Consistency over Convenience

Life has felt so fast since the motorcycle accident that I talked about in the first blog and the first book (The Accident: How to Shake the Sh!t Out of Your Life). 

I remember thinking that I had such a grip on life but I couldn’t see that I was barely hanging on. 

My emotions ran everything. I let overthinking and panic make a lot of major decisions for me over my intuition, over the things that made me calm. 

I have had so many moments where I wanted to throw in the towel and call it quits, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see any option to quit. No matter how loudly I declared that I was done living like this, I kept finding myself back in that feeling, over and over and over again. 

And each and every time I was aware of it, the more frustrated I became. The more my thoughts ran in a loop about all the things that I messed up, all the things I didn’t do well enough in, all the ways I let others down, all the ways that I let myself down. I thought about all the life that had passed me by. All the dreams that I never chased. 

I felt so old. 

And not a fun old. 

I felt the kind of old that nobody wanted to feel. 

Everything in my body hurt. I looked frumpy AF. All I wanted to do was eat and sit and hide away. So I did. 

I was so tired of having my heart broken, being lied to, trying so hard to be what everyone wanted me to be, just to have them resent me for it- fight with me over it. Tear me down about it. 

The thing that bothered me the most, was that when I let my favorite parts of myself out, so many times, I was told to put it away. 

It made me want to hide all of my favorite parts from the world because they didn’t understand, and the more I heard what they had to say, the more I questioned myself. The more I didn’t like myself. 

It made me feel crazy. 

Like I was never going to be enough. 

I wasn’t going to have enough. 

I was going to struggle forever. 

And damn…  I was tired of struggling. I wanted a better life for my son. I wanted a better life for myself. I wanted to spoil my parents. I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. I couldn’t feel this way anymore. 

I yelled it out, cried it out, wrote it out, talked it out. I tried everything to get out of this loop. 

But then I changed ONE thing. 

Every single time I caught myself being aware of feeling these feelings that I was SO SICK OF FEELING, I flipped the script. 

It was time to reroute my brain into the brain that I had been craving. 

I stopped everything. 

I went outside or I sat down or laid down wherever I was and I closed my eyes and I breathed. 

I felt the sun on my skin, the air, I felt my body becoming lighter, less tense. I opened my eyes and took in everything around me. Nature has always had a way of connecting me back to the present and reminding me that there is so much that I don’t know. As big as this felt, it is small.  When all those big feelings seemed to settle- I’d write.

I would greet my feelings like old friends, instead of enemies. I needed to restore this relationship within myself by rerouting all the negative talk into gratitude. I searched for the lessons. I cried out the pain. I let it all off my body. No more holding on. No more trying to control things. I was letting it go. 

It was only then that I realized how much I truly held inside and how unsafe it felt  to say what I wanted, do what I wanted, and truly live the way I wanted. 

Calming myself, connecting myself to nature allowed me to stop focusing on the external and look internally at myself. I was disconnected from myself. I had driven a wedge and it was time to fix it. Now we (myself and I) have a conversation. I empathize and I can truly see myself. I started giving the love I give so freely to others, to myself. 

I am able to see where I am making it harder than it has to be, where I am choosing reactions that don’t create the outcome that I truly desire. I am seeing where I am not honoring the things that I know create the environment I need. I see where I need to breathe- but keep talking. I see where I can soften, where I can adjust. I see what is old trauma and what needs to be loved. I am my best friend. I am the love of my life. I am my greatest achievement. I am my heart, my soul, my home. 

And each and every day I honor that more deeply. 

Consistently, not conveniently. 

A lot of the time it feels inconvenient to use my time for those things- but after I do them, I never regret them. I am always better when I am loving on and taking care of myself. 

I love me for all that I am. 

I have spent too much time on the negative side of things. I was missing my life. 

I am making up for that by seeing all the good in all the things that I have done. I see all the times I won, all the times I picked myself up when I thought I’d never be able to stand. All the times I didn’t quit, all the times I’ve had to celebrate, all the people, places and adventures that fill my soul. I am so lucky and so blessed and I almost missed it all. 

Back then, my responses didn’t feel like a choice, but now- in this place I am now, I can see that it always was a choice. It always will be a choice. 

That doesn’t mean that everything will be rainbows and butterflies from here on out, it just means that my reaction to every single thing will determine how peaceful my life is. 

It reminds me of how often I overlooked all the people that came through for me because one person didn’t. 

That one person would get my entire focus. 

My attitude, my reactions, my thoughts- those were the things that were creating the life I didn’t want to live anymore, and the beautiful part about that was that it was something that I could control. The only thing that could stop me, was me. 

I bring myself back to this very thought each and every day, multiple times a day and I breathe and remember that real change comes from within and habits are formed from consistency over convenience. 

I remember why I set out on this path, why it is so important, and I remind myself of all the times I thought I wouldn’t make it- and I did.