The Rebirth of Sanity – Phase Three: Fall in Love With This Idea

We have to remember that self-care is an action. Now that we are action based, it is safe to say that our sanity is a result of our actions as well.
No?
It is safe to say that by now, no one is a stranger to the sayings “seize the day” or “dare to be great.”
We all understand the optics of a good life. We know what this looks like to us. If we don’t know what a good life looks like, we understand the meaning of motivation and the need to improve.

By now, everyone understands what it’s like to be unmotivated and to feel flat, as if getting up is a bigger task than we can consider for the moment. There isn’t anyone alive who has never experienced a rough or sad time. And no . . .
No one escapes unscathed. No one comes out without a scratch. At least not here because this is life and in life things happen. We slip and we fall.
We encounter moments of discouragement the same as we encounter people, places and things that either discourage or encourage our next best move.
This is life.
The question is how do we live at our best, even when we think or feel at our worst?
How can we keep our energy flowing on a constant basis when the news around us is hard or tragic? Well, in part, this has something to do with the conditioning of the mind.
Also, this has to do with our outside influences which are the people we choose to include in our life. This can depend on how and who we share our intimate details with. It is true that our selection of people who influence us can impact the way we think and feel. So, it is best that we choose our team or friends and loved ones carefully.
Then there’s our routine. This helps us. There is also the way we treat ourselves. Then there’s the evidence we look for which tells our mind that we are on the road to success. This is what seeks the rewards; otherwise, this is what tells us that we need to produce more.
Partly contributed to our surroundings and our internal fitness; and partly contributed to the way we treat ourselves, as well as the way we treat others; and yes, the way we treat other people does have an impact on the way we feel about ourselves; we are able to either improve on a daily basis – or not.
Repetitively, in fact, we can move ourselves in a forward motion. While this does not guarantee that all days will be great and that bad days won’t happen, this does guarantee that the momentum of our changes can put us into a new framework of thinking. This means that our bad days are not so tragic. We not only have the right to recover and improve but now we have the ability to recover and improve as well.

If being consistent and persistent is the answer to our troubles and if we understand what happens when we forget ourselves, or about our acts of self care, and if we forget to keep our our best interests at heart, then next, we have to create a simple routine that becomes habitual.
What does this mean?
What is a habit anyway?
To me, a habit has been defined as something the body can do without thinking or without the mind’s input. This means that our behaviors and actions are as automatic as the first thing we automatically reach for as soon as we wake up when the alarm clock goes off. 
We don’t think, we just do.
Well, if this is so, then how can we create a habit of wellness where we don’t have to think about this? Instead, we just do. We just move.

Our aim to build a new life and a stronger internal narrative has been improved by creating a resource of actions. This can be exercise. This can be something as simple as pushing ourselves to meet new people are saying “hello” to at least five new people each day.
This can be as simple as dedicating five minutes of time to just sitting still and to closing our eyes, just to breathe in and out.
Either way, we have taught ourselves a new routine. We’ve started a process of change. As we begin to transform our lives, we are beginning to see the little successes that have come to our attention. We are noting the accumulation of tiny victories; and more, our reward system is starting to notice the changes of events.
Maybe this can be an improved reflection in the mirror. Or maybe this can be a considerable and noticeable change in weight. Or perhaps this can be an improvement in muscle mass and next, when we exercise, we find the energy to pump harder is easier because our bodies are hungry for more. 
Perhaps there is a more interpersonal or professional reward. Maybe the science is simple and now that we see this, we are starting to exude a certain magnetism. We are glowing now which is beyond what we thought was possible.
If we are in the early stages, perhaps results like this are too soon to count. However, believe this note is true because, at some point, your consistent output leads to a glowing aura that is both fulfilling and magnetic.
The truth is this: We are a benefit-seeking species.
We want more. We want to feel happiness and pleasure. We want success and since this is true, it is also true that we have natural fears and concerns that our pleasures can be either broken or taken away. On the other end, there are times when our doubts and fears or the emotional maps have led us astray; in which case, we think that happiness is more of an impossibility. But more, this triggers an assumption that perhaps we are not deserving of success and, therefore, we sabotage ourselves.

The truth is, there is a pathology to us all and now that we have come to this point where we are “looking for more,” and that the prospect of having a better life is in our sights, my next question is how do we prioritize our daily routine?
Also:
What do we do to exercise our emotional and physical fitness?
How do we look to improve?
How can we create a sense of positive detachment so that when something unwanted or unfavorable takes place, we can detach from this instead of own it?
My next question is also another valuable one:
What exactly is a perfect day?
What does this look like?
Does this include reality?
So, if we could break this down, what makes a day perfect and how can we aim for this on a daily basis?
Is this even possible?
Can a day be perfect when we’re surrounded by so many imperfections?

I ask this because the world is not always going to coincide with our best interest. The truth is unfortunate, but not everyone plays fairly. Yes, there are bad, unfair and unfortunate people in this world.
There are and will always be problems that occur.
It is fair to say that we all have intimidations.
We all have fears. We have worries and concerns. And too, we have wants and needs and we have a series of steps that we have to take to ensure our needs and wants are met.
This is true.
But . . . there are times when the days are unfavorable. There are times when bad news seems to be on sale and everyone’s buying their shares on this. There are times when the perfect storm consumes us and the emails won’t stop. The challenges won’t quit. Work sucks. Life’s a bitch. If we could, it would be nice to call “Time-Out!” and ask for a “Do-Over!”
There are days when systems break down. Machines go wrong. The car needs repair and there’s unexpected traffic that bottlenecks which, of course, comes at the worst time and causes a stir of anxiety that we might be late or that we might miss something.

