Tag: advice

The Springing of Spring!

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

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It’s becoming that time of the year where a certain freshness is in the air, with lighter evenings and blooming flowers. Where the ‘stripped back’ appearance of winter disappear as the world starts to grow and become bright again. I love Spring. It’s like the world is becoming alive again, and it is so beautiful. It’s the best time to go for walks and explore where you live.

This time of year makes me realise how great it is to live where I do. Not everyone can walk along the coast, and paddle in sea water. Depending on where I walk, I can pick up sea shells or flowers. It is my favourite thing to do, and in the winter you don’t get the chance to enjoy walks so much.

There is also this sense of nature restarting a cycle, be it lambing on a farm or the flowering of plants on a nature walk. It’s like things start again, and have another go. Which is a nice thing to think of. Whilst, starting again completely may not be always necessary, it’s a great reminder that nature always ambles on.

Trees often look dead in the winter. In spring, the leaves bud and life seems to come back. It’s a good metaphor for life when you think about it. When things appear dead, life can still go on. So the main thing, is to keep your head down, and try again. Nature has created you to keep on fighting through, like everything around you.

Constant Struggle

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

These last few days have been greeted with tears of frustration and over-thinking. I feel like I am always a prisioner within my depressed state of mind, with a sentence which has no timescale. Without an end in sight, it is difficult to be productive at all. And it seems to come as a downward spiral. I feel bad about something, then feel bad for feeling bad, and even worse for crying about it. It’s never ending. Or so you can believe.

By filling my time with distractions, I have been given a good sense of perspective. I have watched movies, read books and listened to music, to help get me out of my depressed state. Sometime’s all you need is something to take your mind on to something different. Such as planning a ‘big adventure’ or achieving something on your ‘bucket list’. Something that helps give life meaning, and put the control back into your hands.

There is a serenity that comes from not being so depressed. When low, my mind seems to go into overdrive, set on making me feel worse with every passing second. So, when I have been distracted successfully, my mind slows down. I calm down and relax. Unfortunately it always seems to be a short term thing, and soon the self-doubt comes back. But by working on how to get out of my states of depression, I can control it better myself.

But this is a work in progress. It isn’t easy. In fact, there are times where it is so hard, that I find myself so close to the edge, that I could end it all in a second. And when you get to that stage, it can seem impossible to imagine any way out. But, I honestly believe that if you give your mind something else to focus on, you will slowly step away from the edge.

If you are still reading to this point, and this ramble seems familiar to you and what you go through, then I have a message for you. You are alive today, and that makes you a successful person, no matter what anyone says. So anything that you do today, will just make you even better. Hold your head up high.

Climbing Back On The ‘Ole Horse

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am struggling with motivation.

The writing and drawing that normally gives me immense pleasure, is not doing it so much for me. And it’s a hard thing to get round. Because I tend to feel uncomfortable talking about my feelings to someone face-to-face. I write about them instead. If that doesn’t work, I concentrate all my energy into drawing. And I can feel any frustrations melt away.

But, sometimes, like recently, the ability to express myself so freely hasn’t been there. What I write makes no sense, and I can’t focus enough to draw. So, in turn, I have to try and deal with all the feelings I have in my head. Which proceeds to either me over-reacting to things irrationally, or just a complete breakdown of tears and snot.

It’s difficult, and noone tells you how to cope with that. And it’s a hard lesson to teach yourself. The only advice I can think of is never give up. I can’t tell you how many times I have closed an empty blog entry or put aside my sketchbook recently. But, by persevering you will eventually crave what you haven’t been able to do.

Maybe surrounding myself with more inspiration would help. Right now, I am surrounded by mess and clutter. That needs to change.

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

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What if, is not a question really. It is a feeling of self-doubt where a person analyses what could have been. It can almost seem like a person is doubting the decisions that they have made, and they current position where they are now.

It’s a natural thing that people feel. Particularly when we find ourselves approaching the end of another year. It is a normal time to evaluate how the last year had gone, and whether we believe things would be different if we had made different choices. This isn’t very productive. It makes a person regret where they are, and forces them to wallow in any failures.

