How Do I Live?

Every day, I long for a new tomorrow but why? Why do I wish for tomorrow when I can live for today? Why do I hope for a new day, if I can't even make it through today?

I asked myself these questions about a year ago and I didn't have an answer. I didn't want to live, but I definitely had no desire to die so where did that leave me? Hopeless for the most part. And yet here I am still today, did something change that made life worth living for me, did I somehow change for the better? Well no and yes, it's more of a its complicated sort of situation.

Now everybody says that Rome wasn't built in a day and they are right, it takes time to build and perfect such a marvelous place. It also takes time to build and make yourself better. Aw man what a cheesy line, but it's true. Think back to a time where you actually cared to make yourself a better person or at least to where you found yourself wanting to be alive. It might have been this morning, maybe yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, a year, or maybe never. No matter what if you've taken a singular ounce of time to try to better yourself you can build yourself out of the misery.

STEP 1 You have to stop beating yourself up for all the little things! Here's exactly what I mean, whatever you did yesterday or this morning, last week, last year, or whenever you "messed up" probably wasn't that big a deal. I used to consistently beat myself up for all the little mistakes, saying one wrong thing was the end of the world for me. It became a pity party the second that I felt like I made a mistake. This is part of what made me so miserable all of the time and what fed into my desire to die and yet not die. I started taking accountability for the things that I did, but realized that not everything is entirely on me. It was key to becoming a happier and healthier human being. One way that I found helped me to stop feeling like every time someone stopped talking to me or was acting off, was by writing down what I did and the way that I perceived their reaction. Then I flipped the script, what if they said what I did or did what I did. How would I react? Often times I would've acted in a similar manner and this didn't necessarily mean that I was upset, often times it meant very little. I started to realize that the things that I did weren't always messed up or mistakes, they just were completely regular and rational actions. Yes on occasion, I did mess up and that's alright! Making mistakes is only human! It's ok to not be ok, never forget that.

STEP 2 Take time to care about and for yourself I generally assume that anybody reading this article is somebody like me, a people pleaser. This isn't a bad thing by any means, but it often times means that we tend to forget ourselves while trying to please everybody else. This is your little reminder to take 5 minutes to take care of you, what I like to do is when I wake up in the morning I try to take around 5 to 10 minutes to assess how I'm feeling that day. I take deep breaths in and let myself know that no matter how I'm feeling today is going to be a good day. After I do all that, I get ready for my day and try to mentally prepare for what I have to do. Taking this time in the morning is important to start the day off on the right foot. If you can find time within your day, to just take 3 to 5 minutes and check on how you are doing you'll feel a lot better. I often try to just take 3 minutes to take a deep breath in breathing in calmness and happiness breathing out anxiety and sadness. Whatever is going wrong in my day, I try to breathe that out and breathe in only good things. Finally before bed, I try to evaluate my day and how I felt throughout. If it was a good day, I try to catalog why it was a good day and how I contributed to a good day. If it was a bad day I try to think of solutions to the issues that occurred and was I the main cause of the problems, was there even actually a problem? If not, how can I work on fixing my attitude towards those things. This is incredibly useful to making my day better and happier the next day.

Step 3 Be Happy With Yourself! If You Aren't Why Not? This step is probably one of the most crucial steps in making yourself feel better overall. I used to hate every single thing about myself from my face to my body to my personality. I thought how can somebody even possibly stand me, I can't stand myself. I often found myself isolating myself from others because It's easier to only be a disappointment to yourself then to others. I want you to know that it's ok if there are things that you don't absolutely love about yourself, it's ok to have goals that you're working on, it's absolutely ok to not be ok but at the end of the day, you have to at least be content with yourself. The one way I learned to start to learn to be happy with who I am is by taking the time to actually look myself in the face and find things that I liked about myself. I would tell myself in the mirror those qualities and repeat them until I started to see them. It didn't happen over night, there are still days that I hate who I am but I remind myself that there are redeemable qualities about me and who I am. Start small, one thing that you like about yourself. If you can find one thing, you can find more. Relax! and remember baby steps are still steps towards success.

Just be who you are, turn around and think about who you are from the perspective of the people who love you. Learn to appreciate the finer things about yourself because you ultimately can't become somebody else. Always remember that it's ok to not be ok and that one day, you might turn around and start believing in yourself. One day you can turn around and learn to enjoy living rather than anticipating dying. I'm here for every single one of you who are struggling, reach out and know that you are loved by many. I am here for you!