Last year, I was overcome with darkness, the kind that swallows you up whole and doesn’t want to let you go. I found myself in a place I didn’t think I would. For the first time, in a while, I felt hopeless. It didn’t help that setbacks kept coming my way, I was getting wiser and there I was making the same mistakes. I had no idea what to do next, it was as if I couldn’t find a way out of the darkness. 

My life was not the way I wanted it to be and I had no clue what to do next. I knew something had to change when I was on death’s door and

couldn’t see a way out. Out of desperation and despair that is usually when the answers come to us. Often it comes to us, not in the way we want or expect it to be, but when it does that’s when we realize we hit rock bottom. 

I had hit rock bottom, it is odd that at the beginning of the year, after writing my yearly goals I believed it would be the best year ever. Sure, a lot of great things happened. I traveled a bit, but that it didn’t take away the emotional pain I was going through, by July I was a wreck and when my birthday rolled out in August, everything shifted. I found myself trapped in the darkest recesses of my mind. It is there that pain and doubt visited me often. Where my courage and self-worth were shattered into pieces.

By October, I was having panic attacks, the memory of the emotional trauma I had gone through haunted me. Seduced me with its words and its vicious images, there were so many nights I cried myself to sleep. 

We often want our problems to be solved, but the problem is we don’t make any effort to change our lives. What messes us up are the habits that push us back and always make it hard to move forward. October was when I started changing my habits and they helped me out, I’m sure they’ll do the same in your life. 

If you want to get better at your habits, I recommend going to Project Life Mastery. Stefan James has a lot of great resources on how you can

master your habits. My habits used to be bad, but when I started changing them, my life changed and the best habits I implemented were the

ones I listed in this blog post. 

Stop with the excuses

How many excuses have you made for not doing something? I was the queen of excuses and often there was a good reason for them. There’s

always a reason for not doing something. Whether it is waking up early in the morning, excising, working on your dreams or even eating healthy.

There’s always a reason and it usually convinces us not to do something. Time is limited, that’s one thing you should remember. We have a number of days in a year and each day we decide what we should with it. When that day is gone, we don’t have it anymore. We can’t go back in time. Whether we like it or not time is running out and we’re getting older. You don’t want to look back and regret it. I understand life happens when we’re making plans and it’s never going to be easy. There will always be a number of reasons why something won’t work out the way you want it to, but if you press on something will come out of it.

Relying on your excuses won’t make you feel better, for a while it might. It might make you comfortable until you realize that the excuse you gave wasn’t as valid as you believed it was. 

Stop relying on people solving your problems

Adulting is hard, as kids we couldn’t wait to become adults then it came faster than we thought it would. That didn’t mean that everything fell into place. No, we were expected to solve our own problems, but there was a part of us that still wanted it. The belief was still there that someone else could help us with our lives. The expectation was in our minds when we entered the workforce, got into relationships, bonded with people and even got married.

It is so much easier if people give us advice on what we should do. Rather than listening to our hearts and minds. It has taken me a long time to realize that no one can solve your problems whatever they are. It might be easier, but there will come a time when you’re upset you allowed it to get that far. I am not saying we should be arrogant and walk around as if we know all the answers. There’s a difference in being arrogant and be confident enough in your decisions. 

When we allow ourselves to get caught up in waiting for someone to solve our problems, it is easier to find ourselves in a mess that we didn’t

anticipate. I have seen firsthand how destructive it can be. When the person you rely on disappoints you then you find yourself lost. 

Gratitude is important

It is hard to be grateful especially with what is going on in the world. But when you don’t practice gratitude you end up complaining. I used to

complain a lot, everything under the sun wasn’t safe from me. If there was nothing in the fridge I would complain instead of taking action. If I was bored, I’d spend a couple of minutes complaining about how I was bored. If someone mistreated me I’d spend a couple of days complaining about it. Okay, you get the point. I loved complaining even if there was no benefit to it. 

Complaining once in a while is good for the soul because once you do that you free yourself, but staying in that place isn’t good. If you want to improve your life you need to realize how many great things you have going for you. There was a point in my life where I was so broke, I started going to food banks and looking for food. It lasted a couple of weeks, but once I got out of that space I realized how blessed I was. There are so many people out there suffering, who go hungry because they can’t afford to buy food. That’s how hard life gets.

I don’t know what your life is like, but I can imagine that there are good things in your life. Maybe, you have really good friends or it is your health. Whatever it is realize that you have the chance to do something great. When you practice gratitude, it is so easy to focus on what you want for your life. When you do that you fall in love with yourself.  

Don’t be a afraid of focusing on you

I used to be a people-pleaser, it was so bad that my self-worth was built around it. I wanted their validation and to be accepted. There are so many instances in my life where my self-esteem went belly up all because I relied on people to make me happy. Now, I realize that I didn’t love myself enough to understand I didn’t need validation.

Many people grapple with this, believing that it is selfish to focus on you, but it isn’t. Of course, it is all about balance. If all you do is think about yourself then yeah that is selfish, but there are instances when it is important you focus on you. When it directly affects you and no one else then you need to focus on yourself.

For example, never move in with people who you know you aren’t close to. If you are doing it to make them happy you are dipping your toes in murky waters and it won’t end well. If you are spending money you don’t have all so you can prove to your friends that you belong then you’re making a grave mistake. If you’re going after a career you don’t like because you want to please your family then you end up being miserable.

I have done all the above because I wanted to belong, for people to accept me. The problem was I found myself miserable and depression hit when I didn’t get validation. All my fears were realized and I had to ask a hard question, did I truly love myself? I have learned to love myself and focus on me because in the end it is your life. 

Let go of your past regrets and mistakes

Regret and mistakes hold us back, they have a way of affecting the way we think. Regret takes far too much of our energy that we have nothing left for anything else. I watched a video a while ago, John Lee Dumas was talking about his Freedom journal. He spoke about how we don’t have enough energy to do what we want because we’re focusing on the wrong things. 

When you focus on the negatives, all that it does is impact your life negatively and you can’t move forward. Human beings make mistakes, it is part of the journey. The secret though is finding a way to move forward. This way you make sure you don’t make the same mistakes. Read this post about how to stop letting your past define. The worst thing is never learning from your mistakes. If you regret not working on your dream, take action.

If you regret, not standing up for yourself, start doing it now. It is never too late to start living your best life, you just have to believe that you can do it. 

What postive habits have you started doing to improving your life? Comment below

                                                                                                                     KEEP  PUSHING

                                                                                                       VANESSA