behavior? It is important to acknowledge our flaws, but it is not an excuse to go down the road of self-hate. We need to acknowledge our flaws, in order to improve. This is work. I am sorry. But the only sensible thing to do, when we catch ourselves talking to ourselves negatively and pointing out everything we did wrong, is to figure out ways to make it better next time. Sometimes our minds are too clouded by self-hatred, then it makes sense to write this down. This is productive and it gives us a better chance of breaking the cycle of negativity.

Here are some other things I like to keep in mind to break negativity:

Watching what I say. (I talk to myself a lot.) Especially watch out for whining and complaining. These are often just ways to give voice to negativity, without changing anything for the better. The goal is to become a more positive person, so yes, we need to acknowledge the things going wrong, but if we cannot change it, there is no point to get emotionally invested in it, since it will only drain our energy and make us more negative. This especially applies to talking about other people. If it is not something nice or at least very interesting we want to say, it would be wise to refrain from saying anything at all. Complaining, whining and bad-mouthing other people does not only make us more negative, but it also makes us a lot less pleasant to be around. Of course sometimes we just need to vent. It is perfectly human. But remember: there is ALWAYS something we could vent about. And it is one of the easiest negative traits to catch and correct.

Don’t seek out distraction when I feel crappy. This sounds a little counter-intuitive. But hear me out: I am not talking about taking a break or finishing the day off with a little bit of a nice TV series. I am talking about spending hours in front of the TV procrastinating. This can have all sorts of causes. My favorite ones are “I am tired” and “I am feeling nauseous”. The problem is: After I have wasted a few hours I will feel just as tired and in addition to that I will also not have done anything productive and that will have me feel even worse than where I was at the beginning.

Focus on improvement. This one is probably the most trivial one. But it is very important to remember that it is okay not only make small steps into the right direction. I once tried to talk myself down because I was sore after a workout, because it meant, that I was weak, even if that was true, me being sore was a sign I was on the right path. It is normal to have setbacks, but then it makes much more sense to focus on the long way we have come than on “how far we’ve fallen”. The first has a better chance at getting us up on our feet again.

Monitor what I think. This is very similar to watching what I say, just a lot more subtle. It is about training ourselves to be mindful of our thoughts and to alternate negative thoughts with something more nice and positive.

Take care of my physical self: Sleep, Exercise, Hydrate! This is pretty self-explanatory. It is all about feeling good in our bodies. If we feel good, it is easier to focus on how good we feel, than on how life is unfair and not worth being lived. It is also about being kind to ourselves and taking care of ourselves. Because that is inherently positive. It is consciously taking action to shower our bodies in positivity and that is a perfect first step to more positivity.

This list is not complete, there are countless other little things, that have us become more positive. And in the end it is a very individual journey, but for me breaking out of negativity was long overdue and these tips come straight out of my personal journal. I know that negativity is the one thing that if I do not get rid of, I don’t even have a single shot a happiness.

The Formula to Changing Mindsets

I promised to do a post on how to improve one’s mindset, with the goal to have a mindset, that allows us to improve ourselves, out of a habit. And for that to happen, we first need to do the most difficult shift: We need leave our passive mindset behind and start forming an active one.

Let me first clarify one thing: A mindset can actively be changed, but it is like changing a habit. Changing the way you think, requires time and patience and a lot of work. But the nice thing is, that the moment we take action, we do something, that is not typical to our current mindset, so we already took the first step to an active mindset.

Goals

To avoid, changing our mindset into something that is not better than what we are entertaining now, it is advisable to first define a goal. Often that is something that emerged from our dreams and is some sort of a soft version of them. It is something that makes us truly happy. Our goal is (usually) basically happiness. If we don’t know what that is, it helps, to make a list. Not only a list of things that we do enjoy, but maybe also of the things, that we do like. For me one of the most striking ways to know that I truly enjoy doing something, is when I do not feel the need to check my phone. These things will definitely end up on the list of things that I do enjoy.

