I find the hardest thing for me to do in my life is to simply take good care of myself. It has taken a long time but I finally could say I love myself after being caught in drug addiction for 8 years> I have been clean for over 4 years now and thank god life is much more normal than is used to be. I no longer am extremely wrapped up in my trivial and selfish needs, no longer am manipulating people or creating schemes to get what I want. I even try to help others as much as possible which used to be foreign. For some reason, however, to this day it is hard to simply take good, genuine care of myself.
I believe the best way to start my day is by a little meditation, believe me, I am no pro at it but I do notice an effect when I partake in it. Along with my meditation, I like to throw some positive affirmations my way to really kickstart my day. I’d love to tell you I do this every day but I, unfortunately, have days where I am running everywhere in the house before work and get out to my car and on the way to work realize I forgot to do any of my rituals. Those days seem to be very different than my days that start off with a quieting of the mind and some positive affirmations.
My diet also plays a huge part in whether or not I am feeling positive about myself. I can honestly say once I removed drugs from the equation (thank god) I would say food took its place. I am an emotional eater, I eat things that are bad for me to make me feel better. I have a major sugar dependence and carb dependence. I have windows of time however when my eating is very clean and regimented and there is a world of difference in my mood and daily activity when I am eating healthy and even exercising!
I am writing about my lack of consistency in taking care of myself because I know many other people struggle in the same way. We see those happy health nuts cruising through life smoothly and wonder why it can’t be us. I’m here to tell you it can be you someday. The biggest thing I give myself credit for is that I never give up. No matter how many times I fall off that horse, I get back on and try again. We all come up short in life, even those darn happy healthy people, the most important thing is we start over, take an honest look at our life, and give our best effort again.