Day 14 - Life Reflections

Gosh, you can tell we are in the last week of school here before a two week holiday - everyone is getting tired and cranky! The week also seems to be rather busy - oh well, a few days then we can all relax for two glorious weeks!

Today is Day 14 of the 30DLBL Challenge, and its all about Life Reflections.

Now I must admit, the first half of this exercise has been done by me over the past couple of years with the help of my psychiatrist - I have been seeing her monthly for nearly 5 years, and we have delved very deeply into my past as we worked on getting me through some of the more significant events.

So, rather than re-hashing it all, I'm going to just summarise the 5 years worth of work!

1. I would rate my current life as 4.2/10 - this is based on my life wheel exercise back at the very beginning of the 30DLBL.

2 & 3. My biggest milestones/achievements and most significant events all fall pretty neatly into just three areas of my life:

1. My childhood (I don't care to elaborate on that, except to say that as a result of my childhood I no longer have a relationship with my mother and making that decision was one of the most positive turning points of my life).
2. Having my own children and supporting them through their special needs and chronic health conditions from, well, even before they were born...
3. My marriage, and the end of it.

4& 5. Before making some rather large changes in my life in the past 2-3 years, I used to experience:

• Low self-esteem
• Low confidence
• difficulty opening up
• difficulty trusting
• being "needy" and "clingy"
• anxiety and depression
• a complete loss of "self"

As a result of my years of therapy and reflection upon these events and the effects they had on me, I discovered:

1. My incredible inner strength - I am certainly not the weakling I thought I was.
2. I began embracing my true-self and living my own life.
3. I no longer experienced any of the above effects.

Moving onto the second part of the exercise, the new milestones I want to achieve in my life are those things I have put in my 5 year plan. Meeting any of these goals will be an achievement I am very proud to have accomplished!

The things I plan to do differently are:

1. Continue to recognise my strength, and embrace my true self.
2. Remain focused now that I feel I have a direction to head!
3. Create Action Plans and follow them.

I guess this particular task has been a bit different for me, because I feel like I have already been through the past, worked out its effects on me, and "corrected" many of these effects, so my main task left now is purely to move forward.

And, the moving forward thing has been the thing I have struggled with most because I haven't really had an idea of where I wanted to be heading - I knew I wanted to do big things with my life but wasn't sure what. So, the 30DLBL Challenge Part 1, was incredibly beneficial for me in that respect.

Although, after the day I had yesterday, I am going to have to revise some of my goals - I endured some unexpected car repair expenses, a digital camera that completely died, and realised just how little life is left in my laptop! So I am going to have to review "Operation Financial Freedom" with these upcoming expenses and see what my new plan of attack will be... I may well continue my current savings plan, but just focus on the more immediate goals of replacing camera and laptop, and pushing my other goals back a bit... Some more thinking is required!