Bipolarwanderings

I’m realizing that to truly live an authentic and freedom-filled life, there are steps one must take (well, everyone has a different list of steps, but here are mine):

1. Love yourself first, and by this I mean, don’t let others’ opinions of you matter, or your projections of others’ opinions of you. And if they do matter, allow the thoughts and insecurities to be felt, don’t suppress, and then let it go, with love. This for me meant ignoring the intrusive thoughts that told me, “Your family thinks you’re a failure…give up now.” I HAD to let this go and accept that these thoughts shouldn’t affect the love I have for myself.
2. Now, this is the hard part for me, because I’m used to putting my “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” first. But, in order to be truly happy, I am finding that I have to put MYSELF first. Not what I think I should be doing, or what I shouldn’t be doing, but what I know in my soul I need to be doing. And for a long time, this was sleeping in and getting 10+ hours of sleep, even though I felt like I should be waking up at the crack of dawn every day.
3. In order for me to get to the place where I am now, I needed to learn to trust myself. This looks like a complicated puzzle, trusting yourself, but in reality what it means is to accept that the path you’re on is the one you should be on, and if it’s not, change it.
4. Finally, the last thing that I am still working on is learning to Let go of the things I cannot change. As a former collegiate athlete, I was a constant micro-manager, and wanted to affect change wherever I went. However, this led intense suffering as it is humanly impossible to change EVERYTHING you want to change. One thing that took me years to accept was my bipolar diagnosis.

It is a HUGE challenge to love yourself first, PUT yourself first, trust yourself, and let go of that which you cannot change. And they are all qualities that I am continuing to work on, but I feel confident that if I can get these things in order, the rest will fall into place…stay tuned! 😀