The Plan

We cannot achieve our goals from one day to another. That is, why up until now, our goals were merely dreams rather than something we could take action on. In order to achieve our goals we need to divide it into smaller goals. And maybe we need to have different smaller goals in different aspects of our lives.

We need to add dates to these smaller goals and then, we need to figure out, what steps we can take today, to achieve those goals. We need at least weekly when not daily goals, little steps we take towards our big goal, in order to be able to move forward. A goal that is only set for a month is too big for us to oversee. We don’t know where to start, which is, why we need to break it down.

We need to implement some sort of accountability system. That can be a to do list, a project list with dates, a habit tracker, you name it. But the important thing is, that it makes sure, that we do take action and start achieving our goals. We are way more likely to fail, if we do not write it down and are not accountable.

But with accountability comes the instance that we do achieve our weekly goals. It is important, that we acknowledge those small victories, because without them we would never reach the final goal. Yes, our success is, the sum of a million little, daily actions that got us one step closer to were we wanted to be, but that is exactly, why we need to celebrate those little things. They are the stepping stones. They are the foundation to who we want to become.

The Mindset itself

The mindset is the set of attitudes. Therefore, in this step we have a look at our intentions. It is about who we want to be on less obvious level. It is about taking control of our mind. Do we want to hate the world and everything and everyone in it? Or do we choose to give people the benefit of the doubt. Do we choose to complain about, or do we choose to fix the things that bother us? What kind of aura do we want to have? Do we want to be the person that doesn’t really care about politics, or do we have a refined opinion on it? How do we choose to treat others? How do we choose to treat ourselves?

There are big trendy attitudes like minimalism and the “cool ones”, who just do not care about anyone and anything. But we don’t need to adapt to one of those. We can create our own mindset according to the person we strive to be. Finding who we want to be is a very personal things, but usually our goals give us a good starting point, to think about who we want to be, but sometimes we also need to adjust our goals to our intentions. It is a back and forth, a journey to find balance between our intentions and our actions.

Implementing a new mindset is however tricky. It starts with awareness. We need to keep questioning, whether what we are doing matches our intentions. The next thing is to adjust the space around us. It is to take care of the exterior. That includes the space we live in, but also our desk at work, our cars, our appearance. All those things reflect back onto us and help us to become the person we want to be. A certain space reinforces certain thought patterns and the thought patterns are exactly what we want to take care of.

Then we also need to implement habits, that reinforce our mindset. We want to respect ourselves? How about we start respecting our time and stop doing things, that don’t bring us closer to our goal or that we don’t really enjoy. We could also take care of our health and start going for a run once a week. Or focus more on nutrition. Maybe we want to respect our hobbies. Maybe we want to give more importance to other people than to ourselves, so we could spend more quality time with friends and family. Maybe we want to lead a productive life, so we focus on working productively without distractions for an hour straight, every day.

The last step is to find out, why we want to become that person. Why we have chosen this particular mindset. And to envision the person we want to become. And set up reminders of that throughout our space. Find inspiration. On YouTube, Pinterest, or wherever you find your inspiration. But do not scroll mindlessly. Go on a quest for inspiration and don’t just consume, but try to bring that inspiration into your life, by putting up notes or pictures on your mirror, at your desk, your screen safer, you phone background. Because you can have chosen to become a certain person all you want, we are humans and we do have emotions. That inspiration and the why are what makes our emotions cooperate. It is what helps us not just make the decision, but enables us, to follow through. It will be what makes sure, tough times are not the usual state.

Remember that this is a journey. Our mindset does not change within a week. And maybe it turns out, that we found a mindset and tried to implement it, but it didn’t suit us. Then we have to reassess and adapt. And try again. And that is okay. We do not need to have it all figured out instantly. It will happen. But it will take some time. It has to grow first.

The Mindset

A Mindset. What is it? Can I eat it? No. A mindset is not eatable, but it can include eatable things. Allow me to explain. Google defines Mindset to be a person’s set of attitude. Even though very accurate this does not help anyone unless one already knows what a mindset is.

