Miscellaneous
Despite this illness, we find the strength to face adversity. I know I wanted to give up, this illness made me believe I wanted to give up, that’s how desperate and vulnerable this illness made me. But I know every minute of every day, we are all surviving, and we remain committed to this illness. We need to maintain our mental strength by regulating our emotions, managing our thoughts and our movements every day. Our mental strength means we don’t feel sorry for ourselves, and we don’t give up, we persist and gradually we become the best and strongest version of our former selves. We need to heal and be at peace. We need to remember; mental strength is a work in progress. When our thoughts are not productive, we need to revert this into positive thoughts. We need to increase our awareness of our thinking habits and catch our negative thoughts early, before they spiral out of control. I know despite everything that happened to me, the loss of movement, the loss of cognitive thinking, I will always be one of the lucky ones. Key takeaways True mental strength becomes apparent amid adversaries We need to do more of whatever makes us happy whilst living with this illness, disregarding what others may think, they don’t see our daily struggles and we need to accept this is our new ME We need to focus on what is still in our control and stop thinking negatively, because otherwise we will have less energy for creative endeavours and other things that truly make us happy Change is now part of living, and we need to accept there are things we can’t change. We need to focus on what is within our control We all have life challenges and we need to remember our circumstances can change, we may get better, our severity may improve and we need to focus on the little things we can now do and the subtle improvements in how we are feeling We need to have realistic goals; change is part of living and our lives have changed. If we start to accept that there are things, we can’t change, we can then focus on the things we can control We can all strengthened our resolve, by journaling, mediating or simply being creative. It can be anything that helps us restore hope We need to start the habit of small ‘wins’ when we move towards realistic goals and along the way we need to try to accomplish one small step towards these goals every day. I know there will always be challenges and life will never be perfect, but we don’t know how far we can go until we get started, until we take the first step. This is our journey unlocking our visibility! Together we can still make a difference. Valuable resources: Action for ME and the NHS Connect with me on Facebook Visit our official website www.jak-group.co.uk With thanks to: Jamie York and Rob Moore Oli Corse (Intro and outro) purple-planet.com (Music) braydesign.co.uk (Darren Bray – Graphics)