50 Ways to a Better Me...

50 Ways to a Better Me

In the beginning…

Let me introduce to you my new project: 50 Ways to a Better Me. This project was very much inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s ‘The Happiness Project’, and is designed to help me do something that will, ultimately, increase my happiness. For me, this is a loooong term project that I intend to use my blog to document. 

However, before I can begin my 50 Ways to a Better Me experiment , I have to start with what led me to this idea.  So here goes *insert deep breath here*.  

I hate the word ‘depression’; it conjures up so many dark, brooding melancholic images, and tends to make people want to turn off and find something more pleasant to read, but, unfortunately, I can’t write about improving my life, if I don’t at least acknowledge why it needed/needs to improve.

So a brief history of me.  Depression has been an intermittent visitor in my life, probably, since I was a teenager.  In the past, it was successfully treated with medication, and on my life would go.  However, last year, I applied for, and achieved a promotion at work.  Technically, it was two promotions in four weeks, and while most people would celebrate this fact and feel good about themselves, for me, it opened a Pandora’s Box.  Slowly and virtually unaware, I slipped down the rabbit hole that leads to depression.  I wasn’t totally blind to what was happening to me.  I distinctly remember at a department meeting being on the verge of a panic attack as my boss shared with the rest of the dept. my new responsibilities.   On the surface, you may not have seen a ripple, but beneath, I was a raging tempest of fear and panic.  A high pitched voice screamed loudly inside my head, “You can’t do this!”  “You are hopeless; you’ll never manage this”. “What are you doing?  Everyone is going to find out how useless you are.”  At that point I knew this voice was out of control, and not normal, and making me feel terrible, but months would go by before I finally decided to do something about it.   

Eventually, over the course of the following summer, I came to terms with the fact that I was depressed.  It took a long time for me to admit this to myself, even though to those that loved me, it was becoming increasingly obvious.  I felt like I was a  failure, and that if I admitted I was depressed, I would be admitting that I had failed at life.  I am glad that I know now what utter rubbish that is, but at the time, it felt real and it felt justified.

Once I allowed myself the honesty of seeing I was deeply unhappy, I decided something had to be done.  I needed to take action and that lead to therapy (CBT to be precise.)  I always think therapy sounds a bit pretentious and American, but I can tell you with absolute honesty that therapy changed my life.  It changed me so much that I look back on the person I was and barely recognise her.  The best way I can describe my experience of therapy (which was supported by medication) is that CBT was like a key that unlocked the person I really was, or had the potential to be.  When the sessions were done, and my therapist insisted I no longer need our fortnightly sessions, I felt like I had won the lottery.  It was like having a secret that you want to tell everyone, but you can’t articulate properly; it’s just a really great feeling.

I left therapy thinking I was cured.  “That’s it!” I thought.  “ I understand myself, and my behaviour.  I have changed the way I think.  I am fixed.”  Time has shown me that while a lot of this is true, my mental health (another phrase I am not keen on) is something I have to keep working on.   This led me to 50 Ways to a Better Me.  I want to continue to apply the strategies I learnt in therapy to my everyday life, and I want a mental health first aid kit for when things are feeling a bit tough.  Finally,  aI hope that by chronicling my situation, it might help someone else going through something similar.

Therefore, this blog will allow me to record the things I do to make me happy, keep me happy and remind me how to be happy.  

I’d like to end this post by looking at the lessons I learned in my therapy sessions.  They are personal and specific to me, but they might also make sense to others:

1. The voice inside my head can be a total bitch, and sometimes I need to turn her down, or tune her out.
2. I am not a fortune teller or a psychic.  I do not know with absolute certainty how any event will turn out.  The imagined scenarios in my head, are just that: imagined.  Likewise when it comes to reading minds.  I do not know with any certainty, what people are thinking, or why they act the way they do.  The latter, actually allows me to cut myself, and the person I am dealing with some slack: we never know what’s going omg in someone’s else’s mind.  
3. No-one is perfect.
4. Perfection is impossible, and there is a wide landscape between total shit and perfection, and if day to day, I can land in the middle of that scope, I am doing alright.
5. Pause.  Sometimes you just need to stop for a minute, hour, day and gain a little perspective.  Not rushing to make a decision or do a task etc takes the pressure away and gives me breathing room..
6. Reassurance: I need to remember that, for me, reassurance doesn’t help: sometimes, it makes things worse.
7. I need to be more assertive, and being assertive, doesn’t mean I am a bitch.  
8. Look at the evidence.  When that nasty voice gets really loud, I need to look at the facts.  Do they support what the voice is saying?
9. ‘Who guards the guards’. I need to find my compassionate voice.  I need to treat myself compassionately and I need to guard against the things that are going to make me feel bad.
10. I love my life.  On the whole, my life is good and I am happy.  Sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

So, that explains how and why I came up with this crazy (no pun intended) idea to record 50 things that will improve my happiness.   

NEXT TIME: Number 1 on the list: Appearance and Reality.