I have said before happiness is a choice. You can just...be. You can be in a state of happiness and experience life with that mindset. At some point you will realize that if you have issues and your companion has issues then it will never be a healthy n happy relationship. Enjoy the now. You have very little control over the future. breathe and stay calm. anxiety would eat you up in fighting so thats the first opponent to defeat.
~ Mentor Jack
I've been struggling with my relationship with my girlfriend recently. I mean. Basically since the beginning. I was constantly split in my head about what I want to do with my life. There've been many turns and changes in my life, generally for the better.
I was split in my head for a long time between wanting to continue living a single life or choosing this amazing girl to be my girlfriend.
I was never the happiest person. My mood and my thoughts have been dragging me around for what has seemed and to some degree felt like forever. I've suffered from the fantasies of my own mind. Not always, sometimes they were inspirational and helpful, other times they dragged me through shit, the mud, etc. whatever you want to call it.
A lot of the things in my life while they were choices, didn't always feel like it. There were times when I was questioning myself because of my thoughts. They have been loud and painful many times in my life. They've caused complications in my relationships and internal and physical pain.
I mean, literally multiple relationships, and probably many situations.
I struggled to be present. I understood it as a good thing. I'm aware the mind is a very useful and fun tool to use when used properly but getting to that off switch is quite the fucking struggle.
Breathe. Realize what's around you.
You're likely missing a lot of beautiful details about your life and your situation.
Presence is hard to explain. You're just aware of the things around you. You're aware of your thoughts and you choose to allow them to rule you or turn your attention. Pushing thoughts away isn't quite it. It's not about pushing thoughts away. It's about moving your attention, like water in a bottle.
Move your attention to your breath when your thoughts are very loud. Breathe. Keep breathing. Keep breathing deeply and well into your stomach until it becomes a habit. Take care of your body and your health so you don't get sick and get respatory problems. When you do enjoy something, focus on it intensely.
Thinking about your partner all day will likely not bring you piece of mind. Obsessive thinking is not piece of mind.
Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future. What we can do is see the present. Look at our options. Look at what we have and appreciate it or change the situation.
Our anxieties and our fears are anxiety about the future. Whether or not our fears are true or not are unknown until we have proof. Either way, it doesn't fucking matter because you need to put your attention on the present.
My father told me you need to be scared behind the wheel of the car. My dad is not the happiest person by far that I know and there are many lessons I had to unlearn from him (thank fuck for meeting my mentor, the happiest person I know... and my therapist who helped lead me to my own realization of these lessons).
I never felt right about that "you need to be scared behind the wheel of the car". We typically don't look up to people who are afraid. We look up to people who are confident, aware of a situation, and handle situations well. That comes from an undistracted mind.
The time you spend in your head takes away from your work, time with your friends, etc.
I'm not saying not to think, I'm saying don't think in ways that make you suffer.
In a fight, as my mentor explained to me (which I shared in my previous article), there is no right time to be anxious in a fight. You need to be present and have full use of your faculties. In life, if you're stuck thinking about the future, you're the cause of your own suffering, because surrounding you there's likely something to be grateful for.
That doesn't mean you can't be in a shitty situation, but you can likely do something to either change it or improve it.
You can focus on your breath and not your hard past or missed opportunities that make you suffer, or your fear that also makes you suffer, or that person that you hate, which thinking about also makes you suffer. You can solve things and talk about things with people. You can hire a therapist to help you with your issues. Feel not great about yourself? You can go to a gym and see if having a nice body helps you become confident, or hire a language trainer to learn a new language if you feel lonely while living abroad, or hire an accountant if you're fucked at taxes.
The point is that there's action. The actions are the only things that actually change your life. You can be prepared for something. You can prepare for something. You can be ready for something now and find out that you were. You can choose to focus on good things in your life and not suffer so much and maybe you'll start to appreciate things better.
Again, currently I live in paradise. A really affordable apartment with my own bathroom and kitchen, food options, a nice gym, surrounded by nice people and a beautiful girlfriend.
I wasn't happy. I now feel better about my situation because I'm learning (and knock on fucking wood can and will continue) to stay present, focus on my breath, not allow my thoughts to rule me, and have the physical health and strength to point my mind in more positive directions. I had a lot of thoughts that, thanks to my therapist, I realized were the only things causing problems in my amazing relationship. Multiple times. It caused me to give up quite a lot on quite a lot of things. Life does guide you to some degree but it does get to a point when you realize you're the captain of your own ship.
Anxiety is the first enemy and will rob you of your life if you keep letting it, which we don't have an unlimited supply of time living. We have now. This moment. Always around us.
I hope this article helps someone.
Take care of your health. Be aware of your mind. Breathe and remember to breathe deeply a lot and enjoy the moment. Practice diaphragmatic breathing constantly and keep reconnecting to your breath and focusing on cool and good things and become a happier person that attracts good things purely because you can see them. Work hard and achieve stuff. Try things and do things that are worth doing. Find your fulfillment. At the end of the day we all have to learn to live with ourselves. Life doesn't come with a manual, so do your best and do better. Do what is required and learn what that is.
I do believe that's all I got for now. Not much formatting in this one. Just getting it out there. Thanks for reading and by for now!