Tag: #personaldevelopment

Letting go of our mind’s self control mechanism

You’ve probably heard about the importance of letting go of the things that we can’t control. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it several times myself.

But what about letting go of the things that actually, we can control?

Whilst it is good for us to have some level of filter, turned up to the extreme this can make us seem robotic and inauthentic. We can quickly get to a place where we are constantly second guessing ourselves. For much of my life, I’ve felt like a chameleon and found it hard to know what I really thought.

Taking time to appreciate our physical bodies

My injuries have been relatively minor. This has meant that I somewhat forgot how frustrating and painful it can be when we have an injury. Yet getting one also is a reminder of how well our bodies function – most of the time we use them without even thinking much about how much they do.

On Tuesday, I rolled my ankle whilst walking down Brussels’ infamous pavements with a random hole in the middle of it.

The tale of the misplaced wallet

Grand philosophical ideas around peace and harmony are great. But they are only useful if they can hold up when coming into contact with our real, messy and unpredictable lives.

This week I had the fortune (or misfortune) to be tested on my worldviews.

On Wednesday, when looking to leave the house I simply could not find my wallet. After a rather long search I came to the conclusion that I must have dropped it when coming off the bus the day before.

Here I had a choice of how I reacted to the situation.

Finding an outlet to express our internalised emotions

This week started more anxiety driven for me than most. I found I woke up with a lot of existential dread without really being able to pin point why.

This week ended up being about finding ways to express the emotions outwardly, without necessarily trying to analyse them. Spending too much time trying to think about ‘why’ usually ends up worse rather than better.

Opening up to a deeper vulnerability

I had a moment this week where I felt deep fear.

There was nothing to be scared of externally, and I knew that. But I felt fear all the same.

I am someone who has generally always kept my composure in situations. I rarely lose control. Even in moments of intense emotion, these are often calculated, deliberate actions.

But here I was in a situation where I opened up more deeply than I am used to.

The art of learning nothing

Every day may be an opportunity to learn something new. But we can afford ourselves a break sometimes.

I’ve been tuning out my brain from needing to learn or do too much. Earlier in the month I spent a lot of time reading about Autism, ADHD and the like. Right now, I’m doing very little.

Sometimes our brains need time to properly digest the information we take in.

The art of managing our energy levels

It’s been a humbling experience to see how little energy I’ve had recently. Basic tasks which I would usually do without thinking have taken a large amount of effort.
I’ve needed to learn to be very discerning with how I spend my energy. Whereas before I could seemingly conjure life force out of thing air, in my current period of fatigue it’s been pretty tricky.

The positive about this is that by being more energy-conscious, I’m seeing how much I would previously use inefficiently

Connecting with our intuition on feeling safe

I never thought of myself as a particularly anxious person. Mainly because the idea of anxiety was something very visible and pronounced. It turns out that I just have become very good at managing my anxiety, rather than it not existing.
But in recent weeks I’ve been noticing how much unattended anxiety I’ve actually had. I don’t think this is something I’ve always had, but it’s certainly built up in the last few months. These haven’t been particularly noticeable (both to other people and myself) because my way of demonstrating anxiety is far less visible. Rather than having a visible panic attack, I tend to retreat inwards and disassociate from my body.

One of the benefits of actually listening to the anxiety rather than trying to manage it is that I’ve become a lot more cognisant of my intuition around social interactions.

On the search for a quietened mind

My recent weeks have been plagued with fatigue. It got to the point where popping out to the supermarket a few minutes down the road would leave me struggling, and I found myself frequently needing naps during the day.

I’m in the midst of understanding what being neurodivergent means in practice. It’s a lot to navigate – there’s certainly many things that make a lot more sense now, but I’m also cautious to jump to conclusions too quickly.

I went to my doctor this week who recommended I tried antidepressants. In an ideal world, I would have had a bit more time than a short consultation to think about it. In the end I decided to give them a try.