Seeking Wellness
Do you want to feel good? I did.
Do you long to feel happy? Me too.
Do you wish for more energy, for life to be easy?
I wished for that all that.
For me, I felt that life was hard, it can be busy and demanding. I felt sad, stressed, unwell and anxious. Modern life seemed to just increase all of these negative things.... but I felt that just isn't how life should be.
I realised I want more from life, and at the same time, I want less.
I want less stress and less pain, I want less busyness. I want more calm and I want more peace.
For me, I can condense this into one word - Wellness. That's what I want.
I've heard the term "living on autopilot' and that's what I felt like was doing for most of my life, just living day by day, doing what I had to do to get through. Different life stages had different demands : childhood, school, working, adult responsibilities, raising a family. Using all my mental and physical energy just to get through from one moment to the next, always telling myself it will get easier one day.
But one day never came, new things would come up that keep me functioning on autopilot and never finding time for myself. Rush, rush, rush. Stress, stress, stress.
I often felt like I had the responsibility on me to ensure everyone and everything was taken care of. Except for myself.
There's the pressure to do a good job at life, have a nice house, keep it clean, work hard, look good, bring the children up right, keep up social obligations... always busy, busy, busy, doing, doing, doing. See how productive I am? See what a good person I am? Look at all I'm achieving?
All my life I've been the good girl, doing the right thing. Thinking if I'm good at everything, exceed expectations and achieve a lot, then that must mean I'm a good person.
And where did that get me? Stressed, anxious and unwell.
I've always been interested in evolutionary anthropology, looking at our early ancestors and why they evolved the way they did and how they lived their lives. I find it fascinating to see how far we've come, to compare the now with the past. Some things have progressed in a positive way, yet others things have changed for the negative.
Of course the lives of our early ancestors were difficult and hard, but not the 24/7 stress we seem to consider normal these days. They had a lot of downtime, time to relax. They were connected to nature. They lived in small, connected groups, supporting each other. Humans didn't evolve to live crazy busy and constantly stressful lives, in the hope of one day in the far future reaching retirement and finally having time to relax and live life how we want to.
The more I read and researched on evolution, and the how and why of it, the more I realised that I needed to focus on the key drivers and necessities that underpinned human evolution both physically, mentally and socially.
The constant mental stress and anxiety, the constant busyness caused ill health in my body, unease in my mind and disconnection from my spirit. Looking back it was a long downward spiral, and it wasn't till I reached the bottom that I impetus to change.
And the revelation was that it wasn't a change of job, home or finances that would bring this change and reduction in stress and busyness. It was me that needed to change, and so began my search for wellness.
I went down my different rabbit holes, I found so much wonderful information, great strategies and things to do, all of which would help me achieve my goals. But the more I got into it, the more I realised I had just added another layer of stress on my already busy life. Now I felt I had to somehow incorporate all these great strategies and techniques into my days, so I made more plans and lists. But it never quite made me feel well. In fact, I felt more stressed and busier than ever.
I kept coming back to one thing - I want it to make my life easier not harder.
I didn't want to be doing more things, I didn't want to add more routines and actions into my day that made me feel even more overwhelmed. I quickly realised that I needed to be doing less, not more!
I decided I had to prioritise things in my life, I couldn't stop looking after my family, I couldn't just stop working, I couldn't just drop all my responsibilities, but I could make choices in many areas. I could let go of the notion of having to be all and do all, and I could choose what I really wanted to keep in my life.
As an example, I had a volunteer job that was rewarding in may ways, but could be stressful and took up a chunk of my time almost daily. The responsibility that came with this volunteer position weighed heavily on me to, due to the self induced need to do everything to a high standard.I felt obligated to stay in this volunteer job, I worried how it would go without me, I didn't want to let people down. But I made a decision to prioritise my well being, and hard as it was, I stepped down from that position. And once done, I haven't regretted that decision.
I honestly believe that the stresses in my life directly affected my wellbeing - physically, mentally and emotionally. And by looking at ways I could reduce that stress, my wellbeing has improved.
Yes, I still have stressful times, life still gets busy, but I'm really conscious of mitigating that stress by incorporating of concepts of slow living and relaxation time into my days, in ways that work for me. I've altered the way I look at stressful things to reduce the impact it has on my wellbeing.
I think the key is finding ways that are right for you. There are so many voices out there sharing what works for them, academics, researchers and doctors telling us this is the thing you must be doing to be healthy and well. But I've found tnot everything works for everyone and certainly not always for me. Try things by all means, but if it doesn't work don't think its you that's the problem. It's not you, you're not failing. It's just that we are each individuals, with individual needs, and we need to find the things that work for our body, your mind and soul.
I think that might be one of the hardest part of a wellness journey, tuning into yourself, finding what is wellness for you, and how can you help yourself?
Living our lives on autopilot has meant that we're no longer connected to ourselves, and its hard to figure out what we actually need. After a long time, I knew that firstly I needed calm and quiet, I needed an antidote to the stress and busyness. Going to the ocean, spending time by the water, sitting by the river or near trees works for me. Others may crave connection and love, they may need to go out and be social and find people they connect with. Other people may need movement and exercise, reconnecting with their body - yoga, dance, sport. It could be more sleep, better nutrition. What do you need to find wellness?
Initially I did struggle to identify what I needed, as my first thoughts were I needed to be more efficient, to get things done quicker or better, to handle stress better and be more organised to fit everything into my day and then once all that was done I would finally be able to relax.
But that was an illusion, of course I'd never be able to get all that done. The answer for me was to do less, less rushing, step away from a stress mindset, let go of the need to do it all, work out what really mattered and what didn't.
I changed my perspective on how I wanted to live my life, and suddenly by doing less, I was able to do more.
More time to relax, more time to reconnect with myself and my needs, more sleep, more time in nature, more moments enjoying family, more time for myself and my wellness.
What do you need to feel good? To feel happy?
What do you need to find wellness for you?
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