I am a firm believer that someone should take responsibility on what choices they have made. Maybe you did make a bad decision, then you will learn from it. Wasting your energy on wishing it didn’t happen is useless. You can’t undo anything already done. A person should recognise what’s happened, and look at why it why not to do it again.

Learning. That is what is important in life. Not wishing things happened differently. People need to realise that EVERYONE makes mistakes and wrong choices, it’s what you do as a result of those mistakes, that is important. Education is often thought as something that begins and ends with schooling. That is not true. People are constantly taking in information and they learn from it.

So if you make a mistake, don’t panic. Just think about why things happened and work out how not to do it again. Learn, rather than wish for what never happened.

Work Is A Motivator

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Exciting times, so it is. Working on a Saturday has me tuckered out, so I am lazy on the couch watching nonsense TV. It’s times like this I appreciate being able to sit and relax.

That’s why I like to keep myself busy. As much as I sometimes say I would like to lazy around and watch TV forever and a day, I honestly don’t think I could hack it.

I like going out, even for a walk, makes me feel so much better than watching TV all day. I just can’t sit and watching hours and hours of TV. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the Internet. I swear the Internet can eat up my whole weekend without me even realising. And the issue is, I might not even be doing anything specific, I am just looking at things.

So, so that I don’t do that, I try to make myself do things. I might read, walk or go meet friends. I think it is important to keep your mind active and do something. That’s why I am happy to work. Although I do complain, I think that having something to do helps me keep motivated. As low motivated as I can be, I know that I would be a lot worse if I didn’t work. It’s like it gets me off my arse and gets me moving?

What about you? Do you think that you would remain motivated if you didn’t have education or work to fill your time?

Regular as Clockwork

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I have heard recently, that an active blog should be updated a couple of times a week. This doesn’t inundate readers with daily posts, but it let’s them see that you are still active. Okay, it was advice on Vlogging on YouTube, but I guess the same rules could apply to blogging.

Usually, if I go on a kick and blog EVERYDAY, I will do it for so long, and suddenly stop. It’s like I have overdosed on it, and then can’t find anything else to say. So I go from blogging daily, to not blogging for a month. I thing part of blogging is habit, if you get yourself out of the habit of posting, then it is hard to get back into it.

I think that writing 2 blogs a week is a good target. Something that seems a little bit easier to do that blogging every day. But, we’ll see. Hopefully, if I get back into the swing of things, there shouldn’t be too many more blogs about blogging. 🙂

Lust for Life

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

How good am I?

It has been a while since I started the PMA lifestyle change, and I am still going strong. I don’t think I ever thought how hard it was to make the change. I think it is expressing myself that changes most. As a frequent user of social media, I am used to posting any gripes with the world for others to see. For no real reason, it just made me feel like I was complaining to someone, and helped relieve some of the stress incurred by a particular situation.

This didn’t work. What it did do, was get me into a complaining mood, and I moaned about everything.  And this would set of a chain reaction by anyone who read what I had posted. So they would start thinking about their gripes, and it could really sour the moods of a lot of people, without much thought.

The lack of thought could have quite a chain effect. So I have been making a solid attempt to stop myself from making negative comments online., in a bid to get me out of that mind frame. Whilst there has been a lot of challenges with this, it has went pretty well. I have tried to keep a smile on my face, and at least keep my negativity to myself, and shift my focus to something else.

It has allowed me to enjoy where I am more, and I feel more comfortable about any situation I am in. The key for getting past any negativity, for me, is to focus on that silver lining, there always is one, and focus all your energy on that. It really has helped, and I am in a better place for doing so.

Converse Well?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

What do you notice most everyday? Is it the weather? What you had for dinner? What outfit you wore to work? Do you remember the person who served you when you bought your morning coffee? Did you say thank you, or are they lost in your mind, destined to never see the light of day again?

I ask because as someone who has worked in customer services since I was 16, I have always found conversation important. Of how a little bit if effort to wish your bus driver a nice day, could make him smile and want to be nicer to other passengers. Positivity is a chain reaction, once you feel it, you can pass it on to others. It is contagious. And when you feel happy, everything that you have to deal with is a lot easier.

