Fuck-it List and Other Acts of Letting Go
I explained in an earlier post that I penned, that I had created a ‘Fuck-it List’, as part of the act of letting go; of people, places, things, thoughts and behaviours that were toxic and detrimental to my existence. I’d meant to go back and expand on all of these things but hadn’t done so, as yet. Until this week.
This week, which saw a few of these behaviours re-emerge, as I struggled with physical limitations and feeling compromised. As I struggled with the ensuing depression and feeling sorry for myself because of these limitations. And, as I came to the realization that I needed to re-visit this list in order to move on and let go of the things that had become impediments of some kind or another. So, I sat down and started expanding on this list, and explaining what it meant to me. The following is the list I compiled; a list of things to hold onto, and things to let go of. The advice I gave myself and, a few musings that might be of use to and have some meaning for others out there.
Self-loathing
If you see things in a negative light, you can always find something wrong with yourself and your life. But in the same way, you can always find something right, and good; something beautiful if you look at things from a different perspective. I've worked really hard on self-love but I still have days of feeling sorry for myself and loathing certain aspects of myself; my body, my brain, my character. Those are the days that I let the negative thoughts creep in. The days that I allow myself to entertain that negative self-talk that is so damaging to our pscyhes.
Negative self-talk
As I penned in an earlier post, we are our thoughts. If we think we can’t, we literally can’t. When we switch that perspective, and look at ourselves in a different way or in a different light, then we can achieve anything we truly set our minds to; anything within our abilities, and in many cases, things we didn’t realize we had the ability to do. Take me, for example; I was forty-one years old when I joined the Military. There were no accommodations made for me because of my age; I had to do everything that my twenty-one-year-old comrades did. It was one of the hardest things; the most physically demanding and pscyhologically challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life but I did it – because I believed I could. If I didn’t believe in myself, or told myself I couldn’t do it because of this inner ‘mean girl’ voice, I would never have been able to do it.
Negative people
Some of our negative self-talk comes from the minds and mouths of others. Surrounding ourselves with people who are negative rubs off on us. Their negativity can seep into our own lives, like poisons into soil. If we poison the soil inside our hearts and minds, our thoughts become poisoned in the same way the plants growing in the poisoned soil would. Listening to others’ negative diatribes, forms the same within us. Unless you’re constantly cloaking yourself to protect you from this poison, these negative thoughts will get in, and these energy sucking vampires will bleed you dry of all of your positive energy. Saying ‘fuck-it’ to, and distancing yourself from these people and circumstances replenishes and cleans that energy for you.
Self-harming behaviours
Self-harming behaviours aren’t just things like cutting, using harmful substances, or eating disorders; like bulimia. Sometimes, they’re less obvious and subtler but just as harmful. Oftentimes, they’re even more harmful. Self-harming behaviours can take the form of simple things like, staying up all night watching television instead of getting the proper sleep you need, or eating junk food instead of feeding your body what it needs to be healthy. These behaviours can also manifest themselves as continually making poor relationship choices; knowingly and unconsciously, alike. Continuing a relationship; friendship or with a partner, that is toxic because you are comfortable, or you don’t want to be alone. Or, picking someone to have ‘fun’ with, over waiting for a more fulfilling relationship; undervaluing yourself and allowing others to do the same. In fact, pretty much all of these behaviours stem from you not loving yourself, valuing yourself, respecting yourself or caring for yourself enough. Not to say that occasional casual sex, or eating junk food and staying up late once in a awhile means you don’t love yourself; on the contrary, sometimes it’s healthy and good to ‘treat’ yourself to life’s ‘sugar’ but just as too much actual sugar is detrimental to your physical health and wellness, too much metaphorical ‘sugar’ is detrimental to your mental health and spiritual wellness.
Addictions
I was a smoker for over thirty years. I tried quitting several times throughout my life but it never stuck. The closest I got to quitting for good was during my pregnancies; but I was doing it for someone else, not for me. So, each time the baby was born, I went back to smoking nearly a pack a day. It wasn’t until I was a student in the Mental Health and Addictions program that I was able to quit; using the skills I was learning about recovery and addiction cessation from within the program. I took the skills I was learning and applied them to myself to help me quit smoking. Things like, harm reduction techniques, mindfulness and meditation, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques. Changing my mindset; to help with the psychological dependence and actual, psychological component of the habit of smoking. And, by replacing the cigarettes with an E-cigarette, or vape (gradually cutting out the nicotine, and cutting back on use of the vape), to deal with the physical dependence and physical component of the habit. I’d been thinking of quitting for some time, and had tried replacing smoking with vaping before but it never stuck. I realized it was because I didn’t understand addiction, itself well enough to beat it.