A mindset does not include emotional state, attitude may. Even though emotions and mindset do affect each other. But is one important difference: The mindset can and should be a conscious choice, whereas emotions are out of our control. As a result, the mindset is more steady than emotions.

How we handle our emotions may very well be a matter of our mindset. And how we choose to form our mindset may be influenced by our emotions. But they are not the same. Mindset can include eatable things, as it determines, what exactly we think about food.

The dictionary defines Mindset as a person’s way of thinking and her opinions. I like this definition. Because we can choose the way we think. We get to have control over that. Our mindset includes every attitude and also our general approach to life, the universe and everything. It includes our attitude towards working, relationships, spirituality, money, health, politics and climate change. As well as our opinion on art and literally everything around us. It also includes our goals and our wishes. Our desires and dreams. And our attitude towards those.

The most known and hyped mindsets are probably the minimalist mindset and the mindful mindset. But I do not believe that we have to choose one of the two, to form our own mindset. Keep in mind, that the mindset is probably one of the most personal things. I believe that a mindset can be changed. I believe everyone should tailor their mindset to their own needs to find happiness. But that is a whole new blogpost, that is what I am planning to write next.

A mindset does not only define our way of thinking and our attitude, a mindset can and in my opinion should define our whole life. The reason for that is simple. We have control over our mindset, if we define it such that it will take control of our life, we control our life by transitivity.

A passive mindset, will not affect a person’s life very much, in contrast to the active one. To understand that imagine Anna being criticized by her friend. She understands and even agrees with the criticism and moves on with her life. If Anna entertains an active mindset, she will improve, it may take her days, weeks or months depending on what the criticism was about, but in due time, she will not repeat that mistake. Anna takes responsibility for her life. And she deals with things. If she had a passive mindset, Anna would nod and smile and forget about it. She agrees, but her mindset is not to take action.

Improvement comes easier if one has an active mindset. Because with an active mindset, we have realized that this world does not do anything for us. As long as we have a passive mindset, our lives will not change the slightest bit. At least not in the direction we want. Because we may have dreams… but those are not coming true by chance. And concerning the little things in life, we don’t even really know what we want. We don’t really care. A passive mindset is just the result of ones upbringing. Just the sum of one’s surroundings.

An active mindset does not only contain the dream, it contains the steps to reach it. It contains a detailed roadmap. Someone with an active mindset will check back in with that roadmap and see if his or her actions bring him or her closer to that dream. Which at that point is not a dream anymore, but a goal.

The problem with switching from a passive mindset to an active one is, that it is so much work. We don’t only have to figure out what we want and how to get there. We have to motivate ourselves. And that turns out to be way more difficult, that it sounds. Taking the action of switching mindset, is already something that would be inherent to the active mindset, that is the very thing we are trying to acquire. And so we end up in a vicious cycle.

Most people with passive mindsets do not even realize, that their mindset is passive. Because it is how they have always lived. And when they don’t feel their best about their lives, they don’t realize, that it is not just a little thing bothering them. It is not just their job, friend or partner that is problematic. It is their entire mindset. Their way of thinking. Their attitude. That makes them unhappy. And they do not realize that unless they find a way to fix that, they will never find true peace and true self-confidence.

In addition I believe that many young people don’t quite understand the concept of a mindset. They all want to grow up and be their own boss, but they cannot take control of how they think, because they are still entertaining the same mindset they entertained as teenagers and children. I think, that we cannot be truly gown-up unless we understand how to take control of our own mind. This is true freedom. True independence.

High society and the rich

I have been watching a lot of YouTube on the topic of high society and elegance. And I realized that even though I always considered myself to tend to be overdressed, I am very middle class. And I asked myself if I was willing to put in the effort to become high society. But at some point I realized, that that was not the goal.

When we look to the rich and famous, we realize a few things

They respect themselves (and often times others)
They don’t crave approval
They care about one thing or another
They act instead of talking

But these things are all not exclusive to upper classes and the rich. Those things are simply things, that make us happy. And I truly believe, that this is the key: If we manage to implement these things in our own mindsets, we have a better shot at success (whatever that may be to us), because these things make us happier, better people, no matter which social class we are in.

