It sounds simple doesn’t it? To change your life start with just one thing.
However, sometimes when you’ve fallen incredibly low, your just one thing could be as simple and yet so incredibly daunting as taking a shower.
I had a severe clinical depression several years ago after a horrible and lengthy episode of work place bullying, which drained much of my physical, emotional and mental reserves. During this period I didn’t care what I looked like, I didn’t care if my clothes were clean, I didn’t care if my home was clean, I didn’t care if I was clean.
Looking back, I can only feel compassion and empathy for that me. God help her because she couldn’t seem to help herself.
Nothing mattered. I didn’t matter, so what did it matter if I was clean or dirty? Washing, grooming became foreign concepts, they took too much damn effort.
My one thing started with brushing my hair every day, progresses from there to showering, progressed to putting on outside clothes, to opening the front door and looking out at the world, to walking to the end of the drive, to going out to meet friends for a Starbucks.
As I said in the previous post, these simple one things start to snowball and create an amazing cumulative effect.
My recovery snowballed, I started enjoying getting showered, made up, dressed and going out again. I even started talking on the radio about depression and mental health and had a weekly slot on a local station.
I started to care again. I care now about myself, about my appearance, about my life.
I care about my community, the environment, our world,
I care about everything I can care about and I committed to every day doing just one thing to help someone somewhere.
Some days I pick up other people’s trash that they left littering the beautiful park where I walk my dogs, some days I protest about fracking or animal abuse or human trafficking.
Once I just wanted to fade away and not exist anymore, now I’m committed to living a life that matters and it starts with just one thing.
However, sometimes even with doing just one thing and celebrating every day, it can be easy to be distracted and get pulled off track.
You might get afraid that it isn’t going to work, that the one little thing you’re doing is pointless and a waste of your time and energy.
Remember that everyone who had a goal started somewhere, often nowhere close to being who, what or where they wanted to be.
You start and you move forward incrementally, keep doing your one thing and you’ll keep moving towards your goal and those daily increments soon add up.
No-one decides on a lifechanging goal and then jumps straight to its achievement. No-one!
Whatever it is: improving your golf swing, clearing clutter, improving your physical fitness, learning a new language or getting washed every day, you have to start where you are, decide on your goal, plot your route and start.
And every day you take that small step forward, and every day you get that little bit closer.
Its really easy to give up. I know, I’ve given up over and over again. But I’ll ask you what I ask myself – ‘Do you want easy or do you want better?’
Be patient with yourself, you have to allow some time to pass. Take your lifechanging project one day at a time, and day by day you’ll move towards it. and one day, you’ll find you’ve done it, you’ll be it, you’ll have it.
When you take a mis-step, and we all do, you just have to restart from where you left off.
Just do that one thing. There is no miracle that will take you from here to there. You are the miracle and you are the only one that can make it happen for you.
Try it. Just one thing – what if you don’t, what will you lose if you don’t try? Start today, my dear one. For you, for me, for all of us.
Cynthia Curry 