You know how they say "I smile with my whole body?" No? Well, Erykah Badu captions it a lot on her Instagram anyway, and these days it is a phrase that frequently surfaces to my mind. I feel like, 'Yes, I do smile with my whole body. My smile is not only an expression of my face but of my whole being. When I truly smile? Bro! I cheeeese, man!' But the reality is my body does not wear a smile at the moment, it wears a grimace and the same is true in the opposite direction. On the days I am not gleaming from ear to ear, my body takes the full brunt of my self-rejection, my own abandonment and low mood.
I will make no bones about it, like many of us are beginning to more comfortably divulge, I struggle to manage my mental health and my relationship to stress. Inevitably, this aspect of my wellness has a direct influence on other dimensions of health, for example my sleeping pattern, time spent outdoors/exercise, journaling - or lack there of - as well as, what I eat and sometimes whether I eat at all. There was a time however, when being vehemently aware of the interdependence of wellness better enabled me to take an honest inventory of my physical, mental and spiritual resources; restocking when I noticed myself running on empty. I was absolutely dedicated those days because a year prior, I had fallen from the roof of my self-concept, totally un-blanketed by my lack of self-care. So some years later, I am fully schooled on what routines work for me, which 'pick-me-up' practices revive my low mood and disordered sleep pattern, enough to fill one of those gorgeously edited, fifteen-minute, lifestyle-Youtuber 'Reset Routine' videos. What I need this time around is not the knowledge - yes, in part there are developments to my physical and mental health that require both learning and unlearning - but most importantly, motivation.
I find it funny, reflecting only now, how nothing motivates the same as having seen who you become at a crisis point and how soon we become complacent again. Now, I have to root around a little for my motivation, I find. It burns bright and burns fast, I haven't seemed to manage that one divine quality: consistency. I am hopeful though...another phrase rings between my ears suddenly. I was super bored and resisting an oncoming dissociative episode when I opened a video from a YouTube channel I would otherwise ignore, an Australian male, thirty-something, offering his advice to people experiencing their twenties. He said at some point in his mid-twenties, burnt out and chasing other people's ideas of success, he began to make decisions based on the question, "How do I want to feel tomorrow? A week from now? Next month?" This is honestly becoming a great source of reflection and encouragement for me to follow my positive and healthy impulses, to harness that little bit of extra effort it takes to take care of my self, earnestly. In my mind's eye, I hold an image of me and it comes encased in sensations and a life ethic all of its own...I know exactly how I want to feel in my body and in my mind. That is the my strongest liqueur of motivation.