We do not need to strive for elegance and affluence. We need to strive for confidence, respect for ourselves and others and a proactive and positive mindset. Because that is how everything else will eventually fall into place. Think about it: if you see something in your life, that you do not like, your proactive mindset will make you change it.

We don’t need to have high society approve of us. We need to have ourselves approve of us. I know that for me, that mostly means I have to approve of my own mindset and the way this mindset is put into action. There is nothing wrong with striving for elegance. Just remember one thing: Elegance is not just about looking and acting sophisticated, it is even more about being appropriate. Overdressing is not elegant. When I dress for an occasion, I will always think about what is the average level of elegance that will be worn there and then wear something that is 1-3 levels more elegant than that. This way I will look elegant, yet not overdressed. And this applies to every day situations as well. If I care I can dress very well even for university or running errands. But that is just how I feel comfortable, this is by no means how everyone needs to operate. I just find, that it helps me a lot with self-respect. But that is a whole other topic.

Happiness through Growth

Let’s talk about New Years resolutions. Some may be going well. Some not so well. And some may already have been given up on. That is okay. There are many reasons for that. But one thing may be worth keeping in mind: it is not about being perfect. It is about getting better.

Here’s why generally speaking money does not make one happy: Money is stagnant. Sure, it becomes more, if invested properly. But we don’t really have to improve, to make it anymore. So some may be happier while striving for money, rather than actually possessing the money. We have an inner sensor, that tells us, whether or not we are good enough for ourselves. And that sensor is not satisfied with money. It is satisfied with growth. It is satisfied, when we improve.

So it does not matter, where our New Years resolutions are at right now. All we need is a plan to achieve those goals, if they are worth our time, if they are not we may as well set new goals. Such that in five minutes we are one tiny bit better. Because who said, goal setting and planning improvement was something that had to be done only on special occasions. That is just a way to prevent greatness.

This goes hand in hand with kindness. Kindness towards ourselves. We have to acknowledge our small improvements, because they are worth something. And really they are worth more than money. Kindness towards ourselves can be hard. So hard. I found that learning how to be kind to ourselves can be easier, if we start by being kind to others. Doing the right thing. Because it does make us feel good about ourselves. And when we are kind to others, we do not have to be so harsh on ourselves either.

So one thing we could grow is kindness. Or we can improve our relationships with the people around us. Make an effort to spend some time with someone we care about. Call an old friend. Send them a funny picture. I for one want to smile only genuinely. With my eyes. It helps with relationships, boosts happiness and is something a kind person would do. I don’t plan on smiling less, just more honest.

I believe that kindness and happiness are linked. I do not know why that is. But I think happy people do not need to make other people miserable to feel better about themselves and kind people are making others happy. And happiness seems to be like a boomerang. If you give it someone, they end up giving it right back to you.

Never think, that improvement has to be limited. But never think that growth happens over night or in jumps. It happens almost unnoticeably. Slowly and steadily. If we think there is something that could be improved in our lives, we should do it. Right now.

Acute Mental Pain

We all have our rough patches from time to time. Whether we have mental issues or not. The key however is to handle those properly without hurting anyone around us, or getting hurt ourselves.

The first step as always is to realize that something is wrong. For me it is usually the music. Sometimes it feels like music is screaming out all the pain for me. And the next thing I notice is, that I want to write. But there are also more obvious things: Me wanting space. Me being tired and just wanting to stay at home. But the biggest indicator is how often I cry. And at what time. I cry when I am tired. So it is quite normal that I cry in the evening. But if I cry at 8am I know something is wrong. If I walk into a room full of people and after 5 Minutes cannot handle it anymore, and I want to scream or cry and have to leave, I am certainly on edge. I am sure everyone has different signs. We can find out, what they are, by watching ourselves. Are we acting normally? Is what we are doing, what we would usually be doing? Is our reaction appropriate? I used to get very angry and impatient. Which is the next point.

