mental health – Seclusion 101 with AnneMarie

I’m back! It has been a few days since I have been on here, but fortunately it is not because I fell off of my Health & Fitness journey. I have just been rather busy. 🙄

First off, it has been mostly beautiful weather here so I have been outside cleaning up the yard and getting ready for summer. Secondly, we took a short trip up north to visit son Dan and family – and to help them prepare for granddaughter Gabby’s graduation party I did a lot of baking (while Dan was out shopping for a lot of fresh fruit to serve with said baking.) Third, I have been working really diligently to stay on course with my health and fitness program.

Speaking of health and fitness… Physically things have been going well. I did faceplant on our cement patio (chasing Molly) a few days ago. My skin has mostly grown back but my glasses were a write off – hence the new look.

Mentally and emotionally, I am crushing it. I am reading “Be Your Future Self Now” by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It is one of those works that is just brilliant. There is so much wisdom to be found in every chapter. One such example “We all have a future ahead of us. In 10 years, 20 years, we will become our future selves. The question is: Who will your future self be?

If I had stayed the course fifteen months ago, my future self would have been pretty pathetic. Right now, I would be pretty pathetic – and miserable to boot. I am so grateful that I began making better choices last February. I am reaping the rewards now and loving it! 💖

I have started a timeline for becoming my future self. I have already reached my first goal – to be calm and confident. There’s always room for improvement (and I intend to keep working on it) but I have to say, I crushed it this weekend. My next goal is to be healthy, strong, and fit by August 11th. I am working hard to get there! Every goal met is encouragement to set more and to improve further on the ones I reach. Exciting stuff!

That’s about where I am at these days. We were not at Dan and Amanda’s for long this weekend, but husband Dan did manage to get a few cute photos of grandson Lucas hanging out with Molly. Molly was amazing this weekend. She even spent a fair amount of time strolling around leashless which was pretty cool to see. She was SO happy loping around free and easy.

That’s it for today. I hope everyone is keeping well. Take care and have a great rest of the day! 🌞💞

It is Day 23 of my June ‘Accentuate the Positive’ challenge and I have decided to pay tribute to memories. This one is a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole for me, so hopefully it will be a positive experience for anyone who chooses to join me today. 🙃

I have never been one to dwell on the past. At first, it was not a conscious decision. I was focussed on dealing with the present and looking forward to the future. 🌞 After a brutally painful period in my life, I did make a very conscious decision to shut the door on my memory banks and slap a big old lock on them. If a moment from the past happened to sneak through, it was nothing more than a snapshot in someone else’s photo album. I would not relate to it personally.

I was perfectly happy to live in this delusional little headspace, where my past did not exist. I had no desire to relive my past through painful memories, and bizarrely, the best memories from my past were the ones that were most painful for me to face.

Ultimately, this decision to block my past became problematic. I had a tendency to react to triggers that seemingly came out of nowhere – like the time a business consultant snapped his fingers in my face. He was lucky that he got out of my office while he still had fingers! There were other times, many times, when I just drew a blank when someone mentioned the past, even the recent past – like the day Dan and I ran into his boss. They started talking about the time they had been at one of our local hospitals. I could not remember when or why Dan would have been at the hospital. It was only when Dan’s boss turned to me and asked how I was doing now, that I realized that Dan had been at the hospital to be with me. I had been in the hospital with pneumonia/empyema for a solid month a couple of years earlier and I had totally forgotten!

In the security of my relationship with Dan, and the relative well-being of my life in general, I decided it was time to crack the locks on my memory banks and have a peek around. At first, there was a whole lot of ugly memories that burst out. I wasn’t surprised, and I wasn’t that bothered by this. I was expecting them. I did not find a lot of warm and fuzzy memories. I was not expecting to and quite frankly, I was terrified of finding any.

Lately, I have been sorting through our basement and closets. I found a couple of boxes of older photos. I started to go through them and discovered that I have finally reached a point in my life where I am ready to look for the positive anywhere and everywhere – even in my past.

So, without further ado, or rambling on as the case may be, I invite you to browse through a few positively good memories with me. 💞