So why does that bring in conversation? Well, I work in a call centre, where conversations are of obvious importance. Sometimes, due to the environment, it is easy to become caught up in the business of targets and such, so that conversations don’t become the focus. Well, in my bid of being more positive, I decided to work on building a better conversation with my customer. And over the last few days, I focused on the call and the customer, and it made me feel good because the customer could see the difference. Feeling like you have helped someone, is a big personal boost, and that makes things bearable.

The biggest way to change things, is to treat everyone in your life the way you expect to be treated. Converse with people to treat the situation with a positive outlook. Try it and see what happens. It makes work better and life easier. As they say, if you open the door for positive thinking, more positive opportunity will find you.

I hope this makes sense. I am always quick to complain when life is poor, but being positive is not something I do normally. So this new thing is helping
me change some habits and hopefully change my life for the better.

Asking For Help?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I have always lived by the ideal, that if you need help you ask for it. If you are struggling with something, go and ask advice off someone you know that has had similar experiences to yourself. Get thoughts and opinions, to help back up what you think, and to help get you get out of whatever funk you are in.

But I do have a problem. And it comes into play, when people ask ME for help. As soon as I feel someone looking to me for guidance, I get nervous, my brain panics and scrolls through 100 thoughts in a minutes. And yet, I don’t know how to react. It is the one thing I go ‘rabbit in the headlights’ over. Since my stance on sharing thoughts, it seems a little strange that I can over-react to what is sometimes a straight-forward situation. But I do.

Whether it is asking for directions (something I suck at, avoid asking me this AT ALL) or advice on general, I panic. I try to be objective, and give useful advice, but I get a bit iffy when I know that information is not what that person wants to hear. It mostly happens when someone is being treated like shit by their partner, and I try to speak my mind, but don’t want to hurt the person. Love is blind, and it also takes away all common sense as well, it seems.

So I struggle over the words, mostly because I have to figure out how to say things. I am a fan of the ‘positive sandwich’, where I say something nice, then nasty and finish with something nice. It seems to not make me feel so vicious.  In theory anyway. But after I give out my comments, I then think that if I had said the negative on it’s own, would it have made a bigger statement? Would the message have hit home better? Sure it would hurt, but sometimes the most beneficial things in the long term, do involve some pain.

I mean, I would hope people would be honest enough with me. Life sucks, but it would suck even more if every person was sheltered from the truth. What do you think? How do you deal with giving or receiving advice?

Listening to- Rancid- Ruby Soho

Thinking- Xbox update? Go and hurry up please.

 

Working Hard or Hardly Working

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Stress.

It is the biggest pressure on so many people as they try to live their day to day life. It’s hard to reason why some people are more prone to stress than others. It is more, that the person is struggling to cope, rather than the actual work involved.

It is a feeling of being overwhelmed, and that can come at any stage of a day, and at any stage of life. I have suffered from stress, and to be honest, it seemed to effect me more when I wasn’t working. When I had time on my hands to have a bit of a think. I have a habit of over-analysing things, and I guess that’s what I did. I put pressure on myself, to the point that I felt I was suffocating, and that I was pretty worthless for not coping when everyone else can. It did lead me to the path of depression, and I became increasingly frustrated my life.

After much chatting to people in similar circumstances, I found I wasn’t alone. And it was the cliche that ‘everyone feels overwhelmed at some point’. I say cliche, because at the time, I felt that was all it was. I know, people try to help when the compare your life to someone else’s, as if to say ‘if they can do it, so can you’. But it ends up in a spiral of self doubt, because I feared, I was not as strong willed as that person in front of me. Which was basically me excusing myself for not trying. As if I was shrugging and saying ‘what’s the point’.

Whilst looking at others didn’t help, I took a small piece of advice I found in many self-help books and articles.

Do a little something every day, that makes you smile.

And as basic as it sounds, it helped. I would listen to music, take 5 minutes to sketch something, go for a walk, I’d try something that I knew I loved to do. It became something that I looked forward to, and it made every day that little more bearable. And because my brain was focusing on what ever ‘highlight’ I had planned for that day, it didn’t have the time to focus on shining a negative light on everything I did. I guess, it is just occupying your brain, because over thinking is a huge part of stress related illness. Or it was to me anyway.