Once we realize that something is wrong, we need to validate. I used to get very angry when I got hurt. And sometimes I still do. Because I cannot or don’t want to admit that I am hurt. Because in my mind I am vulnerable if I am hurt. So I cannot be hurt. But this is so very destructive. It prevents us from dealing with the pain, and therefore we cannot heal. So we need to validate. We need embrace the pain. We need to allow ourselves, to be hurt for sometime. It is alright to take a few days off to take care of ourselves, even when we cannot put our finger on what is wrong. We don’t need to have cuts manifest our pain, to be allowed to be in pain.

So what do we do once we know we are hurting. We need to slow down. We need to take a break and figure out, what we need. Maybe a break is really all we need. Maybe we just need to lower our own expectations of ourselves. Maybe we just need to spend some time healing. That could be anything. I find cleaning out my wardrobe very good. Or going on long walks. Don’t bother with all the things you should be doing and do the things, you want to do. The things that bring you joy. The things that balance you. Yes, this won’t solve everything in a day, nor two. But it allows us to deal with the pain enough that we can live our daily lives again without bursting into tears every other hour.

And after that maybe we can figure out, what got us so hurt in the first place. But maybe there was no reason. And we just have to take care of ourselves a few times every year. And that is okay. People don’t post how they just spend three days staying at home crying on social media. People do not talk about their failures. But everyone has those days where they just want to cry. Everyone fails. And for some people the pain is more intensely. Those who can stand up and admit that are the strong ones. Those who figured out, how they can take good care of themselves in these situations are the smart ones.

Not everyone understands this. Most people do not give it much thought. I believe this is a mistake. Those who never run into intense pain: good for them. But this does not mean, others cannot feel pain that makes them want to turn against themselves. Pain is a very strong motivator. It can explain a lot. What people do. What they say. I think we as a society would be a lot better off, if we were more honest about being in pain. It would raise an awareness and understanding for it, that would help us to feel more understood and deal with pain better, as well as it would help us to help others and help them to deal with pain. Instead of judging and adding to their pain.

What we want to vs. what we have to do

There is no such thing as “I have to do this.” But the alternative is to deal with the consequences.

Last week was exhausting. I had a midterm on Friday and the whole week I kept thinking: “I am so exhausted. I don’t want anything but sleep, but I have to keep going. I need to study.” But when the midterm was over and I had some time to make new to do lists and think about my whole situation I noticed a few things.

My real problem was my mindset
I wanted to study. I did not want to be sleeping or binging TV
But I couldn’t, because I was so tired
I’m not tired because of the workload, I am tired because of my mindset and the season

The more we force ourselves to do stuff, we don’t feel like wanting to do, the more tired we get mentally and the less energy we have. Often we just need to remember, why we want to do something. And remember, that we really don’t have to do it, if we don’t want to. This is a very empowering shift in mindset. It allows us to get back in control.

The other problem is the season. There are really nice aspects to it: it is cuddly weather and we get to wear the comfy clothes and drink tea and hot coco all Sunday long. It is perfectly acceptable to just stay in bed and do nothing for a little. We get chestnuts and gingerbread, chocolates and cookies. We light the scented candles and start listening to all the beautiful winter songs again. On the other hand there is the darkness and the cold. We get a Vitamin D deficiency. We dial back our physical activity. And this is what makes us so tired. For me there really just is one thing: more working out and a better sleep schedule. It gives a sense of control and it battles the exhaustion.

And again: we do not have to work out. But I want to. Because I want to study. And I want to be confident. And I want to have energy. And I know that regular work-outs will provide all those things.

Dealing with getting worse

When the leaves fall and the sky starts crying many of us just want to hide and cry as well. Autumn is known for causing depression. But it is even worse, when it coincides with us failing to keep moving towards our vision. Because then all we can do is crumble. And in a matter of days we are back to the very dark places we thought we had left behind for good.

We don’t talk about it, because we are ashamed of ourselves, for not keeping up the good work. For breaking the promises to ourselves. Again. We keep telling the people around us, we are fine, because we do not feel entitled to feel bad. And with us not telling how we actually are, we detach from the people around us. And just like that our entire lives become empty and cold.