The education I received helped me understand it and to rid myself of this addiction. It helped me become healthier. And, I realized that education is the key to most everything. The key to understanding; hence, the key to conquering. If you understand something, you can see it for what it really is and can see ways of either feeding it or starving it. I saw how this could relate to everything in my life. Educating myself about something or someone; understanding it or them, gave me the ability to see it all more clearly.
Seeing things and people more clearly gave me the ability to either feed them or to starve them. Feed the healthy things in my life; habits, relationships, activities, hobbies, jobs, etc. Or, starve the unhealthy; habits, relationships, activities, hobbies, jobs, etc., as well.
*Note: all addictions are different, and for different for the individual. I don't believe it's as 'easy as this' to enter into recovery or stay in recovery. This is my experience, and mine alone. But it shows that the techniques can work for some, in some cases.
Energy sucking vampires
Taking a look at what I was feeding and what needed starving, I soon realized that one of the unhealthy things that needed starving in my life was those some refer to as, “energy sucking vampires”. This meaning, people who literally drain you or bleed you dry with their negativity and their drama. People, who either always have some kind of drama or who see everything as negative. And those who have such a deep need to be the center of attention, that they will create problems and drama, even where problems and drama don’t exist. They suck you into their dramas by always ‘needing’ you, and by refusing to see the good or positive in people, situations or any facet of their lives. People who outright refuse; whether consciously or unconsciously, to be happy or see the beauty around them. Ungrateful people, who are never satisfied with what they have or can never find gratitude in anything within their existence. These were the people I needed to starve, and the people who I would no longer allow to bleed me dry.
Energy sucking jobs, hobbies and other time-wasting activities
Much like energy sucking vampiristic (I think I made up that word but what the hell) people, there are also things in our lives that suck the life out of us or bleed us dry, as well. Jobs that we get no joy from, or where we are un or underappreciated; or where we are outright harassed. Hobbies or volunteer work that seem like a chore. Things that we do that we don’t have to do but do because we feel like we have to; activities we committed to at one point or another but that either no longer give us joy, or that actually drain us, as well. We hang onto these things out of a false sense of loyalty, or because we think we need them for one reason or another. This is often not true but we sometimes refuse to see that because we often don’t know how to let them go.
I had a few things to let go of, myself. Things that drained my energy or things that didn’t replenish or fulfill me. Things that I didn’t have to have in my life or hold onto for any real reason but that I had done so out of a sense of duty or loyalty from years before, when I had initially said I would do these things. But I wasn’t the person I was then, anymore. I didn’t love these things anymore and I didn’t see a need to continue faking it. Just as, I couldn’t fake the relationships that no longer fit me, I couldn’t keep trying to fit into these activities that I’d outgrown. I had to shift my attitude and allow myself to evolve and let go.
Bad attitudes
I used to have a very bad attitude. When I was first injured, and was unable to do my job; and then when I was ousted for speaking up about the unspeakable things that I’d been subjected to, I was very dark and I hated everything and everyone. And, it showed in my attitude. What I didn’t realize was that I was an energy sucking vampire, myself. And, that I was responsible for my own happiness as much as I was for my own shit and shitty attitude. I was responsible for the way I felt, and I felt shitty.
Feeling shitty
So, I shifted my attitude to allow me to see things more positively and allow me to appreciate what I had, instead of longing for what I thought I deserved; or feeling like I’d never be happy. And, an amazing thing happened, when I started being grateful; I started living a life of abundance and happiness. I was suddenly surrounded by beauty. Not because of the whole, “law of attraction”, idea – that if you want something, you tell the universe you want it and you get it, but because what you put out into the universe, you get back. If you see what you have as abundance, you live a life of abundance. If you see something as beautiful, you are suddenly surrounded by beautiful things. If you allow yourself moments of happiness, suddenly you’re happy. What you feel is a result of how you see things. How you see things, and how you react to them changes how you act.
Acting shitty
How you react to your circumstances; how you act, determines how your life will be. Acting shitty, being ungrateful and refusing to see things from a positive perspective and behaving in such a way that makes you happy, changes how you feel. It’s a cycle. Positive thoughts create positive behaviour, positive behaviour creates positive actions, positive actions give you a positive environment. Positive environment creates a positive and happy life. Shitty attitude and shitty actions means crappy life; crappy relationships and settling for less than you deserve.
