DAY 15

MANTRA: “The only way to get better is to keep pushing.”

I have heard time and time again that if you can stick to something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. 

I think knowing that fact made me more frustrated with myself because that has never felt true for me. 

Starting something is always easy if I am determined to do it. 

If I am doing it for someone else, or because I think I “should”, I always drop out quickly. 

When I really want it though, the first 3 weeks are relatively easy for me. 

After that- something happens. 

My brain does this thing where it starts grasping onto what used to be and it thinks I should throw in the towel and go back. 

I start having thoughts like “I am going to have to do this forever” and I feel instantly exhausted. 

I want to quit because it genuinely feels like the right thing to do. My body agrees with my brain that we are tired, we want snacks, and rest. 

If I give myself what I want and quit, even just for the day- it leaves me craving quitting even more. 

I might jump back in after a day… or 5… but the more awareness I have put around this area during these challenges, the more I see that I am really just waiting to quit again. 

I made it two weeks into 75 hard, and just over a month of my New Year’s Resolutions when I started feeling like I wanted to quit. 

And I mean everything. 

It felt like life was too much, like I needed a week off to sleep and do nothing and be completely alone.  

I really want to break up with this version of myself because these feelings of internal defeat poisons me. 

I knew that I needed to give this real attention if I truly wanted to keep going.

I started there. 

I thought about all the reasons I started these challenges. 

I thought about all the changes that I am seeing in my body. 

All the times my mood was through the roof because I was feeling so good. 

With so much good from all of these things… Why can’t I hold those thoughts and feelings consistently? 

Why do I go back to low frequency things that do not help me build where I am going? 

I had to do a deep dive. 

I found a belief deep down that I will always struggle. 

That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that good things will also happen, but the way life has been weighs heavy in the background. 

I have been healing, but the protective system I built in the past is still active. It scans for danger, lies, and heartache. It searches for the rug that will most likely be pulled out from under me. It also wants to know every single scenario for every single rug in the room that could possibly throw me off of it. 

While I have gotten a lot better, and I feel it less- when things are going well for too long- I feel unsafe. 

What a crazy truth. 

But I also understand it. 

There were a lot of moments in my life that were going amazing and all of a sudden- BAM- something huge devastated my world. 

When I look at how I think and speak when I am aware- it would appear that all I want is a life where my dreams come true. When I look at how I have handled every hard thing in my life, I know that I will make it through. I logically know that I have nothing to fear. 

In my background though, my fear is thinking, “What is going to crush you?” “What is going to throw your entire world out of whack?” “What is going to take you out next?” 

The majority of the time I feel good and like I am truly aligning with where I am going. 

In those hard spaces show me where I am not. 

Where I need more love. 

Where I need more confidence. 

Where I need more good thoughts. 

We all struggle. Each and everyone of us. 

Yes I still have moments of doubt and deep fears that live within, but I am working with them now instead of pretending that they aren’t real. 

The more honest I become with my fears, the more quickly I am able to free them. 

They run deep and require layer after layer to be stripped away. 

Like everything else in my life, I must look at all that I have accomplished- and not how far I have to go. 

It isn’t something that opens overnight. It is something that happens with time. 

Each layer I peel back and meet with honesty and kindness – heals. 

I used to keep everything locked away because if I admitted to a place of self doubt I got a lot of “Don’t think like that!”or “Why would you think like that!? You’re great!” responses.  

Or even worse, they held a new belief that this is who I really am all of the time. That’s who I really was, and that is who I would remain. 

I didn’t want people to form their opinions about me from that place. I didn’t want to hear that I shouldn’t think like that. I didn’t want to hear that I was great. I didn’t want anyone to tell me anything. 

I was really just trying to get it out and saying it outloud made it feel like maybe I could. 

I put too much stake into how other people responded, and it made me want to hide it all away and deal with it on my own. 

Instead of working through those uncomfortable feelings, I buried them and stayed hidden away within. 

I am going to be working through this by staying consistent and seeing where it leads me. 

One day at a time I will crush my goals and keep prioritizing them. I will stay honest in what I am feeling and I will listen to myself well. 

I will greet all of the feelings and thoughts that make me want to quit. 

I will understand them, and then I will reroute them into what is good- into why I started, and why I keep going.

I will continue to work on reframing my mindset and what thoughts are being allowed to run in the background a little more each day, because the little things truly do build the big things. 

I will do this by actively thinking about the beautiful things in my life that I love. 

How good I feel every single time I make it through something hard or how good it feels to move my body. How amazing I feel after I eat well and don’t over do it. How much I love how my body looks and feels with all the love that I have been giving it. How wonderful all the people in my life are and how they make me feel. How inspired I feel when I write, and when I read others words. 

I will be thinking about all of this and more so that those thoughts can help me rebuild my background. 

Even the strongest minds struggle. 

How well I treat myself in the awareness of what needs more love in my life is a true measure of how successful I will be. 

After all, “The only way to get better is to keep pushing.”