We find ourselves having a tinnitus again. Find our feet tickling until we loose all feeling in them. And then we may realize that we have been not taking our medication properly for weeks. Our sleep starts being interrupted. Dreams haunting us. We keep being tired, even though we know we are getting enough sleep.

And we blame ourselves for all of it. We start hating ourselves for letting it all slide. We try to get our lives back on track. Try to focus on our visions. Try to do that homework that we have been putting off. Try to get out of bed. But nothing can stop the sadness inside us. And we know one thing: Even though we try. Even though we try to push away all the negativity, the moment one single thing goes wrong, we will fall. We are fine. For now. But there is nothing we can do to stop the sadness. To stop the cold. To stop the loneliness.

But even though we know we will fall at some point. We keep fighting. Some of us do for the ones close to us. Some do, because they do not want to admit, that they have issues, that they need to address. And some just don’t see the point. I tried to deal with it. I tried to make it go away for good. I know it won’t.

Sometimes life is not about making everything perfect. Sometimes life is about making it through. Sometimes it is about keeping the darkness at bay rather than destroying it. It cannot be destroyed. It will not go away. It will linger beneath the surface and break through at some point. All I want to do, is to make sure it doesn’t destroy me when that point comes. And at some point that has to be good enough.

But how can we make it through? It is a matter of balance in attitude and mindset. For one we have to dump perfectionism. And on the other hand we cannot give up. We need to get stuff done. We have to keep making progress.

We have to get rid of perfectionism, because if we don’t we will never be happy with our progress. And we will keep beating ourselves up.

And we need to figure out what is the most important thing to do. We need to not get overwhelmed. What we do does not have to be perfect, it does not have to be a huge task. But it has to be something. This is what makes sure, that once we feel like working towards our visions again, we don’t give up immediately because the things we did not do pilled up.

Getting motivated may be difficult, but we can, by remembering the recent things that we are pleased with or proud of. And then it is just one step at a time. Living every day a little better than the last one.

Pain. An explanation.

Be it physical or mental pain, it is our body screaming that whatever it is that is hurting us, needs to stop.

When we put ourselves in pain, we want to tell ourselves to stop asking so much of us. We want to tell ourselves, that we need to protect ourselves better. Protect ourselves from other people, from pressure, from our own perfectionist thinking.

We are asking for permission to cuddle up and hide somewhere. We are asking for a break. Asking to be allowed to rest.

Who is it, we need permission from? Who are we asking, to give us a break? Mostly ourselves. It is mostly a way of telling ourselves, that whatever is going on is too much for us to handle. Telling ourselves, to allow us to breath. To stop having unrealistic huge demands for ourselves.

We are also asking the people who know for protection. From our own perfectionism. We are asking them to tell us that we don’t need to push further, without rest to be worthy of their care. We should be able to do that ourselves. But we are not. So we ask for it. In a way that is probably the most desperate in existence. We are in a position, where hurting ourselves and begging for help is way easier than loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves.

Mental pain is not taken seriously unless it is actively affecting our lives. And that is so very subjective. So we reach for the blade to make sure the existence of our pain cannot be denied. Because we ourselves, are the first person to deny that pain. Telling ourselves, that everything is just fine. Telling ourselves, that whatever it is, we can handle it. Telling ourselves, that everyone around us is handling it just fine, so why should we be any different? And that is how we spiral down into a dark place. Trying to be strong. Trying to survive.

Until we reach the point, where we are in incredible pain. Pain we cannot handle anymore. And we slide down into hating ourselves, for not taking care of ourselves. We start hating. And hatred makes blind. We are unable to rationally grasp what we need and we start screaming for help.

We need the pain to stop. But we do not have the strength to make it happen. There is no pain-killer-pill for mental pain. But if there was, it would be the people closest to us. Because they are the only way we can escape the parallelization, we are in before it would naturally stop. But once we have escaped the trap of pain, we will be the ones, to protect us against it in the future. People can help us get out. But only we can help ourselves to not fall in the first place.