I finally wrote a listicle. Sort of. This was a bit of a self-help/reflection thing for me as I approached, and passed, my fortieth birthday.
I’ve learned a lot in the last ten years — since I started training to be a psychotherapist; I am more switched on to the world around me and more connected to the world within me so I wanted to complete some kind of 40 for 40 ritual. As I am in the business of helping people connect to themselves more I figured writing about my connecting to myself might be helpful for others.
40. Lessons I’ve learned, an introduction
39. Respect that urge to say something — don’t bottle things up
38. Walking is magic — the transformative power of movement and time
37. Just say the thing — apologise if you have to
36. No matter how tired, some things will energise me — tiredness is a sign of needing rest or needing change, it’s hard to tell the difference
35. The sun makes me feel better — and there’s nothing I can do about it. On days when there is no sun I just have to do my best
34. I have to allow myself to feel despair — allowing space for the feeling to be stops energy being wasted on fighting it
33. It’s less about effort, more about consistency — show up regularly and build trust in yourself, rather than building dread because you always have to go hardest
32. I’m not always pleasant to be around — the struggle in finding the balance between allowing loved ones to be there when we’re down and taking ourselves away to save them the misery of our misery
31. There is a limit to the capacity of tasks my brain can hold — accepting I can’t do everything I want to do. Certainly not in the same timeframe
30. Sometimes the therapist needs the client — being able to ‘get’ my clients’ pain because I’ve experienced something similar makes my pain make sense (and I’m a little less angry about having to go through it!)
29. Remembering what a privilege it is when someone dares to be vulnerable with me — it creates opportunity for connection, begins to build trust and allows me to dare to be vulnerable with them
28. Not getting what you want creates space — the ending of a relationship and dissipating of feelings creates space for a new feeling for a new person
27. There’s always more — love; money; opportunity; good; bad; choice
26. You can only meet people where they are — their depth of understanding is as far as you both can go no matter how many times you try and explain your level of understanding
25. Everything we know is not all there is — consciousness, other ‘beings’, extraordinary experiences, levels of communication
24. My stillness is my foundation — and it’s contrary to this extraverted world, but it’s mine and it’s how I come back to neutral
23. When my average five people change, I change — changing my people changes my life. To make desired changes, do I need to change my people?
22. I catch myself chasing a feeling from the past — the pain of nostalgia and longing
21. What did my body want to do but was unable? — learning about stuck feelings, emotions and actions within the body and paying attention to physical symptoms that will give clues
20. Seeing yourself through another’s eyes is how you first learn to see yourself — we need other people, we cannot do everything individually no matter what ‘they’ tell you about self-care
19. I like to fantasise about how I’m going to spend money I don’t have — guilt-free make-believe that when handled consciously can be a wonderful form of escapism and inspiration
18. We cry when something is beautiful — crying isn’t just about sadness, it’s really just an overflow of feeling, any feeling
17. I love to imagine the younger lives of older couples — it’s fun and heart-warming to imagine what someone used to be like
16. No matter how hard the lesson, I will still reminding of it — we’re so good at adaptation that something novel and important and heart-wrending can still be assimilated into ‘normal’
15. The world is big and small — everyone has their role
14. We have no other purpose than to be in the world — our natural state is rest, everything else is a (important) construct, get back to being
13. Everything is changeable — but when you can’t face the reality of that change in the moment, it’s okay to just be in what is because it won’t feel like that forever
12. Balancing social and solitude — finding the experiences that feed me, challenge me, heal me and nourish me
11. Our natural state is peaceful and playful — when all around is chaos and stress, remember you can find a way to move that aside. Eventually
10. Psychological/emotional healing is not finite — we’re always learning, developing and growing. When we’ve experienced something traumatic processing it in therapy will be helpful. It will unlikely be ‘done’ though. There is probably going to be a time in the future when the thing you thought you’d ‘got over’ gets triggered again and there’s a new layer of learning. Trust the Process
9. Deadlines and challenges motive me and stifle me — it really depends how well I’m doing mentally — it can be oppressive or playful
8. I say I want an easy life — do I unconsciously need it to be hard? — am I so used to having to struggle to get anything that feels worthwhile that when things are easy I start to sabotage?
7. Living seasonally provides routes to self-forgiveness — you can’t always be light, airy, productive summer. Sometimes you need slow, cool, dark winter
6. The more you know the more there is to deal with — Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is power.
5. Life is a paradox — there is never one thing true at a time, always multiples and nuances
4. Do I really want to be around people, or do I just want to be away from myself? — joyful socialising or avoiding inner torment?
3. I don’t need to tell everyone everything —quantity does not equal quality when it comes to sharing information and building relationships
2. I need to change what makes my life, life — trying to balance my relationship with me and making it as important as my relationships with others
- Lists are hard! This has been six months in the making and I did not anticipate it to have been such a struggle. Life did unexpectedly get a little more complex in that time, I don’t think enough to justify the level of procrastination that occurred though. This endeavour has taught me I want to work more on my writing. I enjoy the process of it, the feeling of getting stuff out of my head, the pride when people read and comment and, I hope, there is stuff here that helps other people. Those big changes have created space in my week that I will use for creative writing. I hope to become better at crafting sentences and paragraphs, and I hope to entertain and educate with some of the things I’ve learned along the way of intimately getting to know people around me.
