You may try, but you will never be able to make today the same as yesterday.
You can stay in bed, but the date will still change. You’ll move your body in different ways. You’ll age.
Nothing ever stays the same. Not you, not the world around you, and most definitely not what you think is going to happen in the future.
Even if you’ve been through a trauma, it changes. The act itself may not change, but, your perception of it does, albeit sometimes slowly. Your memories bend; your understanding grows; you move farther away from it in time.
I rarely write about real trauma, because I have never suffered one. If you have, I can never truly feel yours, but I know that it will change with time.
Things will not always be great, and things will not always be hopeless either.
You are an agent of change. You can change the world around you. You can change your future.
Every action you take has a ripple effect, no matter how small.
Think of one thing that you did not do yesterday, and try it. Only one thing.
Here are ten examples:
- Wake up twenty minutes earlier.
- Take a ten minute walk outside.
- Do ten push ups more than yesterday.
- Write your spouse a note.
- Tell your boss you’d like to try something new.
- Call a creditor and ask for a lower rate.
- Go to sleep one hour earlier.
- Tell a close friend you might need some help.
- Stay completely sober for one day.
- Do not eat after 10 PM.
Give one of those a shot, and see what happens.
I tried, very hard, and, quite ‘successfully’ to avoid what was coming to me for a long time. Yet, in the end, it still came. I could not stop it.
I don’t know what I was so afraid of. I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen if I stood up and asked for help.
I do know that I was wrong, and, I was not destined for a life of misery. Nobody is.
I do know that it takes much less effort to get help than it does to avoid it.
You can start feeling better by helping yourself, or by asking someone else.
Either way, you can start small.
Matt Fried 