For me, this started in the summer. I had been having really bad chest pains since high school, and going into my 5th and final year of school (teachers college) I found that the chest pains were getting worse. I had X-rays, and ultrasounds done and my doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. One day, I had the worst pain I had ever experienced....my boyfriend wanted to call 911 because I was doubled over in pain and balling my eyes out. I said no because I knew they would find nothing and that just made me angry more than anything.
However, I did go to the walk in where they said my ECG was normal and they thought it was just stress. I didn't really understand how stress could have such a huge affect on my body. But I decided to make a doctors appointment with my family doctor.
I was told to wear a heart monitor for 2 weeks to rule out any abnormalities but my doctor said she didn't believe there would be. And after 2 weeks, she was right. I continued having chest pains but nothing showed on the monitor.
It turns out, I was having severe panic attacks. It got so bad that I would feel as if I wanted to breathe out of a paper bag and just sit on the floor and not do a thing. My brain was telling me to worry, and then I started worrying about the worrying. It started to take effect on my relationship and I knew something had to be done. I did some counselling and starting taking medication. Now, medication isn't something I would push on anyone, but for me, I had let my anxiety get so bad that I couldn't bring myself back from that constant worry and panic.
Another thing I decided was that I needed to make a change. After reading the Happiness Project towards the end of my 4th year of school I decided to read it again, and that gave me the kick start I needed. I knew I needed change my mentality and to look for the good in life, and take care of myself instead of always worrying about taking care of others before myself. To do this I knew there were things in life I needed to eliminate before I started on my happiness journey to make myself better.
This is what I did:
1. Stop talking yourself down.
Don't defeat yourself, if you start defeating yourself this will make you believe that others can defeat you and thats simply not true. The first step to being happier is to give up certain things...first things first is to give up putting yourself down. If you make a mistake - learn from it. If you fall down - pick yourself up. You need to believe in yourself for others to believe in you too. Even the smallest of my mistakes started to feel too big to overcome. I felt this insurmountable weight on my shoulders and something needed to change. So I stopped doubting myself. Thats the first step to happiness.
2. Stop living your life to other peoples expectations.If you keep trying to live up to other peoples expectations, you're going to be disappointed. I'm sorry but its going to happen. First of all, you're not psychic...you can't read peoples minds so how are you supposed to know what they expect of you (which you shouldn't). So no matter what you're going to be disappointed. The one thing you can control is your expectations of yourself, and personally I wouldn't look at this as expectations but rather goals. Set goals for yourself and strive to reach those goals, if you don't reach them...don't stress, they're your goals, you can try again.
3. Give up the past!
Stop living in the past. Seriously this is the best advice I could ever take or give for that matter. The past is the past, you can't change it, and if you keep living in the past and dwelling on what did or didn't happen how exactly is that helping? ITS NOT. Sorry for being the barer of bad news but its the truth. There is one thing you can change and thats right now. If you want to look back on your past 2 days, 2 months from now, change what you're doing right now so that future you can say "Right on", and look back with a smile on your face.
4. Do things for you!
This was really helpful to me. I found that a lot of my actions were doing things for others, and I'm not saying thats a bad trait to have, but rather it started to consume me to the point where I forgot about doing things for myself. If you don't want to hang out with someone because you want to chill out and watch Netflix...DO IT! If you're worried about what movie to choose because you feel like your movie partner won't like it...WHO CARES! Watch whatever movie your little heart desires. Taking care of yourself is the most important thing you can do on your path to happiness. If you don't take care of yourself and spend all your time taking care of others and saying your fine....who are you really helping? No body.
I'm sure there is probably a few more things I gave up doing in order to move forward with my own happiness. If I think of something I'll add it to a future post. But in the mean time, if you can think of anything that you think you'd need to give up to be happier...feel free to let me know!
TTFN 💜
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