It is true that our method of living and our personal program cannot change the fact that cell phone service will drop in and out at the worst times.
No matter how healthy we are and how hard we work, life will always take place. The unfairness of life is always happy to show up like an unwanted guest.

We are talking about the obvious here and to simplify the obvious, we are talking about what it takes to continue our forward motion, every day, so that even if we have a bad day, our bad days are still consecutively better than the day before. We want to improve on a daily basis so that even if something unwanted or undesirable happens, we are still better than if we failed to take care of ourselves or if we failed to prioritize our own personal health. 

This is what we have come to change
We have to make this our habit.
This is no different than the habits of our personal hygiene. So, the same as we bathe ourselves and the same as we brush our teeth and style our hair; and the same as we wash our clothes and care for the way we dress, our mental and emotional hygiene is equally as important.

Our mental and emotional self-care is something that we have to make a habit so that our body acts and that our actions no longer need the mind’s input. This is us.
This is our body on autopilot and moving forward. This is the way we will take care of ourselves on a daily basis. 

Our plan is coming together and our strategy is starting to move in a methodical way.
This means that each day, we are allowing ourselves to unfold our best possible life. We are choosing this as a top priority.
We have chosen to remove ourselves from the prison of the mind. And that’s the biggest step of all.
We are becoming action based which means we have made the choice to stop being the spectator. We are not watching anymore. We are not overthinking or overly worrying.
We are acting now.
We are daring on a daily basis and stepping towards the life we want; and more, we are maintaining this with a special level of care.
We have decided to master our lives and take hold of our choices because now that we’ve recognized the benefit of forward thinking, we’ve made the connection between our acts and our thoughts.
We have also learned how this impacts our feelings and how this leads to the end result which is our emotional content.
This means that now that we are deciding to live instead of just exist, we are daring to be great, even without thinking about this because this has become our new habit. 

We are out of our comfort zone now.
We have given ourselves the permission it takes to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. We’ve allowed ourselves to navigate away from the discomforts of our perceived rejection,l which is only as real as we have allowed this to be.
We are action-based instead of thought-based. But most importantly, our thinking is no longer intimidation-based. 

We are stepping through the opposition of our faith and moving beyond our personal limits and intimidations. But more, we are allowing ourselves to not only challenge but to defy our tragic assumptions. We are defying our old thinking that caused us to catastrophize the worst possible scenarios. This is what caused the dramatic and tragic moves that we would play out in our head.

We have made an automatic decision each day, to live our life at its best. So, to continue at our best, we have allowed our body to move and act.
We have allowed ourselves to move away from emotional thinking. Rather than entertain the thoughts that lead us away from our best, we have re-scripted our mind to think and hope and to look for the bright spots, even in the darkest places or at the darkest times.
We have decided to replace emotional fears and concerns with logical and strategic thinking. Remember, there is no fear in the logic brain. There are no doubts in strategic thinking. There’s only our G.P.S. which are Goals, Plans, and Strategy.

No one can stop life from happening and no one can stop bad things from taking place.
I can say that, sadly, life is both inevitable and eventual and that yes, all good things do and will come to an end. Unfortunately, life is fragile and at times.
Life comes with tragic news. There are days when the news is hard to swallow. There are people in our life who mean so much and then, unexpectedly, we learn that something happened to their health.
Still, regardless of what can happen; our new habit is to fall in love with our life.
We have to do this every day.
Our new habit is to look for the next best thing and to set our sights on the beautiful horizon. We have to make this our new habit because this translates to our personal chemistry; and more, this allows us to recover from the unfortunate things around us.

I can say that while the events of my life have not all been pretty and I can say that there are times when I was in the darkest of places; there were times when I swore that “this was it” and that there was no hope. Yet, I can also say that my vision was blurred by my habitual pattern of thinking.
It has been part of my new routine to destroy the older version of myself. Perhaps the word destroy might sound harsh or rough; however, I used to surrender to a pattern of thinking that was equally hard and rough. So yes, I look to destroy this. I look to destroy the limitations that used to hold me back or keep me down.

I used to give in. I used to quit. In fact, this used to be my habit.
I used to believe in my inability. Hence, I never looked at or believed in my abilities. I only knew about my faults and flaws.
I knew about my mistakes. In fact, I believed that my mistakes made me and that it wasn’t the other way around. I say this because we make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make us.
I never supposed anyone “like me” would reach the level of success that I’ve always hoped for. Yes, there are days when outcomes are not what I hoped for.
There are times when opportunities have changed and there are times when budding relationships either shriveled or ended abruptly.

I don’t always coincide with the best possible science of my surroundings. Yet, I am working on my new habit just like you are.
This is the only way we can learn how to navigate towards a happy life. This is more than saving our life on a daily basis. This is more than loving what we have and this is more than maintaining and preserving our best new life.
This is our new pattern of living.
This is our self-care on a daily basis, which is no longer dependent upon anyone or anything. This is us living a life that is no longer codependent on anyone or anything.
We are free now. But to keep ourselves free, we have to create a motion that allows us to become habitually free.
This way, we will never be caught in the mental or the emotional prisons again. 

I was told that in order to dare to be great, we have to “believe” that being great is possible.
I have also been taught that the hardest thing to trick is our belief system; therefore, if we want to create a new habit then we have to create a habit that is so strong that the mind’s input is unnecessary. 
We have to trick our belief system into a habitual pattern of ongoing greatness.
We can do this too.

If we want to avoid our flaws and character defects and if we want to improve our mind and our body, as well as our soul, then we have to make self-care the habit that moves us forward. 

“To fall in love with life” on a daily basis.

I love that saying.
I share this with you because, in all fairness, this is what saved my life when I doubted myself the most.
So, I put this here for you.
(Just in case you might need it.)