Chronic Illness and Controlling Your Mind
Before my hand hits the gas, because my foot can’t exactly hit the gas, I sit here and eat an apple to cure my body, and my mind. I realize that the best time of my day for awareness and making things happen is between three and four in the morning. I can sit quietly in my bathroom next to the shower which is my next step, and all of my clothes are laid out in front of me for the gym. It’s my little haven. Not exactly my heaven, it is a bathroom, but my quiet spot as soon as I will add a bed. It’s a place I can think and start my thought process for the day. Social media is not even in my mind. My iPhone is in front of me to connect to my Bluetooth scale and record my progress, But that’s the only thing that I open my phone for at this time. I’m keeping my mind clear of distraction.
I started fueling my mind in addition to my body at the gym a few weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. I will say that getting back into self-help books has shown me that when I put my mind into action I am in control of myself and my environment more than I would be had I not intercepted.
No matter how many reps and sets I do with a Gym, I cannot change my world if I have a bad attitude about life.
Before I started reading more To help myself get oncrinkled.l mentally, my body would just physically fall apart every time I had something that I thought I would trip over, something that was in my way, be annoyed at some thing that my husband would do, and how could he not know that that would be in my way. Why wasn’t he asking how he could help me. It was just one annoyance after the other, and until I started learning more about controlling my mind, instead of decluttering my environment alone, my whole world changed. Yesterday we checked out of weekly virtual Therapy sessions with a relationship therapist, or couples therapy. It was eye-opening to see how over a 12 week. My life just was a lot easier to slip on every day. I had this Metta awareness about myself in relation to the world and my family. It came from my self help books.
The first book that I started reading or listening to was the More of Less. This was a book about minimalism and one part of it was decluttering your life, which was huge for me, including my car my home. This had to be done and gave me a great starting point. The other portion of the book talked about how to have a mindset that you just need less things in your world and not to pay attention to material value of things. He is a devout Catholic and priest, so he talked of Jesus his teachings. I didn’t really know too much about this before, so it was interesting to me and very relevant.
From that book, I learned how to take control more of my environment by taking things out of my environment that were a danger to me. Moving things is very difficult since my hands hold onto crutches to move so I end up kicking things around or down the hall. Carrying beverages is a nightmare. So I learned how to control my environment to help control my anxiety. This came from my mind. I needed to set a plan up for each room or my car before a trip we took, and just remove things a little bit every day. It was so successful that I do it regularly now more of a maintenance thing. But my point is this all came from my mind, it was not the clutter in my environment. The clutter happened because my mind was not aware of it and let it happen for too long. I control my environment more regularly now because of my awareness.
Then I read a book more about how to control your mind, hacking the mind by Sir John Hargrove, and I really dug it. It had a 21 day program with exercises for your mind to start controlling your mind with this Metta awareness. He writes from the perspective of an IT professional, a programmer, who is proud to claim himself as a geek and talks with a lot of Energy and enthusiasm as he narrated the book. I really dug his energy.
He told how to create this meta-awareness and gave you exercises to be the master in your mind. He kept saying over and over, “you are not your mind.“ I began to practice the exercises and see things so differently. When I was eating this apple in the car I don’t just think of the Apple, but the active how I’m going to hold the Apple so that I don’t have this mess all over me. I’m thinking of how I’m feeling as I eat this apple, and I’m noticing my energy level rise, because I was a little sluggish coming down the stairs. It’s awareness of myself not just grabbing an apple to go with them. That may be a dumb anecdote but it shows you that I have an awareness.
Then fast forward to hacking the mind with Sean Webb’s Expert teachings in two volumes. I read the first with great interest because I really wanted to understand my mind more than just the techniques that Hargrove gave in his book. I wanted to understand the why and how the brain works . His teachings leave me hungry for more, and I watched YouTube videos that he referenced like Ted talks and really dug his style now reading his own books. He is super funny.
Building all this mental awareness, helped my relationship with all of my family members. Because we checked out of couples therapy yesterday, and I realize that a lot of the problem had to do with my anxiety level rising whenever I needed help with something and he wasn’t there because he was in the office with the door closed working at home. I was just more aware of myself and not being able to ask for help when I needed it. I need much more help now because I am more aware of how I control my environment with my own mind. So instead of checking out, I really checked in and I am more in control of my mind. My mind is not me and I want to help you know that you are not alone. Having a chronic illness means a lot of anxiety can be there that you can be in more control of. Whether that’s your environment that’s doing it to you, or your mind that’s doing it to you because it can’t control your environment, and you can’t control your mind to not react to when your environment is cranking you out. There’s a lot you can do. Mental health is everything. Without your brain, there’s pretty much nothing.
