Out with the old, in with the new

No, I am not a writer. In fact, I have never been really great with putting words onto paper. However, I write every single day in a journal. I apologize if sometimes these entries are hard to read or seem to jump around or don't have the correct grammar. I am a work in progress and always will be! These are meant to sound like journal entries anyway.

This is the part where I don't know where to start but here it goes... out with the old, in with the new. For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to help people. To make a difference in this world. I never really had a plan as to what that looked like until I walked through life for a while. As a teenager, I made the choice to walk down the wrong path, the dark path that would lead me into some of the darkest days of my life. At times, I honestly remember thinking that I'm not going to make it to see daylight. I was terrified of daylight. I walked that dark, dreary path for a few years and found myself there again as an adult with three amazing children, going through a rough divorce. However, I was able to "wake up" one morning, one of those days when I didn't think I'd see daylight again and I knew I wanted a different life. The following weekend, I went to church with my mom because I was far from anything good in my life, in my mind. During that service, they sang "Amazing Grace". There is a verse in that song, 'I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see' , when they sang those words my whole world came crashing down on me. This was my first acknowledged moment of the crippling effects of anxiety, I feared that my heart was going to explode and I was going to die in front of thousands of people in a public place.

This was on January 8, 2012. For 5 years, 9 months, 22 days... I have been crippled by anxiety. These past 5 years have been a "blur" but you know what... I AM STILL HERE. Not only am I here, but I am more at peace that I have ever been in during my whole life. I have found a way to cope, through trials and being brave enough to ask for help. I am here and I am better than I have been in a very long time. I have learned many techniques that help with my anxiety and panic attacks. Therefore, I had this epiphany that maybe all of this that has happened in my life is just along my path that is leading me to my purpose. Along my path of anxiety, I found myself in the emergency room several times thinking that I was going to have a heart attack and I wasn't even 30 years old yet. One day, I stumbled across a blog that someone was writing about the exact same symptoms that I was having at the moment. This person had been struggling with anxiety for years and had found themselves in the emergency room several times because he also had his mind set that there was something wrong with him. That's when it kind of hit me, there wasn't anything physically wrong with my heart (I had been reminded that several times, after several tests)... this fear that I created in my mind from the physical feeling and symptoms of anxiety lead me to believe the worst. His post changed the way I looked at my anxiety and helped change my life.

The MindfulLess came to me as I was thinking for months on end about how I can help other people. After the blog that changed my perception of anxiety, I decided that's what I wanted to do was blog. Not only that, but I journal every single day. I figured that maybe something that I was doing or writing about could "click" with someone else and help them along their path. Most of us that struggle with anxiety, are not mindful. We tend to think too much instead of thinking in the moment. There is nothing "wrong" with us, we are just so worried of something that we don't stop thinking once we are in that state of worry. The last thing on our mind is thinking mindfully. Hence the mindful, less part. We give a smaller amount of attention to what is most important which causes us to spiral out of control and create a tornado in our minds.

Let's push the old out and learn together to bring in the new. There are so many new studies, holistic remedies and techniques that we can use to create a better, more enjoyable life. Nothing can help promise that you will never experience anxiety again, but these things make the anxiety much more manageable.

mindful: adjective| mind-ful | bearing in mind: aware. 2. inclined to be aware. 3. conscious or aware of something.

less: determinter & pronoun | a smaller amount of; not as much. 2. of lower rank or importance. 3. to a smaller extent, not so much.