Fresh Start: Cuts
I realised when I wanted to change my life for the better
there were sacrifices to be made. For a long time I felt making little changes
would change my whole look on life, and as much as those small changes did make
me feel better, when trying to secure stability and happiness in my life, I had
to make deeper cuts. I took out my emotional knife and I cut out all that I
didn’t need, a deep clean, if you will.
When at my most ill, my anxiety is very high and I worry
myself sick. I became accustomed to that heart sinking feeling so I started
with my social media. In May, I removed the people who didn’t make me happy or
made me unhappy. I removed all photos and posts about things that when I looked
back at, made my heart sink. Why should I keep my social media a beacon of
unhappy memories? I reduced my phone book to a small group of people that I am
in consistent contact with and that I need to maintain relations with. There
would be people I loved, who perhaps didn’t love or respect me, and I remember
I would check up on their social media to see how they were doing and all I did
was upset myself. So I cut out that behaviour, I don’t look ‘lurk’ and haven’t
for months – so the people who hurt me, merely don’t exist now and I do not
have touch with their lives whatsoever. However, I’ll clarify this further in
another post.
Next thing to cut was my bedroom; I went through everything
in my room and gave it a deep clean. Anything that I didn’t need anymore was
given away or binned. I reduced the chaos in my life, getting rid of more and
more things I didn’t need. It’s almost addictive once you begin, making my
circles smaller and making my life less cluttered. After that I stopped doing
things I didn’t like doing, sounds simple doesn’t it? I didn’t enjoy certain
clubs, certain restaurants – so I stopped going. I didn’t like checking some social
medias everyday – so I stopped checking as frequently. I didn’t like certain
environments I’d go to, so I’d just stop: a mind-blowing concept, clearly.
Choosing to not do the things that you don’t like doing, will change your life.
Now as I am writing I am aware that many of you may believe
that making so many cuts is destructive and perhaps even a way of closing
myself off, but it became the opposite. Once I cleared out all the negative
aspects of my life – my life was opened up to meeting loads of new, incredible
people and the spaces I lived in became happier. When I had so much negativity
closing me in, it isolated me – I had to reduce myself to the ‘happy few’ to
open myself up again.
Reducing all that negativity and stress, put me in a
positive space. One where I could build upon my own fresh start, just starting
things over again. So in May, I gave myself a deadline: July 7th, my
22nd Birthday. By my 22nd birthday I had to achieve my
goal of feeling more satisfied with myself and my life. A very subjective
deadline, but one that pushed me on knowing that my 22nd year of
life was going to be the most excellent with very few bad days, and that only I
had the means to work towards that.
