ABOUT FIGHTING ANXIETY WITH CREATIVITY

Here's a story from yesterday...

This morning I woke up, nothing on my schedule. Within minutes of waking up I started feeling anxious. The uncertainty of how I was going to spend the day, about how I'm going to spend the next few months of my life until uni starts, about when I was going to see some certain friends again, immediately made the worries kick in, and made my brain and my body go nuts.

I had to force myself to have something for breakfast, because anxiety for me always results in a loss of appetite. Somehow I managed to make it through a tiny piece of bread and a smoothie. I went up to my room, not wanting to waste another day on worrying and staying in bed only watching a ton of Gilmore Girls episodes, although not knowing how to fight the creeping anxiety either. Doing that would just make me feel crappy, useless and like I'm wasting my time and I hate nothing more than that. 

I decided to try and get my mind off things, by finally putting proper time into editing my book, which I just keep and keep putting off every single day. I turned the tv on on the side, which I usually never do at this time of the day, because the stuff that they show at this time of the day just gives me headaches. But it worked. I didn't get much done, but it helped keeping my mind off things. 

And just when I felt like I needed a break and my anxiety immediately started creeping back, my mum came in, and I realized I'd barely done a thing today whilst other people had already finished work. Somehow the scrapbook material in the box on my floor fell into my eye, and within seconds I had gotten up and started working on it. And I put so much work into it today. 

It is now late at night, and I have spent approximately around 7 hours today working on my scrapbook. It got to the point where I had to remind myself to get some food, and ended up eating whilst working, because I was completely in the zone and in my zen mode. It wasn't until almost dinner time, that I realized, that I had literally been in a little bubble all day, pretty much since I started working on my scrapbook and living out my creativity, and I had barely given anyone or anything outside it a thought. 

But, most importantly, I had conquered the morning anxiety that had been creeping up on me. And in the end, that is what was and is most important. Not that I didn't go to a place to work and earn money today, not that I didn't have a bunch of things on my to do list today that I could tick off, but the fact that I found a way to make myself feel good when I had nothing to do and felt like everything was going wrong. 

I realize, that this is probably not going to help everyone that suffers from anxiety, that my anxiety differs from other people's anxiety, and even I can't always get myself to a point where I can manage to try and fight the anxiety either, but I think it's a starting point that we remind ourselves, that we are able to find it, even if it's just every once in a while, and that if we ever feel like we are strong enough to fight our anxiety, we shouldn't just give in and let anxiety take over. Sometimes you just need to fight. We all have to find our own ways on how to best channel our energy to fight through anxiety. Try getting creative like I did, try meditation or yoga, try listening to music or audio books. Find a way that can take your mind to a different world for a while and it may hopefully help.

I'm looking back at today, and I am proud of myself that I managed to do it and fight the anxiety, and I feel grateful for getting the strength today to do so. I'm praying, that if you are also suffering from anxiety, that you may find that strength too, next time you feel anxious and liking giving up, before the day has even started. 

1 SIMPLE STEP TO MORE POSITIVITY IN 2019

We all know it. We all feel it. There are multiple points in the year where everything just seems to be going wrong and life just seems to constantly be shit to you.

Many people try loads of different 'Moments of Gratefulness' projects throughout the year, but as much as I find them intriguing, I just don't feel like they work for me because I just can't pull through with them. It's a great idea though. Finding something to be grateful for every day can in fact make you take the things and people in your life a lot less for granted. So if that works for you, keep doing it. If you want to start doing it, start doing it. You can try adding my tip on top of that, or do it completely on its own, or not at all. No one's forcing you to in the end. This is just what I have found to be working better for me.

Inspired by that, a random thought popped into my mind as I started setting up my brand new bullet journal for the following year or two. Having had a year that equaled more sort of a rollercoaster ride than a straight-forward timeline to the future, I often felt myself thinking it was a completely terrible year, and there was barely anything positive about it. When in fact, that just wasn't true. There are plenty of wonderful moments in the year, we just seem to tend to often mainly focus on the bad when looking back after having had a rough year.

