Start Your Own 30 Day Challenge

My 30 Day Challenge over the past month has been so much fun.

Maybe it's my love of lists.

Or that consciously making the effort to stop isolating myself has had a great effect on my mental health.

So for April I'm challenging myself again. And now you can too!

Using my free printable you can set your own Challenge and record your progress on the sheet below! 

My April Challenge is to read something every day. Whether it's a line, a page, or a whole chapter, I want to push myself back into reading.

How Can I Stop Isolating?

I naturally isolate myself. The truth is that I'm quiet and I'm shy. Socialising scares me. It always has. And isolating myself suited my shyness because it meant I never went out of my comfort zone.

It's something my friends have all gotten used to. I'm at that time in my life when I will probably decline hanging out with you this weekend because I have 4 loads of laundry to get through. To me, it's a legitimate excuse.

Source

But if you have legitimate excuses every single day then you're left with complete isolation.

That's why on March 1st I set myself a 30 Day Challenge to combat this. To encourage me to spend less time alone I was tasked with recording a worthy act (or two) of socialising every day.

How to kiss and not create bruises

I found this on Tumblr, and it was just so beautiful and heartbreaking I had to share.

(Source: wordsthat-speak, via cold-brewed)

It can be difficult to determine how much of yourself to give to somebody else. Often, we can give too much, too soon, and not get anything in return. 

Life and love are hard. And when you don't have a lot of self-worth, as I haven't in the past, we often give too much of ourselves away in the hope of receiving a small ounce of attention. In the long run, it only results in more pain. 

Just something worth reflecting on. 

Connected

What’s the first thing you do when you check into a hotel room? You make sure there is wifi.
You check in via Facebook, take a photo for Instagram, Tweet about the relaxing weekend you're about to experience.

So much of our life has become built around public sharing.

We live in an age where we’ve never been so connected, and yet we’ve never been able to feel more alone.

I go from the extremes of ‘I’m not sharing everything; I don’t need my life to be on display’ to ‘My life looks so boring compared to everyone else’s; I’d better post something’ and 'I WISH I had something worthwhile to share'.

Life is Full of Ups and Downs

Life has felt very stressful these last few days.

Whether it be the utter desperation involved in job hunts, arguments with friends, or.... well actually that's it. My list isn't very long, but I still feel overwhelmed. I'm anxious about everything. My concentration levels are ridiculously low. I'm tired, and I'm irritated by the mediocrity of everyday life.

And it's been affecting my mood. If it wasn't for plans like Zumba, Peter Pan on Ice, and a movie night to look forward to, I know that I'd be 100 times more low. And possibly at risk of a break down.

I'm scared of the uncertainty that revolve around the issues I mentioned above. But I am determined not to cry.

So I am stepping back. I'm taking a look around and self-evaluating what is working, and what isn't. What I have control over, and what I don't.

I am grateful for the little things I have to look forward to, and for the wonderful, supportive people I have in my life.

But the road of mental illness is often challenging, and full of ups and downs. Having courage during the downs isn't always easy, but for once I am prevailing.

30 Day Challenge

30 Day Challenges are the new Lent. Or at least they seem to be. I've seen many bloggers starting new resolutions, new goals and challenges to improve their skill base, exercise more, boost their mood and re-discover old passions over the past few weeks.

So having been nominated myself to do a 30 Day Challenge, I accepted. But it took me a long time to work out what to do.

Exercise was out. No way could I guarantee exercising every single day for a month. Rest days (or often weeks) are essential to my 'fitness' regime.

Reading. I wish.

A Comprehensive, but never Complete List

2014 highlights

Things to look forward to this year

In January I was not in the mindset to do a post like this. Every time I sat down in front of the computer to start it I thought, 'I have nothing to look forward to.' I felt completely stuck in a rut.

But now it's March. And two months on I realise that this is 100% not true. With the depressive cloud passed to clearer skies, I can finally see that. Getting out of that rut was the first step, and the next step is to focus on these positive things that I do have to look forward to. The plan? To create memories like these Polaroid snapshots of my 2014. (Yes, one of them is a selfie, but it was my first day in my big grown-up job, so it's okay, right?)

You see, sometimes I come to the conclusion that I'm young. And you're only young once. And I need to take some time to not only enjoy myself, but to realise that there are things worth enjoying.

Self Esteem Journal

TherapistAid

For the past week I've been keeping a Self-Esteem Journal. It wasn't planned, but there I was browsing different online sites and I came across this.

With 3 daily questions, the worksheet is designed to help boost confidence by focusing on success and achievements. 

"No matter how much I change, I'm left with me."

Things that made me cry this week

It's actually been a very good week. But some things just moved me.

A Long Way Down

Based on Nick Hornby's novel of the same name, A Long Way Down is a movie about four 'lost souls', desperate to end their lives who meet at London's most popular suicide spot.

"That's the thing about suicides. You can't cut the long story short."