When you stop and breathe you are taking back the control over the chaos...you have to stop and think about what you are doing. You have to control your body with your mind...you are lost in the action of breathing deeply...controlling the action by breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Concentrating on how your stomach inflates and deflates with every breath by placing your hand on your diaphragm and feeling the chaos leave your body.
Simple right?! But for me, when that anxiety and chaos start to seep in...I just stop breathing...my chest tightens...my stomach flip flops...and my head starts to spin. Mainly I am searching my brain for a solution to my problem but what I am really doing is mixing it up like a scrambled egg. Things start to look bleak...it feels as though this is the end and I am never going to recover from whatever it is that the universe has put on my plate.
So when the chaos and bumps started these last few weeks....I just stopped! I stopped breathing...stopped thinking...stopped trying...and stopped being the person I had become. I am down to 2 workouts a week, I am not communicating with the people I need to be and I am not trying to pick myself up and move forward past the chaos.
I was really thrown off course with all the crap that was thrown at me at once...then my emotional state of mind was thrown off when I felt like I was in high school again because of another person. I thought I was done with feeling like I was being judged by the "cool kids" but I guess not! All the feelings I was afraid of coming out when I trusted this person came out. I thought she was someone who was sincere and trustworthy but when it came down to it....she is just as fake as I thought she was.
Sure it hurt...sure it threw me for a loop...feelings of inadequacy can be debilitating and she just walks around like it was nothing. Amazingly enough, that was the easiest bump to overcome...I thought that it might be because my faith in others has been so low due to my past relationships. But I then realized that I am not as affected by how others see me or perceive me as I used to be. When I realized that she only uses people to get what she wants and to better her image...I felt sad for her. :(
Then life just started to downward spiral with every bump the universe could throw at me....when you are struggling so hard to improve the things in your life and it all falls down like a Jenga game gone terribly wrong...well it can be a bit overwhelming! Flat tires, needing to buy a new car, paying for school so I can continue, trying to plan a wedding with limited funds, and then the straw that broke the camel's back....unexpected loss of the major breadwinners job!! Really universe?! How about you throw some more logs on the fire because the heat is just not enough!
Needless to say I shut down and could not communicate with myself what I should do. I threw my hands up and just decided to give up on everything. Concentrating on the big picture was not helping my situation and it was not helping my spouse either. When you are the strong one in the relationship and you shut down...the whole house is thrown into chaos! It really sucked just going through the motions every day like nothing was wrong but in reality everything was wrong.
So what does one do when you see the house walls breaking down and your family is lost with no hope in sight?!
You stop feeling sorry for yourself....you stop and remember what you have overcome already and how far you have gotten when others said you would fail!
You stop and prioritize your problems and you take them on one at a time!
You look and find solutions to the problems and you get back up off the ground!
Most important....YOU REMEMBER TO JUST BREATHE!!!
So even if life isn't going the way you planned it...you can still have success...it might take a little longer and things may not fall into place like you want...but as long as you are still trying and giving it your all....there is always something to be grateful for every day!!
