investment

I'm so obsessed by situations I'm not in and situations I'm not in yet but might be. I'm learning to reframe those things though. Instead of thinking, what if I had to do this? How would I cope?, I'm looking forward to being able to do these things that seem challenging to me at the moment. 

Instead of dreading them, I'm framing them as my goals, and thinking how good it will be when I can do them because that's how it should be. That's how I want it to be, and that's how it can be. Recovery takes time but it also happens surprisingly quickly, and I know from experience that it doesn't take long for me to be able to do things that were previously unimaginable, or things that didn't seem possible when things were challenging. 

There's also a strange reality that I've been experiencing more and more lately whereby the new me is a different person from the old me. Change is not linear, it's dialectical. It's driven by the tension between two opposing states or influences. Thesis + antithesis = synthesis. In the playing out of the struggle, at any particular time, either side will be dominant. 

Sometimes I'm still the old me, but increasingly I'm the new me. And when I'm the old me, I worry about how I'm going to handle different things, but then, when I think about it I realize that I don't need to worry because the old me is not going to have to handle things, the new me is. I'm making it sound easy but it's not. The old me is still me and it's being put under intense pressure. This process often involves the old me turning up to do what only the new me can do. I still have to face my fears.

But the new me is growing. Every day I become more invested in my daily goals - they're becoming fuller and they are filling my life and negating the rumination. For example - my quiet times - my times with God, reading the Bible, writing my insights and praying. I'm doing those things more fully each day. I'm writing more. I'm creating more art. I'm exercising more. I'm eating better. I'm doing more of my goals. I still don't get all of my daily goals done but I'm doing more of them and doing them more fully. 

I'm inspired thinking about all of the things I want to do. 

I think each of my daily goals is powerful, and I have longer term goals as well, but my daily goals have a special power. They are my new life. 

Just thinking about one in particular - my quiet times....that is so powerful. To be able to spend time with God each day. What can compare with that? It's better than any counselling or any resource you can draw on or any experience you can have or any other relationship. But it hasn't been powerful in my life because I neglected my quiet times. I haven't invested in them. I fell out of the habit of spending quality time with God as a priority every day. And also, rumination squeezed it out of my life like it squeezed everything else of value. It got to the point where rumination made it so that I couldn't even have good quiet times if I wanted to. I had no sense of what that meant any more. 

That's how I have changed. You can take this to the bank. Every day I achieve my daily goals. And I feel something building. It's been so, so, so hard. It's been ridiculously hard. How is it so hard to just read the Bible, write my thoughts, and pray? How is it so hard to make art? How is it so hard to write a blog post or write a post on Medium? How is it so hard to go to the shops? How is it so hard to do anything except be in a kind of vegetative state? 

It's stopped being as hard now, and I notice that every day, I'm more invested in all my goals. With my quiet times it's been hard to even think and write anything when I read the Bible. I can barely manage to squeeze out a sentence. Some days not even that. But it's getting better. I'm able to focus more on what I'm reading and write more about it, and I want to keep growing in that way - really seeking God and spending quality time with him. And my other goals as well - I find myself getting carried away, transported, away from the rumination and other problems.