I find myself more and more disconnected from my life and more plugged into social media.  Even when I have no need for it, I reach for it because it is mindless and fills in the time.  To be honest, it’s become an addiction to know the latest thing even when it doesn’t concern me.  I’ve recently had a very tiny bout of depression about it because I feel as if it’s consumed my life lately.  I feel as if I have no time for anything else, when that is not the reality.  I’ve retrained myself to be more mindful of who I am in this digital age; for when I neglect my own wishes, I’m only wasting my own time.  Whenever I feel as if my life is out of control, I try to put things into perspective to take control back.

I’m trying to limit my time on social media and really structure my day more so that I can fit in what I truly want to do like reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, catching up on episodes of Netflix’s Peaky Blinders, and writing my novel.  I’m a realistic person and I know I can’t magically make more time in the day, but that I must work with the time I have.  We sometimes get into a rut where we want to attain something, but we also are scared of the hard work that goes into it, so we do nothing and hate ourselves for doing nothing, causing a cycle of depression and guilt that spirals down.  My boyfriend was just remarking that he didn’t want to turn out like his hermit uncle who had no girlfriend, but did nothing to remedy his own situation before me.

What’s worse?  Finding out you didn’t get what you want or never finding out at all?  There’s work to be put into this life and everything else is merely a distraction, albeit glorious distractions.  There is a drive that propels us to want more, and some of us are born with it and some of us are not, but it can be developed.  If it is not developed, unfortunately, it results in a lot of unhappy people with unfulfilled wishes.  We’re all living in cocoons where we have goals in mind, but are also afraid of the pain we must endure to reach that goal, so we satisfy ourselves with distractions in the meantime.  Sometimes, we just need a reminder that we must work with the time we’ve got and do our best, for time comes for us all.

Okay, so there are some players out there who just rock no matter what, but then you encounter those out there where the game gets mental.  Of course, to become an elite athlete, you have to have innate abilities, practice, and grow, but  practice doesn’t include anything mental, and that’s where a lot of players who are lacking in this area can improve.  People have already devised various ways to mentally focus and visualize success on the field, but they don’t necessarily attack the core of the issue.  The core of the issue is that a good portion of the game is mental and if you can shut out the rest of the world, you’re fine, but if you can’t, you need to work on your mental as well as your physical abilities.

Oftentimes, we see a brilliant player spiral downward such as Tiger Woods after a personal scandal.  Sometimes, players beat themselves up for losses and mistakes that occurred years ago and this memory still eats at them.  Mentally, they have not left these things out when they are playing, so it affects their  time on the field.  First, they must learn to see mistakes as learning opportunities, for as long as they hold on the memory of it being bad, they will always feel bad about it.  If they can let go of these mistakes, they will free themselves from the guilt of it.  As long as they attach a reassuring thought with the memory, they will be able to feel differently about their mistakes and see them in a positive light.

So you’ve probably heard the story on the Chapelle Show where Charlie Murphy plays basketball with Prince and Prince turns out to be phenomenal.  I believe this is because overall, Prince believes in himself so much that he can step over hurdles that most athletes face on a daily basis.  Because he believes in himself so much, he exudes charisma and doesn’t second-guess himself on the court.  To achieve this level, athletes must hold themselves to higher standards in their personal lives and live by them.  If they are able to do this, they will also gain similar beliefs in themselves and it will translate to their sport.  When a person is sure of who they are in their personal lives and does not fear mistakes, they are able to hold their head high in their personal lives and in the public court.

Everybody loves a good intervention.  I mean, have you seen A&E’s Intervention?  We do interventions because we care for the person and want them to change, but when we run an intervention, we are dealing with the symptoms and not the source.   Oftentimes, I watch the show and I see the family members and friends reading statements about how it has affected them.  A lot of times, this simply does not get through to them.  The best of them may feel guilty, but that will never get someone to stop what they’re doing.  If you don’t address the source of the issue, you’re just treating the symptoms and the problem will always be there.  A lot of times, the source is something that occurred years past or even something no one knows because it has been suppressed.

You have to realize that the majority of these people are in deep denial and use other things as an outlet because they can’t emotionally express themselves.  When they can’t emotionally express themselves, they delve deeper into their addiction because it helps numb them.  Of course, some people are physically addicted, but the majority of people I see with severe drinking and drug issues are those who refuse to deal with their past.  If you try to talk to them about actions to fix their problem, it will not help at all. When you talk about actions, they are addressing symptoms, but not the source of the pain.  You must address the pain to begin an honest conversation with them so they can acknowledge their pain.

So you see how reading statements of their addiction affecting you may not be the most effective?  A good way to start is ask them how they FEEL.  Tell them that you see they are hurting and relate back to them what is happening such as I see you’re hurting and you’re drinking every night because you want to drown it out, but it’s always there.  And you wake up every day and pretend everything is okay and put on a smile so that no one will know just so you can survive, but I know.  I can see the hurt in your eyes.  When you can relate back to them the pain and that you see what they are doing and how it affects them, that is a much more effective solution to addressing the real issue. When you can address the hurt, they are forced to confront it and talk about their feelings.

