Month: October 2019

How to Honor Your Mental Health

How to Honor Your Mental Health

With World Mental Health Day being this week, I’d like to share a story.

Exactly 4 years ago, on October 10th, I missed a cousin’s beautiful wedding to protect my mental health. Let me explain.

Four years ago, I was battling through my very painful divorce. During this specific time, in the 5 months between filing for divorce and our final court date, we had just tried to reconcile and it failed miserably. I was in a world of hurt – brokenhearted, angry, and just sad.

My little cousin was getting married and it was going to be a beautiful day of family, friends, and nuptials. I was looking forward to it and dreading it all at the same time. After talking to my mom, sisters, and best friend, we all came to the conclusion that I probably should not go to this wedding. As sad as I was to miss the wedding, it was also a huge relief.

Had I gone, I probably would have gotten drunk and made some poor life choices. I was pretty good at that during this time. Not like fall-onto-the-stage-and-give-a-slurred-and-sappy-speech-drunk. More like overshare-personal-details-of-my-life-and-maybe-makeout-with-a-random-family-friend-drunk. Either way, not pretty.

During that time, my mental health was fragile. My heart was broken and I made plenty of bad decisions. But thankfully I had a tribe who was looking out for me and gave me permission to sit this one out. In fact, Facebook reminded me of what I did end up doing that weekend. I went up north with my best friend to her cottage to get away, drink a little wine, and break bread with my person and her family.

Honoring my mental health
The view from my best friend’s cottage.

But that’s not the end of this story. Fast forward 4 years and I am happily divorced, in a loving relationship, my career is thriving, I own 2 businesses, and I’m pursuing things I love. My mental health is in a much better place. I no longer have nagging thoughts of self-harm, which is something I have a history with. I don’t immediately reach for alcohol to numb my feelings. And I truly have respect for myself and my body.

It also hasn’t all been unicorns and rainbows. I’ve had struggles just like anyone else. I made sure to take time after my divorce to heal. Healing has to be intentional – not rushed. Intentional. I chose to heal. I chose to face my pain, bad choices, and insecurities. There’s still healing that needs to occur, but I’m always working on that. If you choose to heal as you go, then it is so much less overwhelming.

Healing looks like therapy, reading, journaling, crying, laughing, self-care, exercise, self-awareness, prayer, acceptance, connection, forgiveness, and love. All of these lend to your healing. Healing takes work, but it is so worth it. You are so worth it. And your mental health will thank you.

Now I look back and my cousin has beautiful memories of her special day. No one even remembers that I wasn’t there or why. And no one especially remembers how I made a fool of myself after getting too drunk, because it didn’t happen.

Life goes on and gets better – mine did. Yours will too.

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4 Truths About Creativity

If you’re a breathing human and on the internet, then you have probably heard about this thing called creativity. It seems like highly successful people have a lot of creativity. If you aren’t highly successful, maybe you don’t think you are very creative. You probably believe musicians, artists, writers, and the like are creative. But what if you don’t fall into one of those categories? Does that mean that you aren’t creative? I don’t think so.

In my experience, I’ve learned a lot about creativity. I’ve always identified as a creative person, but I haven’t always used it. In not using my creativity, I’ve caused myself a lot of internal anguish. Here are a few things I’ve learned that might help you on your creative journey.

Everyone is Creative

First and foremost, we are all creative. Every single human is creative. Creativity is innately in us. We’ve been sold this big lie that only certain people are creative or have the “creative gene”. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell.

We’ve been convinced that creativity equals art. There’s nothing wrong with this idea, as long as we are willing to broaden our understanding of what art is. If art means thoughts, ideas, and processes in addition to paintings, drawings, sculptures, music, and writing, then yes. Creativity means art.

I’m actually not opposed to this broadened view of art if it means that we believe we are all artists.

Creating Brings Inspiration

Creativity is not something we need to be inspired to do. Inspiration is not what we wait on to be creative. It’s actually quite the opposite. Choosing to create should be a practice, not something you do only when you feel inspired to do it. What if your inspiration never comes? When choose to create, then we are also creating inspiration. At first, what we create probably won’t even be that good, but the more we try, experiment, and learn, the more we will desire to create. Stay the course.

Creativity is an Unlimited Resource

And this leads right into this myth that creativity is a limited resource. As if when we use our creative energy on this thing over here, then we won’t have enough creativity to use on this other thing over there. Or we are one-hit wonders in the creative department. This is simply not true. Again, the opposite is true. The more we create, the more we will want to create. Creativity is an unlimited resource! When you use your creative energy, you breed more creative energy.

Creating for Attention Will Kill Your Creativity

The last point I need to make is one of the most important things about creativity. It’s something I never even considered until I watched this Ted Talk by Joseph Gordan-Levitt. It’s so good and I highly recommend it. It hit me hard, right in the gut. It’s something I realized I struggled with in a big way after watching the Ted Talk. It’s so important, that if we don’t caution ourselves against it, we will negate everything else mentioned above.

If you are creating for attention (accolades, awards, likes, shares), then your creativity will dry up. If your “why” is attention, it won’t get you very far. It’s a slippery slope that will get you wrapped up in other people’s opinions, which will eventually kill your creativity. The recognition you seek may never come.  The truth is, whatever you create may deeply impact someone, and you may never know it. You have to be ok with that reality. Your job is to create the thing. But you might never be recognized on the grand scale – or at all. You need to create it anyway. Someone needs what you have – even if it’s just you.

As a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist, I have fallen in love with the attention my work has gotten me. It has stunted my creativity and caused so much frustration with myself. I am learning to shift my perspective.

These aren’t new ideas and there are tons of resources that dive more into this subject. A few of my favorites are:

*Note – these are not affiliate links and I receive no compensation for sharing these resources.

Thank you for attention. I would have created this piece either way, but I appreciate you.

Stay creative, friends!