19 Lessons I learned from 2019

These are lessons I learned along the year of 2019, which was a whirlwind of ups and downs and full of lessons.

1. Lean in and feel the feelings, its the only way to process and grow.
2. The darkness (both in the feeling and process) always leads to stronger and longer-lasting light.
3. When your mind tells you you've reached your limits, pause, listen, figure out if its fear of failure, and when it is; pause breathe and push forward.
4. Self-acceptance doesn't equal self-love, rather opens the door for that process to start.
5. Acceptance isn't complacency rather an important tool for change.
6. Family exists, their acceptance and love doesn't determine your worth.
7. Asking for help doesn't make people think less of you, rather it gives new options to connect.
8. Sharing your pain and fears in a healthy way doesn't hurt healthy people, rather it builds bonds.
9. When you build inner boundaries, the lack of them surrounding you doesn't impact you as much.
10. The voice in your head telling you not to try and that everyone is watching is lying.
11. Change and Growth are not linear, you will get to what feels like the same point, but with new tools and from a different view.
12. Changes are not always constant continuous lines, sometimes they are small dots, keep going dots make pictures too.
13. Cry. Let yourself be vulnerable and cry. Instead of leading yourself into an illusion of processing feelings by trying to block them out.
14. The lies society spins about psychiatric medications and hospitals are just that-lies. The help is worth breaking through those societal barriers
15. Respect the need for pauses both from mind or body, but let it just be a pause and not a full stop.
16. You are what you say you are, so stop saying you aren't anyone worth saving and sharing with the world what you are.
17. Keep trying to love yourself, in different ways at different times, never give up on yourself.
18. Asking for help to save your own life is hard but makes living so much easier.
19. It's really hard to save yourself, but not as hard as giving up on yourself.

On to 2020, I am adopting a new idea from someone I follow who gives each year a theme and a word so, wait for the next post to see what they are.

Musings from the Bench

Sitting me on the bench for the first basketball game of the season makes sense. I mean it's my first game in my return- if you can even call it a return, then maybe to basketball as a game but practically, its a start, for sure competing in a league. I'm not a good player, I have miles to go before, I believe I will really have any helpful impact on my team during a game. This means logically I know that it makes no sense to put me on the court if there are better players, that give our team a better chance to win. Internally I am still super competitive and "game-day" brings up the nerves and stress of competition. Which for me led to the two hours before we were meeting up for warm-up, I was dysfunctionally stressed and nervous. What came up in my mind was the feeling that I had no idea in my mind how to process these pre-game emotions and nerves. The only other competitive history I had was rowing competitions, and my mental preparation for these competitions consisted of intense (depending on who you asked too intense) internal focus, closing into myself. I spent time breaking down specific moments of the race and what my plan was for each time, and going over the repetitive movement in my mind, these tools helped calm my nerves, and as I liked to say "focused me into a coiled spring" ready to release all the power during the race. This structure to me felt non-transferable as basketball is a team sport and I'm on the court moving constantly in different ways, to me this felt like there was no repetition which I find hard. I reached out to a friend who competes in both these sports at the highest level and her response made a lot of sense "your skills, your shots and movements are more repetitive than it seems on the surface, you focus on your shot, and repetition of making the different shots, and your movements on court." Sitting on the bench after the warm-up I fell into the focus, of just the movements and shots of my teammates on the court, which made me super quiet and focused on the shots and plays on the court, almost taking me back to pre-race levels of focus, which for me personally felt good, I felt a comfort in that level of focus, which controlled my nerves. A teammate though reminded me about the difference, of sitting on the bench to pre-race. Yes, you are sitting on the bench, but you are still part of the team, which means cheering for your teammates and pumping up the energy. Yes learn from what is going on, but part of that is also being involved with everyone else. While my first thought was that she doesn't get what I'm doing, the reality was I could still focus pretty well on the specific skills on the court that I was trying to focus on as well as cheer super loud and make myself part of the team. In reality, while I still really wanted to get out on the court, I mean c'mon there is nothing like the wheels hitting the court and the ball bounce, that is one of my happy places, and yea I wanted a workout as well, but I learned plenty from sitting on the bench. Team isn't yea, I'll play with the team, but wanting to focus on your own skills and goals. Self-learning doesn't mean shutting out the team, and sometimes shouting loudly teaches more on the silent inside than you think. Here's to learning and growing on and off the bench.

