“Life’s what you make it” and other shit that turned out to be true
So I’ve been thinking a lot about all the little sayings and kitchy quotes that we’ve all heard about a million times in our life. Isn’t it so crazy that those things feel so bullshit because of how often we hear all of them AND they’re fuckin right?? Life IS what you make it, we ARE the only ones responsible for our wellbeing and WALKING DOES HELP OUR MENTAL HEALTH! Let me explain.
When I first started on my “mental health journey” or whatever the fuck you want to call it, I remember preparing for my first therapy session because I thought being prepared would make me better at lol. I remember thinking “This is going to be really complicated and really hard so the more work I put into it on the front end the easier time I’ll have”(Awe Kass if only you knew lol). I was SO right about the hard and couldn’t have been more wrong about the complicated.
I go to my first session, and get my homework assignment from her and it was a journaling assignment. I went home and did the homework as fast as I could, again thinking that sooner and faster was the best way of going about therapy homework, lol. After my third or fourth time doing this with my homework I started to recognize that I didn’t think the homework was doing anything at all to help me process what was going on in my brain. I talked with my therapist about it and I’ll never forget her telling me “Who are you trying to impress?”.
OOOOF dude did that hit me in the heart because the answer was anyone and everyone who would pay attention to me and in this specific scenario it was my therapist I was trying to impress. She told me that as long as I was trying to impress other people I would never be able to impress myself and would never be able to slow down enough to even be able to recognize myself and what was ACTUALLY going on in my brain not what I WANTED to be going on in my brain. I visibly became defeated and I remember my therapist saying “Trust the process” and I was like wtf does that even mean? The process??? If I know it in my brain it should just be that right? Like if I think to myself “your emotions are important and valid” that should be enough to validate right?
SURE WASNT! BUT it was less complicated than I thought it was. Those kitchy sayings mean nothing if your living life in autopilot, moving quickly and without intention. Intention is the key to everything mental health and the key to ACTUALLY achieving the goals that you’re lookong for. I was never intentionally looking at “Trust the process” sitting with it and recognizing what it actually means. I had to slow down, get back into my body (this was a whole learning process in itself) and intentionally decide to recognize that this shit sucks for one and THEN validate the emotion “I’m feeling frustrated because this isn’t going as fast as I want and that is okay. We’re not in a rush”.
All of this to say, “trust the process”, “Life’s what you make it”, and “Did you try breathing?” are all valid and important and overused. Next time you hear someone say one of these things my challenge to you is to slow down and let that shit hit. Are you trusting yourself and the process of life?? If not, what’s stopping you? Are you making the most of the little moments in your life? If not, what’s stopping you?
Did you try breathing?? If not, oxygen to your brain never hurt anyone. (: