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I am an entrepreneur. I can’t imagine my life without my business and without my writing. It is a huge part of me and always has been. When I decided in June that I needed to change my business path, I knew that the path was going to be difficult. I owned BeYOUtiful Box for 3 years when I decided that it was time to let go. It hurt deeply because I knew (and still do) that women needed what I was doing. But it just wasn’t working and my business was beginning to stress me out in ways that I didn’t expect it to.
Creative Purpose was born. I think it was always in the back of my head because, from the time I was little, I wanted to write. I wanted to get paid to write. I always had a dream of being the President’s speechwriter. I focused on business. I began to blog only about business and threw my mental health to the side because business was an important part of my life. I needed to feel as if I could succeed. I needed to know that I was and am good at what I do. I pushed and pushed for 5 months and began to feel a lack of passion. Maybe a lack of passion is the wrong way to put it.
I began to question myself, question my business, and question my skills. I began to wonder if I was meant to be writing. I could feel my mental health slipping. Once you know what the dark feels like, you can feel when it begins to take over. In the past few weeks, I knew that something has needed to change. I needed to change where I was focusing on.
2019 was a year filled with many emotions. It was filled with moments of darkness that I haven’t had for a while. I was unprepared for this journey to go deeper into my healing. I wasn’t ready but the Universe doesn’t care if you are ready or not. I knew that I would need to heal more and I was pushing it off. I am terrified of the things that are going to come up and that I will have to work through but that is what healing is all about. It is messy, chaotic, broken, and powerful.
I am as ready as I will be to begin my deeper journey to healing within and I want to share with you a few things that I will be doing in 2020 (some I have already started) to help me along my journey. I have been working on creating a game plan for what I need to do to embrace this change. To welcome the messiness into my life so that I can figure out who I am and my place in this world.
6 THINGS I AM DOING TO FOCUS ON MY MENTAL HEALTH IN 2020
Journaling. I am super excited to have partnered with Divethru. A newer journaling app. I will be showcasing them more in a couple of weeks but I have already started their journaling processes. This is allowing me to go deeper with myself. I am lucky enough that they have offered my readers a FREE 30-day access code with the code, creativepurpose30. Watch for my blog posts that I will be digging even deeper into what they offer and how it is changing the way that I journal. I truly believe in the power of journaling. It helps me to get out of my head and to focus on what I need to focus on in the present moment.
Life Design 101. I am incredibly lucky to be surrounded by powerful and amazing women. Women that know how to empower those around them and who make it their purpose in life to create and spread positivity and awesomeness. I will be completing Tara Hullah’s 8-week course on living your purpose and owning your values for clarity, manifesting, and miracles. I am ready to expand and grow and this will allow me to focus on all of that. Tara is a beautiful human and I am excited to explore deep within myself all of the necessary changes to allow myself to grow and heal.
Self-care days. If you don’t know me then this will be the first time you are hearing me say this. I know that there are so many people out there who believe that self-care just doesn’t work. That self-care alone isn’t what we need. And maybe that is true. BUT let me tell you that self-care changed my life. I was a woman who was always putting myself last. Believing that as a woman, a wife, and a mom that my needs came after everyone else was dealt with. That meant that at the end of the day, I was drained. There was nothing left for me. I gave all of me to those around me. How unfair was that?
The thing I always remind women is that self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate. You don’t need to do a big fancy spa day. You don’t need to leave your house for hours at a time. You just need to make a conscious decision to do something for YOURSELF. Whether that means taking a shower or not take a shower and go to bed early. Whether that means to curl up and read a book. Whether that means leaving your house to go sit at a coffee shop and just stare quietly into the surroundings. Self-care changed how I viewed myself. It reminded me that I was worthy of living a life that I wanted to. It reminded me that I was worthy of taking care of myself. Self-care lead me to begin falling in love with who I was in the moment. I wasn’t running ragged anymore. I began to notice when I needed to focus on myself because I was running or getting close to running on empty.
Be easy on yourself. Aim for a small act of self-care weekly at the beginning. Schedule it in. I will be scheduling mine in so that I remind myself that I am serious about taking care of myself.
Yoga. I absolutely love doing yoga. Over the past few months, I was doing a habit tracker and I was pushing myself over my limit. When I would look and notice that my yoga was falling behind, I would feel guilty and belittle myself because I couldn’t even keep up with an activity that I loved. I am now changing my focus. I want to do yoga because I love it and because it makes me feel good. I want to do yoga because it enhances my creativity and allows my body to just flow and live in the moment. I don’t want to push myself to do it because I should. That is when I fight it. I want to go into my yoga practice with an open mind and a happy heart.
More date nights with my husband. Now, this may be a hard truth for some but I know that I need to admit it. I have been putting my marriage on the back burner. I have been waiting for him to woo me when it should go both ways. In April 2020, we will be married for 14 years and I want to continue to be married. That means that it is time that I put my pride aside and say yes. Yes to putting our marriage first. Yes to late-night movies after the kids are sleeping so that we can spend time together. We have both changed so much over the 14 years of being together that we need to reconnect. Put the kids aside for 1 or 2 nights a month and focus on us. Bring back dating and romance.
You may be wondering how this last one helps my mental health. A healthy marriage means a healthy relationship with my husband and myself. It means that my kids see a healthy relationship. It means that I am sending love to him and getting love in return. It means that I am falling more and more in love with the husband that I have and growing stronger as a unit. It means that I will have a safe place to land when the darkness will creep in because I know that it will. It will allow me to be strong on my own but also be as strong as a team. Marriage isn’t easy. Marriage is waking up every day next to someone you fell in love with and wanting to continue to do so in the years to come.
Using my planner. I am a HUGE lover of planners and notebooks. But I go in waves. I use them consistently for a month and then fall behind and don’t use it again for 2 months and wonder why I felt so lost in those months. I want to be consistent. I want to be intentional with my time. I want to have my days planned but also be able to have the freedom that I want and need as an entrepreneur and mom. I want to know what I am spending my time on. I vow to use my planners more consistently so that I don’t feel lost and confused. I want to make my life easier to manage and have a place where I keep everything I need to know in one place. That includes meal planning, networking, blog posts, and everything else.
I am ready to begin 2020 strong. Ready to look back on 2019 and thank it for its lessons. I am taking control of my mental health beginning now and am ready to begin the healing journey. I will be focusing my blog on healing again as well. I am ready to commit to myself.
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