To celebrate turning 40, I’ve challenged myself to blog for each of the 40 days leading into my birthday. This is post number 16. You can read all the posts here.
The story I told myself that had the most power was:
“I can sort my shit out myself.”
In other words, I didn’t need anyone’s help.
The second most powerful story was:
“This is normal. Why do you think you’re so special, you don’t need to go through it?”
Everywhere I looked I saw people just like me. ‘Achievers’ who were rushing from one thing to another, stressed out and over-committed. Trying to be everything to everyone and frustrated they were failing.
I thought it was arrogant and unrealistic of me to want the achieving without wanting to pay the price everyone else was paying.
Affirmations helped me with the first mindset.
Once I had my breakdown, I started repeating to myself, daily, “You can’t fix this yourself.”
Finally, I started to believe it and today, I feel it’s the biggest life-skill I’ve ever developed: the ability to seek out help when I’m struggling – even just a little bit.
- It might be a phone conversation with a particular friend.
- Or Ant taking the kids somewhere for two hours on the weekend to give me some space.
- Or hearing a friend rave about a particular type of therapy and asking for the phone number of the therapist.
These all sound like such simple things – but I’d never have done them six years ago. I would have been too busy struggling along internally while presenting externally as someone who had all their shit together.
So that’s the first story taken care of.
The second story?