Up, Up, Out of The Bunny Hole

For a long time, I felt stuck. 

Have you ever felt stuck?

If you have, you will know it.

The ridiculous part of it is that I allowed it. I was hanging out with people who have "stuck" energy around them. After spending time with them I consciously felt myself sliding down that insidious bunny hole. In essence, I did it to myself.

My cute clothes began to shrink so that they didn't fit like they used to. On days that I had dedicated to cleaning & organizing, the call from someone to go out, have some fun, eat foods that I knew were unhealthy was impossible for me to resist.

The end result was a cluttered, disorganized living space. Then, an onslaught of depression, anxiety, shame & fear that if anyone saw my mess that it would be deeply embarrassing. 

So many times, I would begin to get it under control only to backslide into the new living habits that got me stuck to begin with. I was bunny hopping. 1 step forward, 4 steps back.

UGH!

After all, it's nearly always more fun to go to restaurants, shopping, out & about with a friend or friends. Sadly, I came to the realization that these people were more like enablers than they were, friends.

I'm NOT a victim. I allowed it, I went along with it, I went down that path that got me stuck, willingly.

If anyone was going to help me to get out of the mess, it had to be me. I did it & I was going to have to undo it.

If at first you find zero success, meh, just go to bed early, tomorrow will be another day. Why put off until the next day when you can put it off until the next month, maybe next year.

Because preserving my health is so important to me, I started giving myself non-food rewards after making a bit of progress. 

Who's a good girl? Me.

Getting into the nail salons in the town where I live, even with an appointment, is hard. Mani/pedi/wax is what I used to do until having to wait 25 minutes past my appointment time 4 times in a row. The small-town area where I live is at least 60 miles from a bigger city setting.

Then, I began buying flowers for myself. Flowers from Hawai'i! That was becoming somewhat cost prohibitive. Although the cost of flowers from Hawai'i is the same as ordering an arrangement to be delivered.

Then, I began allowing myself to take a night off of working. Instead, to work on a needlework project. That can become dangerous to my career. There were other approaches that I tried that had little to zero effect. It was important enough that I felt compelled to try different approaches until something worked.

*MIND SHIFT*

An idea occurred to me that maybe the reward can be only letting myself have one hour of cleaning & decluttering per day. The scarcity principle, if you will. Knowing that after that alarm sounds, I have to stop for the rest of the day, until the next day.

*BINGO*

It is a relatively new development in my attempt to claw my way up out of the hole I dug for myself. Just today, I put three large lawn bags of clutter plus 3 broken down boxes in the recycling dumpster. Woo hoo! Go, me! 

That's just the living room area. *sigh*

Still, it's a good start.

The reward for my efforts, just 2 days in a row?

Stay tuned.