Donut Deliberations

Its December, and in Israel that means the month of donuts, yes they come out earlier but this is when you are bombarded with them in social media and pretty much everywhere else. I mean literally everywhere. For years I would tell myself I have to find the perfect donut to try because they are full of calories and not healthy and I can't just eat one it has the be "worth it". What does "worth it" mean? What checklist does this donut have to fill? For years I would read reviews and look at photos of donuts and pass the bakeries searching for the perfect donut, then go home and binge on something else unhealthy that I didn't want to eat but I didn't give in to eating the "nonperfect" donut. During my time at the eating disorder clinic, my dietician worked on this idea of finding the "perfect" food worth breaking this illusion of a diet, rather just restriction my mind convinced myself I was on. The idea of just eating one of what your body craved, and it didn't have to be "perfect", yes there are "healthier" (Ill explain the quotation marks another time) foods, but if by not eating one fresh donut, you went on to binge on four or five boxes of cookies that you didn't want that night, you're just hurting yourself both mentally and physically. We spoke about this in June of 2018, which sometimes feels like eons ago and sometimes feels like yesterday. I dont remember if I ate a donut last year, but today, when walking past the bakery, the donuts looked pretty good and I was craving a sweet treat, so instead of listening to my mind which said: "no dont buy one donut, you have to find the perfect one, just buy a box of cookies, there are so many more in the box." I shut my mind off for a second, bought an imperfect looking donut, without letting myself analyze if it's my "favorite flavor" and looks like the best donut on the tray. Getting back to my place I pushed past the thoughts of you can't eat it, its not your favorite flavor (mind you I haven't had donuts in so long, the idea of a perfect flavor, is based on what flavors I like in other things and totally being used by my eating disorder mind to stop me), I poured myself a nice cup of coffee and sat, shut off my racing thoughts and enjoyed the imperfect donut. Because it was perfect at this moment, and I wanted one so I had one. I will work out later, but not to "get rid" of the donut, rather because its a habit I'm trying to build. I ate a delicious imperfect donut and I enjoyed it. ED today I won.

Personal North Star

I don't like letting the idea of something help lead my life. Part of that is my personality and part of that is the fact that being disabled throughout my life people close to me and not have always tried to help. Sometimes the help was needed but many of the times it was "Help". I'll write about that another time, but basically, it created an almost constant feeling me that I was given help, and expected to receive help. This along with being raised with a complicated description of what god is and how you are supposed to relate to it, made me hate the idea that someone else was in control of my life and I had to communicate with "God" for him to give me a good life. I hated the fact that the answer to anything going bad or good that it was god, with no responsibility for any of the people involved(this is not everyone's relationship with god, this is the feeling I got from my education both formal and informal at home.)
This complicated relationship led me to a long while of pulling away from any version of god and religion, I wanted to be in charge of my own life, including the choices and outcomes. I didn't want any connection with something or idea of some kind of god that removed my individual thoughts, actions, goals, and ideas. This lead to pulling back from anything of any sort of religion and focusing on myself, regardless of my enjoyment of reading some religious texts, I cut it all out.

These thoughts came to the surface when I started listening to the book Super Attractor by Gabrielle Bernstein, a main focus in her book is connecting to a higher power, labeled in any way that works for you to connect. To be able to let go in some areas of life while gaining a lot more in many ways. When I first heard this I balked, I said it sounds like everything else I've heard a hundred times and I want nothing of this god that takes all the responsibility out of my own actions in my life. The more I listened and relistened I understood more of the point that it is creating a personal channel with a higher power in the world to create balance and growth inside you, to give you direction in which to use your skills and abilities in the best way to change the world. Creating the balance of what you want to achieve and what the universe has for you as well.  After I realized this wouldn't be the worst thing in my life, maybe it could create a different balance and a release of some of the non-helpful responsibilities.  I have piled on many different "types" of responsibilities in order to keep control of my life around me, most of them don't work because at the end of the day, they make me stressed and anxious without any ability to change most of it.

The first thought I had when I came to this conclusion was "You have heard this 100x times, in many different forms of religious/ Chassidic words, written, spoken, discussed. Why does it take listening to a non-Jewish book to somehow connect and hit me in a place that created a desire to create a personal name and connection to something larger than me." It took a conversation with someone close to me to come to the conclusion of "whatever way of connection and an ability to process an idea is great, just because you have heard it in many different ways, you connected with this one, so run with it." Among Gabrielle's many different words she threw out for connection with a higher power was "North Star".This term spoke to me on a few levels, firstly I love nature and love the idea of finding the north star in the forest or by the ocean. Secondly, part of my very detailed and personal tattoo (I'll go into detail in another post on the meaning of the tattoo) is the form of a compass and the four directions. I love the idea of being able to look at my arm and be reminded amongst other things to connect and listen to the information coming through the personal connection to the universe and find the calm and direction from my channel with the universe. I am still in charge of my actions and goals, yet I am able to focus and listen to the inner connection between me and my north star.