I started off this blog feeling all gung-ho about blogging, like ‘Yeah! I’m gonna take over the world and become the most successful blogger ever!’ and once I had set it up I started to worry… as I always do… about everything. ‘What am I going to blog about?’, ‘Will people think I’m stupid?’, ‘How will I feel if nobody likes me?’, ‘How about if someone I know reads my blog and laughs at it?’. To any normal person, these thoughts might seem ridiculous. Anyone suffering from mental health issues will understand how crippling thoughts like these can be.
So What Exactly Has Rach Been Doing If She Hasn’t Been Blogging?
Well… I didn’t exactly do nothing during January. I have been to the GP who gave me some medication. Although I’m currently debating whether or not that was the right route for me to go down… That, however, is another story entirely. I have sought out help through counselling. That feels like it is really helping me! Something I keep coming back to is that it’s all very well and good popping pills and talking things over… How am I actually going to get my s**t together enough to haul my ass out of bed every morning and start putting my life back together? This thought in itself opens a whole new can of worms with a whole new load of worries to obsess over.
I recently came across an article by Dr Sarah McKay about how we can R.E.F.I.R.E to rewire our brains which gave me some hope that I might be able to get away from these destructive thought patterns and actually get something done. I realised that to get out of the rut that I feel so completely stuck in, I can use blogging as a place to practice this and then I can put it to work in other areas of my life.
Work harder… i need to just… do… something
" data-orig-size="1920,1079" sizes="(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px" data-image-title="Work Harder" aperture="aperture" />C’mon Rach… get your s**t together and get some work done!Putting R.E.F.I.R.E Into Practice
It’s all very well saying I want to do ‘such and such’ but if you don’t give any more thought to how you will achieve that goal, it is likely that you never will. If the goal you have set yourself is work related then you will probably have your manager on your back asking why you haven’t done ‘such and such’ but if it’s a personal goal, like blogging, it’s entirely up to you to achieve it and you have to find the motivation to do so from somewhere.
Reason
Why do I want to blog? Well, it would be lovely to make a little extra income from blogging but more than anything, what I really want from this is to be able to look back in ten year’s time, or even a year’s time and be able to think ‘Wow! Look at how great my life is compared to what an awful time I was having back then.’
Engage
I haven’t had the courage to ask anybody else for help just yet. As I am only just starting out, I have taken the indirect advice of other bloggers who have inspired me and maybe once I have found my feet, I’ll reach out and start asking them some direct questions. Right now, I don’t think there’s a lot of point in asking for advice because there’s not a great deal for them to read for them to be able to advise me on!
Feel
Fear of being good enough and not being accepted by the blogger community is what has been preventing me from getting going so far. The reason for that is that I haven’t prepared properly, I have had the initial idea to create my blog but didn’t really give much thought to what I would do with it once I had created it! So that’s what this post is all about, finding my starting point and making a plan to move forward with.
Imagine
Right now I’m trying to focus on my 101 in 1001 which was the list of goals I set myself when I set up my blog with the aim of turning my life around. Trying to imagine completing every task on that list is more than my tiny human brain can imagine. I need to break the list down into individual tasks and work through this process for each one.
Extend
Does practice make perfect? If I keep on repeating this process to tackle each of the goals I originally set myself, I will eventually get through them all. Not only will I get great at achieving goals that I set myself. In turn, I will feel fantastic about my life! Whilst I’m at it, having worked through that process 101 times I’ll be writing about my achievements. Hopefully, throughout this process, I’ll also become great at blogging! Yay!
If you struggle with mental health, maybe you struggle with achieving even the smallest personal goals? I strongly urge you to take a look at Sarah’s website. It contains some really interesting articles that I know I have found to be really helpful. I hope you will too. Likewise, if you’re reading this and you can offer any useful advice, please get in touch. I would love to hear from you!
Rachael x