This week in the reset challenge, its all about your baby!
That’s right.
If you have been following this challenge from the beginning, it started with the BREATH, finding time, and space to breathe.
Then moved on to self-care – giving our body and mind the love and care it so rightly deserves.
This was followed by expression, using journaling to express our innermost thoughts, to get out any confusion or repetitive patterns in our minds, and to ask ourselves the important and sometimes difficult questions.
And last week was all about movement – did you move? Did you dance? Music and dance is an energizer and stress reliever. It gives us an opportunity to express ourselves through movement.
Now, its time to LEARN.
Why we should always be learning
What I discovered through a long period of battling with depression, is that depression often occurs when there are life-changing events (or triggers) that are beyond our control.
Depression is the mourning for a life we once had. It’s all about the past. Whereas anxiety, lives in the future.
It can be a breakdown of a marriage or relationship, the loss of a friend or family member, the birth of a child, accepting longterm illness or even Covid-19.
These are all situations that systematically change our entire existence. We go from what we have known, into the unknown and this is scary!
At times like these it is totally OK to feel however it is that you feel. No judgement.
Some days you feel good, other days you just want to cry and never get out of bed and that’s OK.
It is all part of the process.
Eventually, however, the path forwards is through learning.
Always learning
Learning about yourself, learning a new skill, learning a new way of being.
This is the stage I have now been in for YEARS!
In the first stages of my depression, everything was difficult. I had no motivation to do anything.
It took everything I had to push myself to take care of myself: breathe, self-care, movement.
I KNOW these are the first stages of recovery so I pushed myself towards them, whenever I could. I also let myself grieve for the things I’d lost and feel sad, angry, and frustrated.
This is all part of the process and essential to our recovery.
As I started to emerge from the darkness, I started to work towards discovering the ‘new me’.
This has taken many, many forms. Some have stuck with me, others have fallen to the wayside – again – totally fine!
Over the past few years I’ve studied vegan cooking, ayurveda, film production, conservation, various aspects of spirituality, digital marketing and mostly…..myself.
Even now, I continue to learn – this entire blog is about me learning.
The more I learn, the more I discover what I like, or dislike. I find the things that inspire me – that make me want to get up on the morning and continue.
Finding a new way forwards is about experimentation. It’s about trying things and sticking with them until they no longer serve you.
It’s about finding things that fill you with passion or joy, slowly but surely, finding a new path in a world that changed more drastically and dramatically than you could have ever imagined.
For me, this is not about Covid-19 – my life was irrevocably turned upside down well before the current state of affairs and I am extremely grateful that I am in the place I’m in.
And this is why I TOTALLY understand how difficult this time is, because I’ve already been there.
Reset Challenge Week 5: Learn
So this week, my challenge to you, is to learn.
Try something new, learn something about yourself, it can be something small or something big – it really doesn’t matter.
Listen to a new podcast, read a new book, google something that you are interested in and spend hours finding out more.
Learning is good for our minds, it keeps them active and engaged.
Through learning, we grow and through growth, we find our true selves and become strong.
You know what they say, knowledge is power, so what power will you give yourself this week? If you are up to it – let me know in the comments below!
If you want to know what different resources I love, check out the sustainable self-care resources below.
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