This year, whilst focusing on wanting to make this year a hell of a lot better in general than the last one, particularly on a mental note, I have come up with an idea to become a hell of a lot more positive about every-day life in 2019, and the good things that happen to us on a daily-basis.

So here's my idea, if you want to try it..

Every day before you go to bed or once you've woken up the next morning, sit down with your notebook, bullet journal, whatever you want. Write the date down and then write down at least one good moment about that day. Whether it was going to an awesome concert or just having a nice phone call to catch up with a friend, or even just having a nice smoothie or sleeping in. Even if your day was terrible, find something in it that was positive about it. Sometimes it can be hard, but looking back, I can assure you, that it makes the day seem a lot less dull than you thought it was. Personally, I prefer short little bullet points, but you can obviously do it however you like.

And if you're as lazy as me and can barely keep a journal for a full week, this is also a great  opportunity to keep some sort of track of the things that you did. So far, this is working much better for me than writing in journals. I don't think I've ever managed to journal for a full 20 days in a row. Who knows, it could work for you too.

Try it. Change it. Don't try it. Let me know what you think. Is there any other way you try and see the positive in every day and track it?

Have a wonderful Sunday everyone. ♥

Outfit:

> Blouse: Bershka

> Jeans: GAP

> Boots: ASOS 

Location:

> Redemption Bar in Shoreditch, London

*not sponsored 

P.S. Let's ignore my writing and grammar in that picture up there please, I hadn't thought of posting it anywhere when I wrote that so didn't really give grammar too much thought. Oopsie. 

THINGS ARE GOING TO HAVE TO CHANGE AROUND HERE

It's that time of the year again where I tell you another excuse as to why I stopped blogging for a while even though I promised to do it differently from now on. Well, I'm tired of doing that. I'm tired of writing excuses. If I don't upload to this blog for multiple weeks or months because I don't feel like sharing so be it. I'm not trying to turn this into a business, and this is my space, so I might as well do what I want with it.

The past few months of my life have been interesting. This whole year has been very interesting and very different to all the years before. I finally left full-time education and am now sat in London, three months into my journey abroad of my gap year. Am I happy? Am I frustrated? I don't really know. I'm not really sure how I'm feeling about a lot of things these days. There's a lot of confusion in my head, a lot of things I'm trying to figure out at the same time, not necessarily in a bad way, but it's just taking time to figure out where I want to go in my life, what I want to achieve and who I want to be. As much as I didn't have a "this abroad experience changed my life for the best" moment, I can see that it is changing me and the view that I have on life and a lot of things that come with it. 2018 has been a year of a lot of tears and confusion, but also of growth, which I am really thankful for, even though it can be very frustrating at times. Things have not being going as perfectly as I wished for, but somehow I'm still making progress personally. I'm still learning a lot about myself and I'm learning to be much more independent, which is beautiful.

I am not sure where I will be in two months time, who I will be and what I will be doing, but I know that eventually I am going to make the right decisions for myself, even though right now it all feels like nothing is going anywhere and I'm going to get stuck in another rud. I'm a firm believer in the saying that everything happens for a reason, and every decision you make is eventually the right one for you. Every decision we take turns into a lesson for ourselves. It can be a positive or a negative one, but eventually, either of them are there to help us grow and shape us into the people who we are meant and want to be.

Last night I watched this amazing documentary on Netflix about Tony Robbins. Interestingly, although he has been doing this job for a long time, I had never actually heard of him. And it was so fascinating to hear his thoughts and very motivating. I often have a very hard time applying words like his to my life for the long-run, but I feel like it's worth giving a try. If you feel like you are stuck in your life right now, or if you just generally need some motivation and inspiration to pick your life back up, I really recommend you to watch his documentary.

I don't really know what this post is about to be honest, but then I guess that's what my type of update posts are usually like. I'm just trying to get some thoughts down.

I think this blog is going to have a lot less "planned" content on it from now on maybe, and a lot more about thinking processes and things that are on my mind. Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see. We shall see how often I will even post, but I guess this is it for now. I'm still trying to figure out my spot in the blogging sphere.


- 21 - 11 - 2018 -