"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." -John Lennon
One of the biggest goals in my adult life is to chase happiness. Not the temporary have fun at the bar kind, the sustainable permanent kind. Happiness is an emotion, and emotions can be fleeting from day to day, but I've been determined to find an equilibrium.
Here have been my obstacles, and all three have been diagnosed by a doctor.
1) Depression
2) Anxiety
3) Clinical OCD
So it seems I have my work cut out for me, huh? But hard work staring me in the face has never scared me before, so the following is a list of things I've done in attempt to improve my quality of life. I'm nowhere near perfect, but on good days I'm pretty darn happy, and on bad days, I just get stressed, but my brain doesn't spiral out of control like it used to. In other words, I've taught my brain how to "be in shape" and the results have been amazing.
1) Talk to a therapist. No seriously do it. This has been almost a constant in my life for the last 5 years. There have been times where I felt good enough to not see anyone, but for the most part it's always something I've gone back to. I went to see an OCD specialist here in Louisville some time last year. Their exposure therapy basically cured my OCD for the time being, but I developed a great relationship with my therapist. She might or might not be younger than me (she's still in school), but I like the way she thinks. Plus I think she finds me interesting instead of making me feel judged because I don't fit some mold. I don't see her very often now, but she's still there if I need her. And we catch up every two weeks or so, just to tweak things and give me things to work on. I think it's extremely useful to have a third party to talk to. Someone whos looking from the outside in on your life and can give you objective advice. You don't even need a clinical diagnosis of a mental illness to have one. :)
2) Don't be afraid to ask for help. This kind of piggy backs on getting a therapist. None of us were meant to make this journey on our own. Think of it this way, the more help you ask for, the more different types of inputs you'll have in your life. Learn from every direction possible. Your mom's advice is going to be very different from you best friend's advice, but ask for both. Who knows, a combination of the two might click with you.
3) Do your research. I alluded to this yesterday in a facebook post, but I truly believe we should all be doing more research in the field of psychology, not only to better understand ourselves (which is probably the most important part I got from my research), but also to understand why other people do what they do. Most people DO NOT UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN BRAINS. Once you come to accept this, it's easy to stop trying to rationalize all the evil in the world. There are some people out there we weren't meant to understand without in depth scrutiny (most of my friends are pretty complex people, for a reason. They intrigue me and I didn't understand them when I didn't know them as well). There are also pretty simple people out there. Jealousy is an extremely simple emotion. It takes a complex and in control person to deny jealousy in their field of emotions. Most simple people DON'T KNOW THEY'RE JEALOUS. They just act on it. Their emotion is so primal, they have no understanding of why they do what they do. As soon as I realized the girl at the gym was treating me like crap because she saw me as a threat, it makes it much easier to ignore. She isn't even self aware enough to realize it's jealousy. I don't always ignore it totally (I'm still human, things still get to me), but it does make it easier.
Read a book. Follow a psychology page on Facebook. Subscribe to Psychology Today. Something. I think a better understanding of the human race benefits everyone.
3) Exercise is your best friend. I know I know you're like "But Laura! You're a coach and an athlete. That's so easy for you to say." You know what I say to that? Fake it till you make it. I don't just try to impose my habits on other people because I think my habits are better. I try to spread fitness because it's one of the most important things you can do for yourself. It's funny how we'll readily spend money on clothes and fast food to make ourselves feel better, but taking care of ourselves long terms is a tough priority. Exercise has been one of the top reasons I've stayed relatively sane over the last decade. There are both physical and mental changes that happen when you begin exercising. The benefits are endless. And most of all, these benefits will allow you to live longer and more comfortably. If I'm truly dedicated to becoming a happier person, exercise will 100% become a part of my daily routine. Except on Sundays. Sundays are rest days.
4) Nutrition is SO important. There's a reason I didn't lump this in with exercise. Because you can have one without the other, and both are equally as important. I don't think I realized the full extent to which nutrition impacted me on a mental and physical level until recently. When you start fueling your body the way it was meant to be fueled, all sorts of things balance out. Your hormones find a nice homeostasis, your inflammation goes down, headaches decrease. I'm all about balance, and if there's a way my body can become even more balanced, I'm going to do it.
5) Balance is key. Now I realize this is going to look different for everyone, but this is what it looks like for me. I excel when I don't put all my eggs in one basket. It's always when I have multiple things in my life to focus on that I tend to do better at all of them. You always hear about how disciplined college swimmers have to be. They'll freely tell you that swimming 20 hours a week has forced them to have great time management skills and actually keeps them motivated outside the pool. And when the swimming stops, the motivation stops. After swimming year round for almost 10 years, I've learned that having a balance between work/school and sports is key for my success. Currently my balance is between a full time engineering job and weightlifting (and a little bit of coaching). All three of these things keep me motivated. When I start losing motivation in the gym, a client might come to me with their successes in the gym. Or maybe when I have a good night at the gym, it gets me motivated for work the next day. I seem to have found a nice balance that keeps me in a cycle of motivation. And when the day comes, and I'm healthy enough to do doubles again like I did in college, I'll have no problem getting out of bed at 4 in the morning. I know it'll make me happy.
6) Greg. Okay, so I can't really share him, but he's a been a pretty big source of my growing happiness over the last year and a half. I've learned more about myself being in a relationship with him than I have the previous 25 years combined. I've found a confidence in myself I've never had before. And that even means sticking up for myself in fights with him. In previous relationships, I've been put down, cheated on, and bossed around. Today, if he ever attempted to do any of those things, I'd shut it down so quickly there wouldn't even be a discussion. So maybe it's a coincidence that I found this confidence when I found him, maybe not. But I do know these things for sure: I'm a basically good person. I deserve someone else who is a good person. I deserve to be treated with respect. I deserve to feel beautiful, inside and outside of a relationship. I deserve to feel like my ideas are important. I deserve to know that there's someone in this world who is perfectly ok with my awkward habits, weird ideas, and strange obsession with lifting weights. I'd like to think I could feel this way if I were on my own, and if heaven forbid we break up today, I think I could feel this way, but maybe I'm just lucky he popped into my life when he did. I didn't deserve it (or maybe I did? Isn't that what I'm trying to say?), but he's here to stay and I'm so happy about it.
Am I saying I'm happy every single minute of every single day? Hell no. But at least I'm trying. And I honestly think the steps I'm taking are the right steps. At this point that's all that matters.
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