“TEN things YOU can do RIGHT NOW to FIX your mental health!!*”
*The title is satire
The amount of self-help books is steadily growing. Once one bestseller is old news, three amazing new books have entered the market to compete for your attention. And if you are anything like me, you also inhale a shit ton of articles about those books. Not necessarily because you want to, but because they are just REALLY FUCKING GOOD AT GRABBING YOUR ATTENTION!!
Especially in the beginning of the year, it seems so hard to just stick to one guide. There are just so many smart people out there, how should one know whom to follow?
Consistency is boring and I don’t know how to fix it!
Never have I read “atomic habits”, yet I feel like I did. It pops up in countless articles about personal development, and everything I read about it does make a lot of sense to me.
So, I think about the book, read articles about it, order it, read different articles, am impressed with what those have to say, think about a different book, change my daily schedule for the better, read some pages of a captivating new book, overthrow old habits with better ones, get back to the first book of which I pledged to stick to, feel guilty, reevaluate my daily routine, overthrow old habits with better ones, read some pages of a captivating new book, change my daily schedule for the better, really stick to it this time…..
And then I‘m crying at the dinner table.
The solution seems obvious. I should be more consistent.. Just stick to one thing. Establish a routine before trying out new things. Finish the first book before I start the second, or even third one.
Why don’t I just do that? Why don’t I force myself to stick to something? I could surely see some results..
BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO!
Consistency is so fucking boring.
There is one thing I excel at, and that is thinking about things. People admire me for my smart ideas and skills in conceptional thinking, and while I am incredibly grateful for my thinking skills, my attempts to execute anything over an extended period of time are awkward, at best.
The one strategy that worked
Believe me, I have tried a ton of strategies, and I did not stick to any. The only strategy that has ever worked for me was the forced upon system by school and my early years at university.
I excelled in high school and during the first semesters of studying computer science.
So, while that might sound awesome, that strategy came with a cost.
The cost
Tragically, when I was still in high school in some conservative suburbs, I didn’t even know about the aspect of life, that i had already sacrificed for “success”..
And this aspect of life is nothing less than my 💫MENTAL HEALTH💫
My whole life was adjusted to that forced upon system, which seemed to work very well for me. I was miserable most of the time, but since I knew nothing else and many people either didn’t think it was “that bad”, or told me it is “completely normal” to be miserable all the time, I just thought “Oh well, life is just terrible and everybody is miserable and there is no joy and I can’t wait to retire to finally be free”.
It didn’t even occur to me that I could live my life in a different way.
I needed to have a serious breakdown in the middle of a pandemic in December of 2020 to go take care of myself.
If you want to take care of yourself, but don’t know how to do that, because it is seriously so fucking frustrating to get professional help, please, leave a dm on my personal Instagram, and I will do my best to help you get professional help. Not many people will read this story, so don’t think my inbox will explode.
I am serious, and I beg you to not hesitate. When I was in a dark place, I would have NEVER made it out without my roommates and a dear friend of mine to give me advice.
And, you know, not the kind of advice like “Here are TEN things YOU can do RIGHT NOW to FIX your mental health!!”.
Those articles are mostly crap and will just make you feel like shit because you are not even able to do such “simple” things. (It. is. not. simple.)
But anyways, now I am a little hesitant to go back to that forced system, and I have not yet found a different solution for me.
