Trust

For my projects, the last two years haven’t been great. I started work on multiple things but for one reason or another they all fizzled out in the end. Some of them with good reason, others maybe not so much. Then towards the end of 2020 it became nigh impossible for me to sit down and get any work done. The corona virus pandemic wasn’t helpful either.

Anytime I tried to get something done anxiety, or fear would build up inside me and paralyze me. I’d quickly escape into watching a movie or mindlessly scrolling Reddit, Twitter, etc. This led to me being lazy with watching my food intake and skipping on workouts more and more. Slowly spiraling deeper into my depression, farther down than I have been in years.

Now, one thing that has kept me sane over the years is keeping a daily journal. For the most part these entries are rather short: what did I do today, did I eat right, did I work out and what is my weight. Most of the times I’d forget to write half of these things down, and almost never remember engage my emotions in these entries. Something I still need to do more.

A week or so into January this year, when making my journal entry on an extra bad day I had a breakthrough though. I dug into this fear & anxiety I’ve been feeling.

I kept writing & writing, a wall of text of questions to myself followed by trying to answer them. Not being satisfied with that answer and questioning again, and again, and again. Why am I anxious? Is it anxiety or fear? Or something else? On and on.

Thats when I uncovered that I’ve lost trust in myself.

Over the years of failing to build things I want to make, not shipping anything, I lost faith that I am actually capable of it.

This sounds bad right? Not trusting myself? Yeah, thats bad. It felt bad realizing that. Yet, to my surprise, I finally understood. I don’t think I have ever fully got the “acceptance is the first step to recovery” saying until that moment.

The moment I arrived at that underlying truth I also got a burst of energy. It felt right. More than any excuse I used to ’explain’ away my behavior before.

I also realized this lack of self-trust has been around for way longer than just the past few years. It reaches all the way to my childhood. Now with this understanding I could start working on it! Everything so far has been a patch-work, but now I have an underlying cause I can work with. And for the past few weeks I have!

I started meditating daily again, my food intake is way more healthy and weight is trending downwards again. Workouts are going great and I’ve been getting small pieces of work done every day. The difference between my mental state from the end of 2020 and right now is night and day. Being able to write this post is another step in the right direction.

I still get bouts of anxiety of course, it’s only been a few weeks and building trust takes time. Yet I’m confident I can do this. If you yourself have trouble doing whatever it is you want to achieve. If you’re procrastinating all the time I can now highly recommend taking a moment and really dig into your emotions. Question them and keep asking until you find an underlying truth. It is hard to explain, but you’ll know it when the answer feels right. It took me several attempts, and years, to find my truth. I hope you can find yours too.