My personal journey - Part 1 Introduction

A friend encouraged me to share this experience via my blog, so I will start a blog series that will be a bit unlike my other blog posts. Here, I will share my struggle over the past couple of years and how I have found to move forward, hopefully for the better.

In the spring of 2020 (when the pandemic was ramping up, we were still clueless about how dangerous it might be, and everyone was staying in their homes), I found myself struggling with depression and anxiety more than usual. Some of this anxiety was exacerbated by the ongoing lock-down and some amount of fear was associated with every time I would walk out of my house to get food or run an errand. Regardless of the source or the reasons, I decided I didn’t want to keep feeling like this. I decided I wanted to get healthier, both mentally and physically.

The easiest way that I could think of to address my physical health was to get out of my house and get moving more regularly. In a pandemic where social distancing is required, this looked like hiking in nature for me; a way for me to meet these requirements where I may pass a person or two on a trail, but likely won’t encounter another human on the entire hike. My mental health was a bit more of a challenge for me. I tried several forms of meditation and blended my meditation into a moving form of meditation while walking through nature.

In this blog series, I plan to share a bit about my journey from setting this goal to improve my physical and mental health to where I am today. Hopefully, this series can help others to not feel so alone in their struggles, strike out feelings of shame wherever they may hide, and encourage you to take action to improve whatever situation you find yourself in that you want to change.

I’m typically a very private person and don’t share much of my personal life online. As noted earlier, a friend encouraged me to share this story. I like to end each post with a call to action, of sorts. Today’s activity is this; ask yourself and genuinely reflect on:

· What stories do you tell yourself that you’ve never challenged?

· What beliefs do you hold about yourself that you’ve never explored if they’re true?

· How are these beliefs holding you back?

· What might you do differently if those beliefs weren’t true?

For me, these beliefs were that I’m simply not that interesting, and no one wants to hear what I have experienced or thought within my head. I’ve recently started sharing more of myself with others and have been astounded by their interest and encouragement to share my stories. So, join me each week for another chapter of this story.