Hello and welcome! I hope it’s been a good week for you. If you have been around here for awhile, you probably get that I am a very schedule/routine oriented person. If I get thrown out of my routine I struggle. I worry. I get anxious. Part of that is because of my disability, and all the mental planning that goes into my daily activities because it has to. That’s how I function. That’s how I stay physically safe when things are well thought out. The other part, I guess, is it is just what I enjoy. Maybe because I have to? Who knows?
I often assume that I don’t have to state the obvious when I am writing about ways that I like to stay positive in the face of adversity. Living with Muscular Dystrophy is daunting. Everything I do physically feels hard. My muscles are very weak, and it affects everything I do. Not looking for pity, just understanding. I’ve learned to live with it. It’s all I have ever known. I get frustrated sometimes when I think about how most people don’t understand. I try not to get caught up in those feelings because they can take over and it leads to a lot of negativity, which I don’t want. It’s not helpful in any way. Not to me or those in my life. I think we all dread that feeling of not being understood.
Focusing on things that improve my quality of life and create happiness helps tremendously. Without that and my faith, I’d surely be sinking. It’s been a long road. Part of the way that I do that is focused discipline. Routine is key. Whether it be my workouts that I am devoted to and rarely miss, or my weekly blog posts that have been consistent for about two years now, or my routine with keeping up with household tasks. Those things are helpful to my physical and mental wellbeing.
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I’m driven by not only the good feeling I get from having focused discipline, but also by others I know who do the same thing. My husband, a 9 time marathon finisher, 3 of those completed pushing me across the finish line in my duo bike, and our last marathon time qualified him for the Boston Marathon for the 3rd time (yes, I am proud of him!), and my two sons, both distance runners, have all been extremely motivating to me. Living with them, seeing what they do regularly motivates the heck out of me! I want to be better because of them, for them. For me.
I think that practicing self-discipline regularly equals self- respect. I respect myself enough to know that by being disciplined, I’m respecting the abilities I’ve been given. I’m using what I have. And the thing I’ve learned is there’s always a little bit more than what you think you have left in the tank. You have to work really hard for it, but it’s in you.
Of course there are bad days, maybe even a bad week, months, years, but you don’t have to get stuck there and stay forever. Let it pass through and then get back up again. It’s never too late to get back up. You are worth it. Your life is worth it. It has purpose. Find it, use it to help others. That is what it’s all about.
We all have that voice inside of us. The one that whispers, “I can’t do it”. Maybe that’s true sometimes, of course it is, but a lot of the time it’s not. Much of my day is a battle between my will and my weakness. My will to do things is strong, my weakness fights me every step of the way. Literally. I challenge my weakness regularly. I focus. For example, I started small, telling myself things like, yes I am going to lift that laundry basket up and dump it on the bed. I focus and tell myself I’m going to do it. It may not be pretty, but most of the time I get it done. Have I fallen and failed? Yes. Many times! I do think, actually I know through practicing it, that our minds are extremely powerful, and can help us achieve things we thought we couldn’t do.
Focused discipline takes humble courage, it takes lots of practice. Viewing it as a tool that can make your life easier, and help you achieve things you never thought you might, makes it all worth while. Start small, with one thing, and then build on it little by little. Soon, you will find your dedication not only improves your life, but the lives of those around you too. Ok, pep talk over. Until next week.💚
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