#2 I’ve been there and I’ve done that…

I know what it feels like being at the lowest points of life. That's where I spent a lot of my growing up - until I didn't anymore. What changed?

So, who am I?

How can I have the balls to sit here and tell you how to live your life and expect you to trust me and follow it?

I don’t have the balls to do it.

But I do expect you to trust me.

This took a lot of courage to finding my way out of my own comfort zone.

But deep down, I knew what my goals with this was.

I knew my why.

Why I wanted to do it.

And that is, to show you how great life can be.

To show everyone that wants to, how to make the most out of the very limited time we get to live.

 

I grew up with lots of “whys” and “whats”.

Am I good enough?

What am I doing wrong?

What is the point in life?

There must be more in life.

Why do I behave the way I do?

What is wrong with me?

 

In elementary school, I was the quiet kid.

I know they’re being made fun of nowadays and memes floating around everywhere.

But that was me.

I didn’t really feel like I belonged.

Everyone else was happy and engaging in conversations left, right and center.

Except me.

I stood in my little corner and sort of waited for the days to pass by.

 

After school I went home and did my own thing, studying, playing video games, etc.

I got asked a lot of times to go out with the others on the evenings, but I decided to stay home since I didn’t really feel like I fit in.

This was the beginning of my anxiety.

Because I didn’t talk to people, I got even more afraid to talk to new people.

Every time I was going to do something new or meet new people, my anxiety started kicking in.

Every time something unplanned or unexpected happened, my anxiety kicked in.

Every time I found myself in the middle of a spotlight, getting all the attention, my anxiety kicked in.

 

This behavior followed me throughout high school and even in my early adult life.

I asked myself plenty of times, what is wrong with me?

Why do I feel this way, when instead I should be happy and enjoying everything?

I started feeling really depressed from it.

I didn’t want to hang out with my friends.

I always found excuses as to why I was unavailable on that day.

Even the video games I used to play, didn’t satisfy me any longer.

I didn’t get enough quality sleep and got tired all the time.

I had no energy to do anything.

 

It started looking like a never-ending loop.

A very dark and sad loop of negativity.

The loop seemed to get further and further away from dissolving.

And I felt worse and worse as time passed by.

I spent countless of hours on social media and watching movies online even though I didn’t really want to.

It allowed me to think about something else.

It felt like a safe place.

It tricked my brain into thinking I was doing okay.

But in reality, I just postponed my problems and stacked them to an even larger pile.

I didn’t realize it then because it felt like the only meaningful thing to me in life.

 

I felt alone.

Like no one was around me that could understand what was going on.

No one to help me.

Because, on the outside, I seemed to be doing fine.

It was difficult to notice how I was actually feeling.

I hid it extremely well, even to myself sometimes.

And occasionally, I felt all right, but my problems very much still existed.

 

With all this going on, it was hard for me to see the light.

To see how great life can be.

 

I knew I had to do something, to find a way out of this loop.

I had enough of being negative and tired all the time and I was over it.

I convinced myself to go to a therapist and I did.

We discussed a lot of things like they usually do.

I got introduced to cognitive therapy treatment and I finished it.

Weeks went by and I felt it didn’t really help me out.

We talked even more and landed on the topic that a lot of people are having the same issues.

In fact, almost 1/10 of people have some sort of anxiety or feeling depressed.

That’s a lot of people if you think about it.

I, for once, felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.

A lot of other people had the same issues, and it was a big problem globally.

I was not alone.

 

I ended my therapy sessions, without anything really changing, except one thing.

I started seeing light in the tunnel.

 

That’s when my life started turning around for the better.

I got waken up.

I started taking control of myself.

I started liking myself and all the differences I had from the rest of society.

I started feeling like I did in fact belong here, but in a different way than I previously had thought.

I decided that my life was going to be worth living.

 

What was my turning point?

What made me realize that I needed to change things up?

 

Funnily enough, it was a social media video, making it clear to the audience how little time we have left to live.

He showed me that we live on average 30,000 days.

I was 19 at the time and that meant about 7,000 of those days had already passed by.

That made me stress out to the point where I finally realized, I don’t have very much time to live.

That also meant people older than 19 had even less time, people like my parents and grandparents.

And I thought, what am I doing with my life?

Why the heck am I caring so much about what others think.

Why am I doing everything that I am doing if it doesn’t make me happy?

I promised myself to always do what’s best for me no matter what others thought.

 

And that my friends, was the starting point in my journey.

I got woken up for real by the scary fact that I was wasting life away.

 

Now it’s time for you to wake up and it’s time for you to realize how great you can live life.

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