In 17 years I’ve experienced many challenges and struggles. I’ve had health scares, friends of mine have died, people I know have tried to seriously injure or hurt me, and sometimes things just didn’t work out in my favor. Bad things happen to everyone, and in my case it wasn’t the events that were the challenge, but how I dealt with them. Looking back, I wasn’t dealing with the those situations in a healthy way. In fact, the biggest barrier in my own happiness, success, and wellbeing has always been myself.
I’ve always been a driven person, motivated by meaning, and that can make it hard to see when I’m getting in my own way. The past 3 years have been spent striving for and recognizing any amount of meaning or significance in my actions, …show more content…
It didn’t take long for me to feel like a soulless husk, with work, individuals, and organizations owning my time and thoughts. I became isolated in my own stress and depression, yet detached from myself and needs. I lost friends because I never spoke to them or I was too emotionally unavailable. Overcommitment led to conflicts in my schedule, leaving many people to find me flighty or unreliable, to the point I even got kicked out of a band that I …show more content…
Keeping myself busy was an excuse to not confront difficult problems. A friend of mine told me that this was because I haven’t learned how to tolerate myself yet, and to some extent he’s right. I didn’t want to deal with my own health, emotions, and relationships, because that was hard. That required thinking about how I needed to take care of myself, and admitting to myself and others when I was wrong.
When reflecting on the past the I get lost in my own insecurities. I wonder if I’ve overworked myself for the past three years for nothing, and if all of the sleep lost, fallen clumps of hair, friends lost, and panic attacks could have been avoided.
Though I don’t have the answer to these questions, I recognize that everything I’ve done, a waste or not, has been done and I can’t change that. But I can, and have, changed how I live going forward to get the best quality life professionally, academically, and personally. I started small by making time to see my friends and cleaning my house more often, and expanding from there. I started a new band, and our schedules have made this a better fit. I got into a relationship with a girl who reminds me when I need to take a step back from work and focus on myself. Life’s like a chemical equation, it needs to be balanced to keep everything stable. This lesson has been hard to learn, but I’ve finally taken the steps to make this
I’ve always been a driven person, motivated by meaning, and that can make it hard to see when I’m getting in my own way. The past 3 years have been spent striving for and recognizing any amount of meaning or significance in my actions, …show more content…
It didn’t take long for me to feel like a soulless husk, with work, individuals, and organizations owning my time and thoughts. I became isolated in my own stress and depression, yet detached from myself and needs. I lost friends because I never spoke to them or I was too emotionally unavailable. Overcommitment led to conflicts in my schedule, leaving many people to find me flighty or unreliable, to the point I even got kicked out of a band that I …show more content…
Keeping myself busy was an excuse to not confront difficult problems. A friend of mine told me that this was because I haven’t learned how to tolerate myself yet, and to some extent he’s right. I didn’t want to deal with my own health, emotions, and relationships, because that was hard. That required thinking about how I needed to take care of myself, and admitting to myself and others when I was wrong.
When reflecting on the past the I get lost in my own insecurities. I wonder if I’ve overworked myself for the past three years for nothing, and if all of the sleep lost, fallen clumps of hair, friends lost, and panic attacks could have been avoided.
Though I don’t have the answer to these questions, I recognize that everything I’ve done, a waste or not, has been done and I can’t change that. But I can, and have, changed how I live going forward to get the best quality life professionally, academically, and personally. I started small by making time to see my friends and cleaning my house more often, and expanding from there. I started a new band, and our schedules have made this a better fit. I got into a relationship with a girl who reminds me when I need to take a step back from work and focus on myself. Life’s like a chemical equation, it needs to be balanced to keep everything stable. This lesson has been hard to learn, but I’ve finally taken the steps to make this