They are not going to change overnight and they may not understand at first, but the biggest step in the road to recovery is acknowledging the hurt.  If you can start having them face the actual pain, they will lift themselves out of denial and be able to address the source and then the symptoms.

I’ve written about this very topic already, but I feel as if I need to delve deeper.  All of us have cringe-worthy pasts or memories from our pasts.  For some of us, they still haunt us.  And in a few cases, we are stuck in our past because we cannot escape the shadow of it.  Let me clarify, for I’m not talking about people who refuse to deal with their past and are in denial, but people who have processed their past, but just can’t let it go.  The way we are wired, we tend to hold on to bad things because that’s what we do.  We have to learn how to change this process and a lot of how we think because it is not productive to our growth. It is completely natural what we’ve been doing for centuries, but it is not conducive to our souls.

What I mean is that oftentimes, our reactions and feelings are innate and something the majority of us would do without being told because we don’t know any better.  If little children are molested, they tend to not tell anyone.  When someone dies, we blame ourselves for not being there for them.  When we hurt someone, we continue to carry the hurt.  We need to teach children about sexual assault and that it is okay to tell someone.  When someone dies, we need to acknowledge our own guilt and express the times we were there for them.  When we hurt someone, we need to process it and move on, but that’s harder said than done because no one has told us how to move on.  All these things are hard-wired into who we are, and it will take years before we can change how we think.

Here is how you can start.  First off, if you haven’t processed the past, do so.  That’s another blog altogether.  Once you have processed it, know that you can never change the past.  The past is what it is, but that is not the important thing.  The important thing is how we FEEL about the past.  We don’t carry the past with us, but we carry how we FEEL about it and that is what prevents us from growing.  When you can change how you FEEL about the past, you will be able to let it go.  You need to know that it is not healthy to keep carrying these things.  It does you or anyone else no good to continue beating yourself up for actions that occurred in the past.  In fact, the memory of it will continue to drag you down.  If you can acknowledge that you are worthy of growth and a clean slate, begin to change how you feel about the past.

When you recall a bad memory, you feel guilty, shameful, or embarrassed of it. These are the memories we tend to hold on to the most.  When we do this, we cannot pass the memory and it eats us alive.  What you need to do is attach a good thought with it every time you bring up the memory.  If someone died before you could be there the last time, remind yourself that you shared a great memory with them another time.  This changes how you feel about the memory.  Instead of feeling shame, you feel joy at the memory and it fades into your consciousness.  You haven’t changed the memory, but you’ve changed how you feel about it.  This also works for things you’ve recently done.  If you’ve asked a girl out and she turned you down, you may feel embarrassed by it.  Remind yourself of the courage you had to ask her out and the memory will no longer contain embarrassment for you.  This will allow you to be able not be suppressed by the memory and be able to ask other girls out.

We’ve been hard-wired to react a particular way and the funny thing is that we only think we are doing it, when in fact, all of humanity generally reacts the same way.  We need to retrain how we react and feel about ourselves so we can continue our journey.  If we are constantly ashamed of our pasts, we will never be able to fully embrace who we currently are and move into the future.  This starts with the knowledge that we deserve to be happy and have a clean slate.

You’ve seen it on social media where someone keeps posting about terrible a relationship in their life, but they do nothing about it.  They swing from saying their mate is never around and uses all their money to spouting about how they love them and how they only have one life to spend their happiness.  They ask why they constantly find themselves in this situation and they never look at themselves.  It’s you.  You’re causing all the drama because you crave it.  Some people have no choice but to be drawn into it, while others will periodically have drama-filled episodes, but if someone constantly posts about it, it’s because they want the drama in their life.  If you recognize a pattern that always involves you and don’t change it, you must be getting some value out of staying.

I’m not talking about abusive relationships where someone slowly tears the other down so they can’t leave, but people who stay in tumultuous relationships for the sake of the drama.  A sense of drama sometimes creates balance in your life and it causes you to see where your priorities are, but having too much of it can throw you off.  Those who are drawn to it only know it as their norm.  They live for the high and reassurance that it brings.  Some of these people start drama to regain a sense of normalcy.  This can happen when a couple starts to argue out of nowhere.  It blows up and draws in others.  Their real feelings come out and other things that they’ve been bottling up.  They run through a gamut of feelings ranging from annoyed resentment to mild anger to full-on rage to guilt and to loneliness. It is a circle and it comes full circle every time.

What happens is that a couple fights and goes through this cycle, and they seek the reassurance at the end of it that the other party really does care for them and that they will not do it again, only for it to happen again.  They crave these affirmations, but can only get them through this cycle.  These relationships usually become abusive and thus it is harder to get out, but those who crave drama will continually seek out these type of relationships because they don’t know any other way of expressing themselves.  And so, they continue posting about how terrible their mate is while everyone else thinks about how crazy they are.  Drama really equates to attention.  You receive negative and then positive attention from your mate and attention from other that you elicit through posts that make you out to be the martyr in the relationship.  You don’t care what kind of attention you get as long as it is attention.  Examine why you need this attention and it will usually hearken back to not receiving attention as a child.  That’s pretty broad, but I’ve seen this happen a million times.