I was looking at all of my old journals and realized how my life was segmented into volumes, a collection of novels that tell the story of who I am. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to really recognize when one book ends and another book begins. Sometimes they blend together in good and bad ways. Sometimes we are just too busy to see them.

I have spent the last two and a half years doing a lot of self-excavation. Digging, demolishing, rebuilding. It has been grueling to say the least. There have been a half a dozen things that have loomed over me for much of this time. These things were and are heavy to carry. There have been many times that I felt like giving up, angry at the world for dealing me this hand. I would have been such a fool for giving up then.

The funny thing is that in our novels of life we never know how the current will end and the next will begin.

I am now in a place where many of the things I have been fighting are finally coming to an end. How much wiser I am. I would have missed all of this knowledge and experience. I see peace in the distance, a cool fresh breeze on a warm summer day.

I am seeing one book end and another begin, a brighter book. This book will not be without trouble, but maybe I can learn one thing from all of this. I will get through this. The story always continues. We just have to accept the story we have, learn from it, grow through it, and know that we can make it through it.

I am at a place that I would not trade anything for what I had to go through. It is what brought me here, moodyminds. I have already changed lives and that is worth every bit of the last two years.
Don’t give up. Keep hope.

So which comes first?  Action or Attitude?

Many would say that attitude must come first.  That you have to want to do something before you can actually pull it off.  They would say that if you don't want to do something it is impossible to do it.

Well, I believe these folks are wrong.  I am a firm believer that action comes first.  If you need to get up earlier in the morning, you never feel like doing it.  If you want to start exercising, you have to make yourself go to the gym those first few weeks.  Anything that I have faced in life that I wanted to change required me to first just do it, the attitude will follow.  Give yourself some time to think about this.

I see a lot of folks with different mood disorders struggle with how they feel.  They let their feelings dictate their actions.  I know I have.  This makes for a very difficult life.

The other day I had reached the end of my rope.  My emotions were dictating what I was doing.  I finally listened to some of my own teaching and said enough.

See I did not change how I felt, I changed my actions.  I stopped crying and told myself that it was what it was.  I made my body act like I was over it.  The amazing thing is that the feelings and emotions followed soon after.  Don't get me wrong, I will still have flair ups, but I have the behaviors to turn to.

My friends, you have control of what you do.  You may not always be able to control how you feel, this I know all too well.  Whatever your mental illness, you still control your body.  You can pick up the phone, you can walk out of the bar, you can stop and smile at yourself, you can pray, you can do anything.

I think we get so comfortable in our situations that we choose not to act.  If we act then what comes next is new and scary and unknown.  If we stay right here, we know this pain.  It is not new at all.  

People, take the risk of seeing something new.  The mud we wallow in will always be there.  Take a chance that you might just like what you see on the other side.

So, first off accept that attitude WILL follow your actions.  Next, just do it.  Do what you need to do.  Stand up, call the friend, write the story, love yourself.

You will not be disappointed.  

Today was a good day.  I got a great night's sleep, and enjoyed both the work I did and the people I met with.  There was nothing bad that happened, and there was nothing outstanding that occurred.  

So, this is a good thing, right?  Of course it is.  Why do we forget these days when our lives seem to go sideways?

I was talking with some folks earlier today.  We were commenting on how our internal inventory systems seem to lose an accurate count of the good and bad things that happen.  For some reason the bad is always too high and the good is always too low.  Where is this coming from?

Perhaps it is lifetimes of negative feedback, or feelings that we simply do not deserve the good days in life.  How can we combat this attitude?  We could spend time trying to improve out self love.  We look back at our lives and see what childhood event caused this behavior.  Don't get me wrong I am a huge supporter of therapy.  I just think sometime a simpler thing can work.

Maybe we just need a new inventory system.  Maybe we just need some help remembering the days where things go right.  I asked a couple of people how last month went for them.  Each of them immediately recounted the few bad days they had, then said things like "I guess it was okay".

The funny thing is when pushed a little they realized that they probably had 25-27 good days and only 3-5 bad days.  

We need to start remembering these days.  I am going to start making some mark on my calendar or keeping little ticks to count good vs bad.  Something.  I can almost guarantee that if we work at remembering the good days we will find ourselves dealing with the troubled days with a much better attitude.

This principle goes deep into our lives.  Start to remember the good conversations with your teenager, or work at remembering good times you and your spouse have had.  Or maybe it is the days when your work went well.  See, I think that our lives are far better than we want to believe.  I think we get comfortable in the pain so we try to make more of it than there really is.

I was told a story of a man spending 24 hours in the pit of an outhouse.  It was a bet that he and some buddies had.  After it was over, he was asked how did he do it.  His response was that the first three hours were miserable, then he just got used to it.

Let's stop getting used to living in the crap of life.  Let's start getting used to spending time in the flowers instead.