Find Your Why, and Everything Else will Fall Into Place
Oh, hello! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve got a flight to catch tomorrow morning early and I just got out of the shower. My shower thoughts turned into a pleasant little thought bubble, and I’d like to do something with it before it drifts off in order to share it with you, as well as remind myself in the future. I hope that you find it helpful. 🙂
I know that I’ve mentioned this fact about myself a few times before, but it’s something I don’t necessarily bring up very often - I’ve got depression and I’m currently going to therapy. I’ve had some hard times in the past, many of which were handled less than optimally. However, I feel like working with my therapist has helped me begin to become more mindful of the thoughts that go through my head, what my triggers are and what it is that truly defines happiness.
While that’s all nice and pleasant that I started to fix and curb the emotional damage that those experiences and thoughts had done, I started to feel the physical component of depression which many people have experienced. This was something I’d never experienced before and I never knew why - but I feel like I’ve figured it out.
Externally, I felt like I was doing things right and living my best life. I have a decent job with benefits, a relationship, my own apartment and I’m slowly but surely becoming a fully independent young adult. But I didn’t feel like I had much energy to push to excel in that light. Things seemed a bit lackluster, my performance at work was just proficient and I wasn’t doing the best in terms of my self care.
One day, I was sitting in my desk at work, just looking out the window and thinking to myself. I wondered why it was that I was here. In this particular desk. In this particular town. In this particular life that has been created by my actions.
I felt as if I had sleepwalked into this place I was in. I took all the steps that I was told to take, and I felt like were the right ones for me. With that being said, I’m definitely happy with the place I’ve gotten, but I wasn’t sure what the last piece was that was missing, the one that was getting me excited to continue doing my best work. But lo and behold, I figured out what it was - passion!
I was focusing so hard on building up my foundation that I directed my focus away from the things that I was passionate about. With that realization coming to mind, I decided it was time for me to buckle down and start to focus in on those things again.
Another fact about myself that I haven’t talked about particularly often was that I used to race mountain bikes back when I was in high school and just starting college. I was actually getting pretty good at it too! I was recruited by a cycling team and had a handful of sponsors which funded my racing ‘career’ that I had going at the time.
When I tell people stories about myself or the things that I liked to do, I always default to mountain biking, then proceed to tell them the stories of my ‘glory days’ of racing. But as priorities in my life changed, our team disbanded and our contracts ended with our sponsors, I slowly faded out of it.
With that, I knew that it was time for me to start training and get back on the bike. I set the goal for myself that I would like to get myself back in shape by the summer and start racing again this year.
Once I set that goal for myself and started working toward it, I felt excited! It almost felt like things had just started to light up a little bit more in general. I felt excited to do my workouts and better overall. I felt the energy to get up early, make breakfast and be more productive.
At the end of all this, the one takeaway I hope to leave is this: Sometimes with life, you need to do things that don’t necessarily get you excited or aren’t that enjoyable, and that’s ok. You may also fall out of certain hobbies and focus less on the things that you care about, and that’s ok too. But what’s important is that you keep those things close to you, and you hang onto at least one thing that makes you smile and gives you something to look forward to, no matter how big or small.
Anyway, I better get to sleep now friends. I hope that you found this helpful in some way or another! 💖