136) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 15: FACT Exercise #2 -- Choosing Meaning over Control
If you feel shitty, that’s ok. I mean, it’s not exactly great, like yay, yippee, I feel shitty! No, but its “ok” in the sense that feeling shitty is just part of life. It’s inevitable.
But we have more strength than we are so often willing to tap into. If we HAVE TO, we can overcome those shitty feelings. At least for a while. At least for long enough to get some Really Important Things done.
135) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 14: FACT Exercise #1 -- Focusing
The thing about telescopes (and microscopes, and binoculars), is that you can’t see shit out of them until you get them aimed and focused properly. Before you do that, they’re actually worse than your naked eyes; everything is just a blur and you have no idea what you’re looking at.
Self-healing and personal growth are exactly like that. Until you know what you’re aiming at, and focus yourself properly, you’re not going to get anywhere by “trying to improve”. You might even get worse, because there’s nothing quite like failing, for someone who struggles not to feel like a failure.
134) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 13: Avoiding the Shit
The only thing we really get better at by avoiding our problems, is avoiding our problems. We become Level 10 Shit Avoiders. Our defence mechanisms, fantasy thinking, distractions and other “coping strategies” become our super-powers. Pretty shitty super-powers, eh? No wonder Marvel and DC don’t have movies about Avoidance Man fighting bad guys….
132) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness, Part 11: FACT cares about your feelings
This is about YOU, living the way your heart most deeply desires. It’s about YOU finding your life more meaningful. It’s about learning to intuitively connect with that which makes your heart sing. And if you’re doing THAT, then who cares how much someone else has accomplished?
103) From Shitty-ness to Wellness: Part 3 - The Self-Improvement Treadmill and Its Perpetuation of Trauma
As you go through life and learn more about yourself, you may at some point decide to really take your well-being into your own hands, and DO SOMETHING about it. Some people succeed spectacularly in this quest, or at least it seems that way on Instagram. But no small number of us try, and try, and try, year after year, with our self-improvement goals and checklists and resolutions and vision boards and buddy systems and therapists and support groups and exercise programs and gurus and mindfulness leaders and spiritual books and self-help trends. And the next year, we’re still at it. Then the next decade.
101) From Shitty-ness to Well-ness: Part 1 - Some Personal Thoughts on the Journey out of Hell
It doesn’t matter where you are or where you’ve been, in the sense that there is no value in judging yourself for that. It matters where you are heading, what direction you are pointing yourself in. If you’re pointing yourself towards wellness, honesty, healing, growth, then you deserve an inner standing ovation. Well done, hero-in-training! Well done.