The one advice that has put me out of my misery

Change often took a big toll on my life, rather it’s physically or on my psyche. It’d always hit like a big truck and cause major mood swings and feelings of uncertainty. This has changed ever since I’ve applied this advice in life, which I’m about to share with you and hopefully change your life as well.

Let’s start this off with figuring out why changing makes us feel ‘good’ and how we can utilize this feeling to give ourselves a better time overall.

When we’re looking to change something in our lives, we’re ultimately trying to improve in the particular area. Should it be fitness, love, career, family, whatever it is, it boils down to one feeling that we’re looking for, the sense of accomplishment. If you think of life as a game, the results of the changes would be like the achievements in video games. However, even in video games there are small achievements that lead up to big ones. For example in Minecraft, there is the small achievement of crafting your first wooden tool to reaching nether to beating the ender dragon.. and you couldn’t have attained the biggest achievement without crafting that tool at first.. (yes, I was once a minecraft nerd, no judgement here)

So, how can we utilize this trait of ours to implement changes without crumbling us down? The answer would be to take slow and steady steps.

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Everything in life is a step by step.

I first heard of this advice from Natasha Oceane, a fitness influencer on Youtube. The moment I heard this was when I started to realize why, even though my goals always seemed to be in my favor, trying to get there barely ever worked.

Let me just be a little bit vulnerable here and share with you a personal story of mine. I am an anorexia survivor and I remember clearly how it felt in the beginning of recovery when I was forcing myself to eat normal amounts because I knew I had to yet also having that ‘demon’ inside of me telling me otherwise. Physically, it had caused me to breakdown several times during the day, attempted suicide, and created a lot of tension within my family as my parents fought to figure out what was the best way to help me. Luckily, I fought through the whole process and after almost 2 years, I have finally established a good relationship with food again.

I wasn’t aware of this advice then, but looking back, I had actually done something similar unintentionally.

* Before I move on to sharing with you what I did to help myself, I want to make it clear that this is not a method that will work for everyone, it wouldn’t have worked for me either if I hadn’t changed my mindset*

I had started another diet, a non calorie restricted one in the hopes that I would be able to eat however much I wanted without putting on too much weight. In that case, it was the Ketogenic diet for me. I started the diet still with a restrictive mindset but eventually started to utilize it as a way for helping me to cope with food, until I slowly reintroduced sugar and carbs back into my life.

Now, that puts us through one thing I’d like to point out about this advice.

Each stages of change until the last is temporary.

It will not be ultimately what you want rather where you have to be to level up to another stage.

This means you do not have to worry if the current small change you’re implementing is not where you want to stay in, because it is just a stepping stone to get you where you want to be. If you think about it, your ‘ultimate goal’ may also just be another larger stepping stone to the next big change in your life. Life is ever evolving and your knowledge only expands as the days go by.

Taking fitness as an example, let’s say getting a six pack is what you want right now. You can’t just get it in one week, two weeks, one month time. You’ll have to tweak your diet and your workout routine to bring you into alignment with your goal, and that takes a lot of hard work and dedication. You will be at the point of losing a few inches on the stomach, to having a flatter looking and stronger core, to having maybe your oblique or top abs showing a little, then working out the lower ones… and eventually reaching the ultimate goal. Now, my question is, would you give up during any of those initial stages? No, because you know it is inevitable to get to having the six pack abs you want. This is the same for any other life changes, you have to be exactly where you are to get to the next stage, accepting and seeing that fact helps much more than repelling it and hating on it.

Back to my recovery, as much as it was not very healthy for me to turn to another restrictive way of eating after an eating disorder, it was a good decision because if I hadn’t done that, the mental breakdowns would’ve just taken over me and god knows where I’ll be now.

Here’s another thing,

drastic and dramatic changes tend to overwhelm.

Think of any sort of big changes you’ve ever tried to implement in life. Here, I'll give you time.

How often was it that you just start to question whether it was all worth it? with all the emotional baggage that it carries with?

When I started eating normally again, I physically looked fine, I was doing the right thing and my weight was restored. But my mind was filled with fear and fear and… fear. I was horried by the fact that I was eating a whole bowl of rice, a whole burger, anything that seems to be the norm to me now. I remember clearly asking myself, when can I ever eat and feel okay about it like a normal person does? Was life still worth it if I had to fight these extreme feelings of worthlessness everyday?

Impatience is what drives us to implement dramatic changes in our lives. We want to be better now, we want to find that higher-paying-job now, we want to develop a skill now, we want to thrive and have fun with life now. Sure these impulses are great for us to use to mold our lives but as Ive mentioned earlier, it often ends up turning you into an emotional wreck.

What can we do to have this intense willpower work for us instead of against us?

To apply small changes throughout is to have our impatience work for us instead of against us.

Referring back to the beginning of this post, the feeling of accomplishment is what gives us the oomph in this whole process, and these small success are our best friends in giving us that boost of energy and motivation.

Small successes make us feel like we’ve actually done something and not only that but also get us excited for the next stage, for us to attain the next achievement. (Yes!! I’m finally ready to mine some iron ore now that I’ve crafted my stone pickaxe!! – you see what I mean now?)

As I was going through recovery and had my mind set on the beliefs of the ketogenic diet, I had put aside most of my worries about weight gain and subconscious beliefs that I had never taken note of started to emerge.

I started to see the deeper side of things, my major issues with self worth and how it was the cause of all things. Then I proceeded to work on my physical image of myself only to encounter more and more negative beliefs I had ingrained in me overtime.

If I hadn’t taken the time for myself to slow down and just be in that state that I also knew deep down wouldn’t serve me for a long time, all those insecurities would’ve likely hit me all at once and would again, make it almost impossible to deal with without being hopelessly depressed.

There is always another layer of yourself yet to be discovered and if you really take the time to let yourself be in the present stage in life, you allow these blockages to emerge one by one so you can deal with them effectively without allowing them to stop you from achieving what you want.

Finally, Inevitably sometimes in life we really just need something big to hit us like a car and wake us up and turn our lives around, rather its an event or a sudden realisation, but after all its the maintenance of it that matters, which gets back to where we started.

Give yourself the time and love to take it slow, as much as wanting to improve is a sense of self love, allowing yourself to feel down every now and then and making peace with those negative emotions is also a sense of self love, in fact, it may be even more important.