Last week I found out how much I need to be consistent with my meditation and keep organised to avoid pitfalls. 

Having felt good for a few weeks I got busy with work and neglected the meditation program. Last week I did no meditations with the result being that I felt hopeless, sad and lethargic again. By the time I reached Saturday I was not in a good place. It was bad timing because I also had a cold last week, so I was a little fuzzy headed at work. Not being very clear in the head and not having meditated at all meant my mind wandered to the dark side and began a series of negative loops. I should have seen this coming sooner, but I was caught up being busy. Fortunately after talking it through with Catherine I made a plan for the week and then got back into meditation this morning.

This was just another lesson for me. It was a reminder that if I don’t put the hard work in and consistently employ the tools to manage my depression then I will never have control. The tools that have worked are still meditation, lifting weights and being organised. None of it is rocket science, but all of it requires effort to consistently do these things. 

I knew that it would never be easy to change myself. I’ve developed a persona over many years and I almost feel a regression is the first step to progression. That’s hard to put into words and explain. But when you have consistently been a positive character, hiding your true self then you will only ever look like you are worse even though you are getting better. I’m still working on the whole brain re-wiring thing, which is separate to the management tools above. It takes a lot of effort to remember to do something new when you have employed the same though patterns for so long. But I will get there with that too because I’m tired of feeling the way I did at the weekend. It just reminds me of the times when I was much, much worse.

On a separate note I am starting to work out a balance in life. Having always thought I needed to be busy to stay happy I’ve realised that this is in fact false. When I am busy working I don’t have time to concentrate on the negative things. This sounds like it should be a good thing, but if you are so busy that you don’t deal with your rotten fruit then it just festers. That is why meditation works so well. In the beginning it asks you to observe your thoughts, but then return to your breathing. As the practice develops in the program you are asked to focus on difficulties and recognise what it does to your body. From this you are able to increase your awareness of what things affect you and employ tools to deal with them. Sometimes it is as simple as being able to make a list after meditation and work through what is on your mind, breaking it down into manageable chunks. At other times it is recognising that a person isn’t helping your recovery and dealing with that accordingly. 

Our brains don’t come with manuals, but there is enough information out there to figure them out. I hope that anyone feeling shit about themselves or restricting their progress in life can understand that ti doesn’t have to be that way and that change is possible. It won’t always be easy for a number of reasons, but it will be worth it in the end.

Are you ok?

Tom