BUILD A LIFE YOU ACTUALLY ENJOY
Steeling herself, my therapist removed her glasses, her expression serious yet strangely compassionate. ‘I'm about to say something that might be tough to hear,' she began, her words hanging heavy in the air. ‘‘You need to get a life”
A nervous chuckle slipped from lips, mingling with the tension that rested somewhere between us. Her expression remained staunch, lips pressed tight, shoulders shrugging matter-of-factly. "I do have a life," I replied. "I'm in school, I work, I have a boyfriend... I have a life."
She scribbled in her notepad before clasping her hands together and resting them on her lips. "You hate your job, school stresses you out, and you don’t prioritize or maintain your passions or interests. When you don’t have a life for yourself, you put extra stress on relationships or people to fill in those gaps."
"Why are you saying this to me?" I replied, feeling a little defensive.
"You have to actively participate in building the life you want," she stated, her tone softer. "Centering it around relationships and hobbies you don’t really keep up with will not give you the life you have expressed to me that you want to have."
Having my therapist tell me I needed to get some business about myself was both humbling and a bit annoying. After some self-reflection and skipping a couple of sessions, I found that she wasn't totally wrong. My relationship with God was inconsistent, the relationship I was in had become the center of all my attention, I wasn’t creating, wasn’t consistent in taking care of my health, and the only thing I looked forward to was getting wine drunk with Free and cuddling with Demarcus (my very perfect dog) on weekends. When I think about how much idle time I had then and what I filled it with, it was no wonder I was easily distracted, struggling with anxiety and comparison, struggling to find joy in life, and fighting so hard to keep a relationship both of us knew would never work. I had made the most interesting thing about me my relationship with somebody else, and fighting to keep it alive became my only passion. I had never put so much effort into creating my own life. For 18 years, my parents did it for me; for the next four, college did it for me. Then I was spit out into adulthood, finally having full autonomy to create the life I wanted, and I didn’t pay enough attention to myself to know what I wanted, let alone what I needed.
CHOOSING SLOWNESS ALLOWED ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO FOSTER A BETTER RELATIONSHIP WITH MYSELF, WHICH THEN IMPACTED HOW I POURED INTO MY OWN LIFE.
Our values, much like our beliefs, add so much color to our lives. If intimacy and connection is a core value, your life could be filled with worthwhile relationships, or you may sacrifice important things for the sake of intimacy and connection. If adventure and spontaneity are core values, you may be a nomad who travels here and there or puts your life on the line for a little bit of fun. Values drive how and why we create the lives we actively live in. Assessing my decisions and my values was the first step in creating a life I wanted to be a part of. It wasn’t enough to settle on "That’s just how I am" or "That’s how I’ve always done things" anymore. So, I started with the following journal prompts/thought questions:
What does a full life mean to me?
Who am I living my life for?
Where do I find meaning when everything is going wrong?
What parts of myself am I not willing to compromise on?
What parts of myself am I sacrificing? And for what reason?
Am I ready and willing to define my life through the hands of Jesus?
These questions helped me identify my roots, my boundaries, what I am willing and unwilling to lose, and who I am truly living my life for. I found that spirituality is not something I am willing to compromise on anymore. I also learned that my desire for love and relationship caused me to sacrifice parts of myself and my life that were important. The key point of this was that I learned. I learned more of what I needed, more of what I had an abundance of, and more of what I was still lacking. In order for me to create a life I wanted, I had to learn more about who I was, what I valued, and what brought meaning into my life.
Spirituality, hobbies, exercise, quality sleep, passion projects, eating real food, and drinking water became non-negotiable.
There have been so many times in my adult life that I didn’t eat any food until 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. In some moments, I would be floating through my days so aimlessly that I’d forget to drink any water until right before bed. I would cycle between working out twice a month to daily. I lacked the discipline and the care for myself to be consistent for my body and my mind. I was in a difficult relationship with myself, struggling to trust that I would be different this time, that I was going to find myself worthy of the effort. In all that struggling, I learned that winging it wasn’t sustainable. If I didn’t make moving my body a priority, it wouldn’t be. If I didn’t make eating real whole foods a priority, my mental and physical health would suffer. If I didn’t take the time to try new things and figure out what I actually found enjoyment in, then my life would only be a fraction of what God intended for me.
When I started thinking of reading my Bible like brushing my teeth, eating balanced meals like taking a shower, and exercising like wiping my butt after I poop, something shifted. I already had built-in non-negotiables in my life based on how I was raised and what I learned growing up. As an adult, I can add more things to that list. Some of my new non-negotiables looked like this:
Communing with God each day through scripture, prayer, or sermon
Balanced meals throughout the day
Drink water
Move your body
Bedtime by 10:30 p.m.
Do something creative
Every day won’t be perfect. Some days, moving my body meant taking the stairs instead of the elevator or parking in the back so I could get extra steps in. Sometimes, prayers were just thank-yous and I love yous. The point was that I was going to make the effort. I was going to make the time and take the time to assess the value and meaning that was being reflected in my life.
THE LIFE I WANTED WAS SOMETHING THAT I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO ACTIVELY CHOOSE AND PURSUE DAILY.
In my relationship before I began dating my husband, right after he asked me to be his girlfriend, I felt like God was telling me that He had more in store for me. Bargaining with Him I told Him that I didn’t need more or want more, I just wanted my partner at the time, to love me back. It was simple in my mind. I wasn’t looking to take up too much space, not really desiring much, just a little bit to sustain me. I can’t tell if it was fear or insecurity that left me arguing with God, but now on the other side of obedience I have learned that what I want for myself and what I want for my life is crumbs in comparison to what God wants and desires for me. When considering the life I wanted, making God the focal point has allowed for so much discovery and love to flow in and out of my life.
In your discovery of yourself and what you value I urge you to begin with God.
