Campaign of Misery

I am halfway through a podcast episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty. His guest speaker is Mel Robbins and they are talking about how she has been engaging in her own ‘campaign of misery‘ for 50 years.

I loved how Mel mentioned that she is a positive & optimistic person but if you put a speaker on her head and broadcast the things she said to herself, people would get her checked into a hospital.

This totally resonated with me, because I believe that I am a pretty positive person on the outside, but the thoughts that run through my head about myself are not very pretty. This was made pretty apparent when my psychologist gave me a homework to monitor & write down my daily thoughts – an exercise that initially made me feel even more miserable and ramped up my anxiety.

Boy, I am really the president of my very own campaign of misery.

“This is terrible. I have really nasty thoughts.”

Melissa Raffur

Another thing that resonated was when they talked about life not being binary – it is not 1 or 0.
Most of the time we think we need to make a choice.
You either gonna be a hustler or be peaceful
Either a winner or a loser.
You either gonna be filled with wisdom & zen or be materialistic.

This is exactly what I have been struggling with.

Through my BodyTalk (which reminds me, I want to go back & reflect on my sessions) & psychologist sessions, I have realized that I have been spending most of my life looking at myself as only able to be on either extremes.

I am either lazy or productive.
Either a good wife/mother/sister/friend/business leader or a bad one.

I struggle in finding the middle ground.

Fuhhh, this post got really heavy, huh?

This is just me lately I guess – been doing a lot of self reflection when I can (there are a lot of moments I really, really cannot a.k.a spiral).

Although I realise (and I hope many more people do) that depression goes deeper than this – in the words of the sister, “It’s literally a chemical thing kan.”, I believe there are certain things I can try to do besides the drugs to help me live with it.

So, gotta be more aware of this campaign of misery I am championing & try to not give it so much power.

xoxo