Crappy relationships and settling
After spending a fair chunk of time alone, working on me, I learned that crappy relationships and settling for less than you deserve are the result of not loving yourself enough. You allow people to give you less than you deserve and to treat you like shit because you either don’t believe in yourself enough to demand more from them, or you settle because you’re afraid of being alone. Being alone is terrifying at first, I’m not going to lie and say it’s not. But being alone is, from my experience, is the very best way of getting to know yourself, learning to love yourself and learning to not settle for crappy relationships. To not allow others to treat you like shit. Because, unless you really know and love yourself; unless you know your true value, people who treat you like shit affect how you feel about yourself.
If you feel like you deserve less, you will accept less. If you feel like you deserve better, you will not settle; you’ll wait for better, or be better, yourself. Part of the reason that we undervalue ourselves, or that we settle for less than we deserve, is because we see ourselves through past mirrors. Mirrors reflecting who we’ve been, where we’ve been, who we’ve loved, what we’ve done and what we’ve accepted or settled for in the past.
Living in the past
The problem with living in the past, is that we all change and grow. We all evolve. Twenty-year-old me and forty-year-old me are completely different people with completely different needs. We have a completely different set of values, a different outlook on life and different future goals. We have different experiences and different outlooks resulting from these experiences. We look at life from a completely different perspective.
Looking at this idea from a different perspective now, I see that I wouldn’t expect my twenty-eight-year-old daughter to have the same perspective that I do about life. I wouldn’t expect her to be at the same level of growth or evolution as I am; I mean, she probably is but she’s pretty exceptional, as are all of my children. But I wouldn’t expect her to be where I am at. I would give her some leeway; in that she is twenty years younger than I am. That being the case, I should do the same for myself, as well.
The twenty-eight-year-old me, and whatever mistakes I made, or lessons I learned would respond differently to situations than I would now. I need to acknowledge this, and I need to acknowledge the lessons both twenty-eight-year-old me learned, as well as those forty-nine-year-old me learned. And I need to cut myself some slack by recognizing that, even though I did something negative or acted shitty when I was in my twenties, doesn’t mean I’m the same person now, in my forties.
Doesn’t mean I haven’t paid for it or learned from it. Who I was then has no bearing on who I am now, other than that I am who I am because of what twenty something year old me, and thirty something year old me, etc. learned. So, I shouldn’t dwell on past lessons, relationships, experiences or whatever else I’m dwelling on from years gone by. And I shouldn’t yearn for past relationships or experiences either, as even though they may seem exciting or attractive to me because of how they made me feel at that time, doesn't mean they will feel the same way to forty something year old me, as they did to twenty something year old me, anyway.
Living in the future
Just as living in the past is counterintuitive to today’s happiness, so is living in the future. Just as you will never feel what twenty-year-old you felt ever again, you don’t know what sixty-year-old you will feel either. There is no point in trying to put forty-year-old you into sixty-year-old you’s life. It’s not happened yet. You’ve not evolved to that point yet. What you may want now, you may not want then anyway. And, while you’re dreaming about twenty years from now, you’re wasting twenty years of your life by not living in the now. By not being forty-year-old you; happy where you are, with what you have and living and enjoying it while you have it, you’re wasting precious time that sixty-year-old will later regret having missed out on.
So, live for the now; see the beauty that exists all around you and appreciate it for what it is. Be grateful for what you have and in doing so, live a life of abundance. Get to know yourself, love yourself and learn your value. Value yourself enough to hold onto all that is good and of value, and that brings peace, love and joy to your life; and let go of those that don’t. Stop settling; for relationships, jobs, experiences and anything that doesn’t fulfill you or bring the same joy.
Don’t covet others’ lives; live your own, appreciate your own and see the beauty and abundance that exists within your own. And say ‘Fuck-it’ to anything that doesn’t fit you. To anything that doesn’t bring you all of these good things that you deserve out of life. Be grateful. Realize that others covet something about your life; your home, family, kids, car, hair, body, education, beauty, intelligence, relationships, your privilege. Don’t take short cuts, live your life’s journey via the scenic route.
Allow yourself to be happy and realize that happiness exists on that scenic route; within the moments of peace, joy and happiness. Stop being uncomfortable and unwell, unhappy, ungrateful and uninspired.
As I said earlier, it’s easier to stay where it’s comfortable than it is to venture out and try to find what 'happy' really looks like, what 'well' looks like. It seems that it will take too much work to be happy and well – but what people don’t realize, is that it actually takes more energy and more work to be unhappy and unwell.
Stop waiting for your life to begin.
Live for the now, because that is truly all that exists.
And, say Fuck-it to all of the things that prevent you from doing so.