Finding Solid Ground

There’s a lot to be said for patience but there’s a lot to be said for boundaries as well. Making boundaries with yourself about how long you will wait for something and how long you will endure something is essential to good mental health. Learning how to accept where you’re at is equally as important. Learning to understand that some things will never stop on their own and there’s no way for you to stop them either is another equally as important a step toward good mental health. There’s so much we have no control over. There are things we will never know. Focusing all of your time on trying to figure them out is an exhausting endeavor. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re not here to be so caught up in our thoughts and beliefs that we can no longer move on from things in a healthy manner when we need to. Sometimes it’s not possible to walk away from the situation…that is a reality. But in that reality you can take the measures that you need to take care of yourself. Sometimes those things can be as seemingly small as learning how to be unaffected by the happenings around you. Of course, we all know that this is an in reality a difficult task for almost everyone… especially those people that tell you to ‘just do it’ with a wave of their hand, as though it were easy. But being truly unaffected by other peoples words, feelings and actions can only be done by learning Self-Love. I do not mean a perfect Self-Love. Many of us have trauma in our background and simple things like a walk outdoors on a daily basis can be part of Self-Love. Things like having meals at or close to appointed times every day, or like having a set bedtime. Things like caring for your physical body…it’s hygiene, it’s health, and it’s joy. Things like taking yourself seriously when you say you’re going to do something and then following through. Because there will always be difficulties somewhere in our environment, and many times we may have no control over it, so making sure that we are taking care of ourselves properly becomes absolutely essential. Do what you can to affect your own life for the better, and when you hit solid blocks, focus on taking care of yourself instead and releasing and changing direction. Be fluid like the rain finding grooves in the Earth. Be flexible like the trees bending in the wind. Be the Phoenix who is born again after the fires burned it down. Be like the mountain that stands tall as a refuge in extreme flooding. Listen to your beating Heart and find your core and anchor there, in your Heart, in your thoughts and in your actions. Whether your environment has any love for you or not, make sure that you have it for yourself.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Renjith Tomy Pkm