Mindset: Positive V's Negative

I'm going to start this blog with something very honest. After what happened New Years Eve and my prognosis, it took me to probably the beginning of April to stop thinking that it would've been better, for me, if I died or if I was still in a coma. When you aren't living, managing the day to day, you don't have to focus on trying to get yourself better, daily. Every day it's a constant battle. Participating in a type of therapy that could help me. That research has shown is good for nerves, your brain etc.

I don't feel like that all the time now but there are definitely still days where I feel like I can't carry on. Moments where you want everything to just stop. Where you don't want to keep trying. But that's what they are. Moments. They don't last and then the positive side of me comes out again. It's okay to have those moments, as long as they are just short spaces of time. No one should expect you to be a high bundle of joy always. I feel that thats unnatural. Especially after everything. No one realises how hard it is, just to be a functioning person.

The things that get me out of those moments are having people saying to me that I am a positive influence and I seem to be a positive person but for the majority of time, at the moment, is a big front.

I have learnt to put on a front from a very young age. Ever since my mum got cancer when I was 13, how you were coping and how you felt didn't really matter. You had to learn to be strong and keep it all inside. I suppose that's helped me keep going. If my mum can go 13 years being ill with cancer because of how strong she was, then I can continue. I remember when I did her make up in the chapel of rest that I said how so proud of her I was, of how she combatted the illness for such a long time, I hope she's proud of how I am coping with what I'm going through.

I know now, that more than ever, it is all about having a good mindset to work with.

Anyone can get through anything if they believe they can. At the moment my mindset varies daily but for the majority of the time I believe that I will be like I was last year. Working, happy, strong, physically fit and didn't have any worries because I believed that everything is temporary and I hope that the way I am right now is temporary.

I have to keep remembering that I am the only one in charge of how I feel. It can always be changed. The days where I don't do the things that have been proven to help you have a more positive mindset, I don't. Some days I really have to motivate myself to do those things. Like visualise, perform affirmations, read personal development books, go through a gratitude list and doing this blogging, putting out there how I am feeling and what I'm thinking. I want people to read that it's okay to feel like it's never going to get better, and you want to just give up but just as long as they are moments.

I want to be happy with the "right now" not chasing something. I feel like at the moment I'm chasing a new start all the time. Discharging myself from hospital, moving from Austria back home, having the surgery and now going to Australia. I know it's only been eight months but the eight months have felt like eight years. I know I will look back on my life a year from now and be so pleased with what I've achieved but there's no point in looking to the future or the past, I have to concentrate on the "right now".

This week I cancelled my leaving do. I have ignored for months the fact that I'm not good any more with big loud social situations that I have tried so hard to ignore because that was me last year. It is common for people that experience head injuries to not like loud music and lots of people but it's not really that for me. Is the fact that I have to raise my voice when I speak to people and it becomes so hard. When I raise my voice the muscles in my throat have to try harder and I become more slurred, like I'm drunk. That combined with struggling with my balance, my right arm that at the moment kind of just hangs there. These things probably appear much worse to me than other people, which is something I need to work on.

I just have to keep thinking it's going to get better but its going to take time and effort. That's the same for everything and everybody. Nothing changes overnight and nothing is easy. If you want something to change you have to put the effort in. If youre not willing to do that it wont change.

So I will continue to put the effort in.