I struggle with putting myself first. I would argue many people do nowadays, when we’re more socially connected than ever. But even as a child, when you’re supposed to have this immense sense of ego and self-righteousness, I was the one the other kids went to when they needed to be heard. I listened to this boy Nathaniel’s story, and let him cry on my shoulder during recess. He thanked me at the end and left. It was around this age that I started really developing depression. I was around 8 years old.
In any case, I grew up with a ton of therapy because I evidently needed it from a young age. I’ve gone through major life changes and challenges with my trusty therapist, who I’ve been seeing since I was 16. I’m 20, a few months shy of 21 as I write this. There are so many things to learn from therapy, or more broadly, introspection and sitting with your thoughts from a third-person perspective. First and foremost, you learn about you and how to put yourself first in the most helpful way possible. For me, and for most people around me, that means prioritizing your mental health.
Wellness is not just about sleeping, exercising, or eating. It’s all the small things you do to care for how you feel on the inside and how to identify what you’re feeling or what you need. Developing self-worth and self-awareness takes time. It’s hard to ground yourself when emotions are high or when you’re low on energy. I know firsthand. Since I was little, I’d struggled with panic and anxiety attacks more often than the average person, and had to learn very early how to calm down. It’s scary, having a panic attack. During the worst ones, my hands and feet go numb; I’m prone to collapsing from a loss of feeling in my limbs, and the world whirls around me like a kaleidoscope. I still struggle with panic attacks every once in a while, but they are much more manageable as I learned how to recognize what they feel like from their onset and can get myself grounded faster. Years ago, a school nurse taught me a grounding technique where you touch your thumb to each of the rest of your fingers while counting to four each time you go through them.
I had to learn to find things that added to my sense of self in every little thing I did, or I would burn out of motivation too quickly and would never follow through. My passion only carried me so far into the hard work that I did. So I found small things I realized I enjoyed and paid more attention to them. The way the keys sound when I’m typing really fast or the sensation of them depressing under my fingertips (I’m enjoying this right now!) keeps me focused on what I’m working on without draining too much motivational energy. In fact, with every press of the key, it creates more motivational energy to pour into the task at hand.
It’s little things like this that I’ll be focusing on in this small eBook. Use it as a guide to follow your heart and your passions, not in the big ways that everyone talks about, like career, school, and hobbies, but in the quieter aspects of life that appear along those hard kinks in the road. Use it to pay attention to what you’re actually doing and the activities you’re participating in, the butterfly effects you are both a part of and creating. Hopefully, it’ll help you prioritize your wellness in a way that makes you feel like you’re prioritizing it at all—it just becomes the leading purpose in your life.
In sum:
- Focus on putting your wellness first.
- Wellness does not just mean physical health!
- Find the little things that bring you joy and motivation.
