Baby Steps

Everything in life takes time and patience, perseverance and strength. Change only happens when you want it. What you allow is what will continue.

2 weeks ago I went back to my therapist after the Christmas season break. There were some things that were super hard to discuss with her but I know it was all for the best. Even before seeing her I knew I had to change my life, change the things I was doing and change who I was becoming.

The problem was that I didn’t know how to change, what steps I had to begin to take to make a change. Quite a few months ago I quit my gym membership as I wasn’t going as often as I had liked and I was just paying for it and not actually using the facilities available. By quitting my membership it just made things go downhill even quicker. I wasn’t getting any physical activity or doing anything positive for myself or my body. It was only at the beginning of the new year that I decided 2017 would be my year to get fit, healthy and get the body I had dreamed of for so long. I joined a new gym but unfortunately that didn’t help my motivation levels. Since suffering from mental health issues my motivation for things have never been great but I used to put in effort to change all of that. Over 6 months ago when my life was going down a very messy and destructive path I had no motivation to even try to help myself so it just got worse. It’s when I went back to my therapist after the Christmas break that things seemed a little brighter.

I told my therapist my body goals and how I wanted to get back into the routine of going to the gym a couple times a week and told her how I had failed to do so. In the new year I set myself goals by telling myself I would go to the gym every day of the working week for an hour but I just failed miserably. My therapist said that I had to set goals for myself that were achievable because by telling myself I would go to the gym every day of the week was unrealistic as when I missed a day of gym I would feel shit and then I would feel unmotivated to go again that same week and the cycle would start all over again. My therapist wrote down a list of things that were the “B” (Behavioural) in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). She wrote a list of pleasant things that would give me pleasant feelings and one of those things was to go to the gym 2 times a week for 30minutes. By having a small goal to reach such as gym 2 times a week it has made me feel like it’s something that I can easily achieve.

This week I managed to go to the gym twice and I ended up doing a workout for an hour each time which obviously made me feel more accomplished and motivated to do it all again next week. It’s all about baby steps, and taking things slowly until you reach your goal. By setting yourself up with unrealistic goals/tasks it can make you feel pathetic, weak and like you are never going to reach where you want to be. Taking things slow, and taking baby steps doesn’t mean you are weak or pathetic, it just means you are taking things at your own pace to feeling accomplished by achieving your goals. Starting off might seem like you are walking along a beach and your footprints just get washed away by the sea and you have to start all over again. But the more you keep going and pushing harder each time, your footprints become permanent.

REMEMBER – It’s baby steps to success 🙂

Stay Strong

xoWoundsHeal96