Happiness is a choice.
I say that a lot and people who battle depression and/or anxiety tell me I’m wrong. That the choice of happiness is out of their control. Being someone who deals with anxiety, I understand how much more difficult it is to flip your mindset when these emotions try to take over.
And sometimes it wins. Sometimes you can’t shut it up in time and you go into a spiral of doubt and guilt and questioning everything. Even if you logically know none of what your emotions are telling you is at all truth, it’s still very present and grows almost at a rapid rate.
My recent experience has been to remind myself that it won’t last forever and just breathe as much as I can until it passes. But some of those fear and thoughts that get loud during these times are really loud and the sting lingers for a bit even after the calm sets back in and your back in a space of control.
My biggest struggle is feeling like I did something wrong. Like I’m having an anxiety attack because I didn’t do something I was supposed to do or something I could have done to prevent it. So, I’m hard on myself generally anyway, but when it comes to my health, I’m way worse. I feel guilty for bothering anyone or causing them to listen to my words when I know wasn’t making sense. I feel like a burden or a problem or like why in the hell would anyone actually want to talk to me after seeing me be so weak? Let alone allow me to coach them (and none of my clients ever see me in that state and wouldn’t even know I had anxiety if I didn’t speak publicly about it so that thought is a perfect example of how irrational your mind can get sometimes)!
That guilt is big. It’s a tough giant to stand up to but I do. Because I know it’s not true. I know my own strength. I know I have the supportive people in my life I do for a specific reason. I know I’m there for them as much as they are for me. I know for a fact that diving into my own anxiety and being so self-aware with it actually makes me a BETTER coach, in fact it makes me a better version of myself altogether.
Because you see, my body is telling me something every single time I’m filled with anxiety or whatever you’d like to label said feeling. It’s not about what I did or didn’t do to possibly prevent it, it’s about the fact that it tends to always shine a light on something within myself I need to address, something I may be suppressing or trying to ignore and it’s like my conscious mind and my emotions join forces with my brain and my body to force me to see whatever it is I’m meant to be expressing.
And the moment I do, it ceases.
I express whatever the light is shined on and I can breathe again almost instantly… And it’s like I reach a deeper level of consciousness every single time.
For months I’ve been on the verge of something massive. A huge shift. A big change. A deeper level of knowing than anyone has been able to explain but they keep telling me I’m almost there, to keep listening, and keep clearing space and following my intuition and it will be revealed to me.
This all feels part of that grand design. I start to get frustrated but remind myself that I’m co-creating so I don’t have a say in how it plays out, and most of the time it doesn’t make sense in the moment but later it will so I’ll keep trusting.
And keep being grateful for the people in my world that bring me peace and love no matter what state of mind I’m in.
So no matter what, every morning I choose happiness. Whatever that means to me in that day, I choose it consciously. And so can you.