4 easy (not simple) steps to take your life to a next level and be happier after COVID 19:
First let me introduce myself and my previous situation before COVID 19, My name is Ángel Rivera, parent of a teenager, proud houseband of a beautiful and exceptional woman and use to work for Marketing Agencies (Havas, Ymedia, Cheil & Andtonic) as Head of digital and Consulting companies like Accenture Interactive and Oracle Consulting now…
(This is me at my Home Office)
During pandemic I lost my way and after 2 months at home I lost my way and suffer a big depression and anxiety what makes me take a long sick leave and let me feeling down and bored of my life, this which seems to be a big problem at the beginning ends up becoming a great change in my life making me appreciate what is really important and start to knowing myself better and finally taking me to my better time in my life and I would like to share with you what I did to get where I am now and I hope it helps you if you are suffering or having mental illness as anxiety and depression or simply bored of live as it is now.
First first:
The first thing you should know about me is that I’m that kind of person that everybody consider a winner, great jobs, great payrolls, great cars, bikes, beautiful wife, nice house, and all those «big things» people use to call «succes» but since I was 18 I’ve considered myself a fraud/scam and hace the classic impostor síndrome. Saying that during COVID 19 I was considered by my boss and colleagues a winner and a great performer, and I started to suffer the opposite to the impostor guy, and start to think about myself as unstoppable (what sound good but is not) because I started to forget my usual behaviours and beguin to think that just doing less I will be able to pass the goals and have my family happy and started to binge Netflix, not sleeping well, spend the day watching Avengers and basically just connecting to zoom few hours a day and not paying attention to my family, friends & colleagues. And without even noticing I just begin to feel myself like a piece of sit, and not valuable at all and started to have fear to have meetings, presentations to clients and completely insecure of my capabilities but was so gradually that I haven’t even notice until I feel my self completely uncapable of doing the most simple task as sending emails or just cooking lunch for my kid and started to have panic attacks just to take my dogs out, just to name a few.
My mistakes:
After analyzing now I found out I stopped doing the things that takes me where I was emotionally, mentally and phishical but let me name the ones I consider where the big mistakes:
- I stopped having an agenda and schedule
- I stopped having habits like having a shower first in the morning, having a healthy breakfast, meditate, wake up at 5:00 a.m, or any kind of order in my life and just let my life take control of me and my next action.
- I blurred and mixed my personal & profesional life and started to attend job tasks at family Tina and viceversa what makes me feel strange and make my family miserable and my boss and colleagues confused.
- I forgot to keep in touch with friends and family and started consuming too much social media and news.
- I’ve abandoned myself phisically and mentally not giving my mind and my body the things they need to perform well and feel well.
- I’ve started to think to much in the past and the future and be worried about my failures and probably «imagined problems» (loosing my job, my wife, you name it») and focusing on what I didn’t wanted instead of what I wanted as before COVID-19.
- And last but not least begin to live in my head instead of my body and real world, which could seem normal but is not.
And as I said before I was diagnosed with a severe depression disorder and general anxiety, what let me tell you is not to funny though, so let me explain you my process and revelations to be now happily better even than I was before and step by step what I did, wich wasn’t free of failures and takes me a month of trial / error until I am where I am and still improving every day.
The steps:
1) I found myself the better therapyst:
I founded myself the best therapyst I can afford, trust me people still have the stigma that if you go to a therapyst or a psychiatric there something wrong in your head (well it really is but is normal nowadays, more than 80% of population suffer from mental disorders but they are not diagnosed and still suffering but relays on alcohol, food, drugs or any substance that calm without knowing they could be better without them), and is socially better seen than going to see a specialist.
He started medicating me even he don’t like drugs but in my situation I wasn’t able to even understanding him or make the exercises he sended me for homework every week.
After that he started with me a different cognitive therapy to find what I fear and why and my most common recurrent thoughts and how to register them, stop them for analyzing them with him. After the first week I have a long list of thoughts that I analize together with him to find out what was wrong in my mind and discover than my mind is just like every people minds but I wasn’t trained to «control it» and wasn’t emotionally educated to manage my thoughts and feelings, I’m not a psychiatric or therapyst but I learned that everybody has his demons and bad education to manage their feelings, emotions and thoughts and he showed me how to manage them and know on which wrong thoughts I was specialized and tough me how to un program them on my brain and mind. Basically I was feeling lack of value and though that I was a bad guy, a fraud, a terrible person, like Satan or hitler, I will detail in a few posts how to re-program your mind to stop feeling those thoughts.
2) Your body first and then your mind:
I used to think than body and mind where to different thinks but Julio Herrero (my therapyst) thought me than that is a mistake and than in a tense body is imposible to have a clear and calmed mind so he started with me a few exercises to relax my body, but that time I was suffering terrible pain in the neck, headache, contracted neck & arms and even a completely sleeped arm which I though was caused by my posture or lack of stretches and exercise but not was caused by anxiety, so my first tasks was to recover my normal postures, and calmed and balanced body via a few exercises that I will cover in nexts posts so this one is not longer than it is already.
3) Discover the power of «Atomic Habits» by James Clear:
I couldn’t be more grateful to youtube algorithm to show on my timeline James Clear TED Talk about habits and the power of them, and to make the long story short he tougher me not to focus on the goal but in the process, than the real happiness is usually founded on being focused on every little step and improvement as he says to be a 1% better every day, and the power of habits and how to make easy to adopt them (I let you a link «not affiliate» if you want to read it but instead you can find him on youtube instead for free. He helped me to i.e:
- Wake up early again
- Meditate 45’ every morning
- Be a more organized person
- Be more productive
- Eliminate distractions and focus on what I should be doing.
- Social media adiction.
- Make exercise again.
- Be more organized and how to create a perfect environment to be more productive.
- Be more present with my son, wife, family and friends.
- And summarizing be a better version of me in just 30 days.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones https://www.amazon.es/dp/0735211299/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabc_xkU6FbMF9B1YB
4) Create for me a military but flexible enough schedule & agenda:
And the last but not least and with the help of my therapist create an schedule that allow me to have a more fresh mind what looks counter intuitive but human mind contrary to what people thinks helps us to not to think every day what you should do next and free your creative mind to focus on important decisions instead of not relevant ones, plus helps you see your life in perspective and have a variety of things as hobbies, work, family, friends, cheap things to do, expensive things or tasks, inside, outside, alone, with other people, so I did one that matches my values in life and adopt it strictly but flexibly enough because every day you have a lot of not previsible things that happens and well you know anything can happen but is good to have a reference framework to look and just execute.
5) One More Thing:
As an apple fan boy an even being a Google algorithm hater, one of my best investment in those times was Youtube Premium Account, as a weapon you can use it to spend your day watching silly and stupid prank videos or find real pearls inside there, I’m not recommending you to buy the subscription but frees you of advertisements and you have access to a vast library of audio books, channels, and people who have a lot of things that helps you to introduce little or big changes in your way of life. I will treat these subject in another post and recommend you my favorites ones so you can suscribe to them or find your favorites ones.
And that’s it, the process was easier of what it could looks (not simple) and if you want to have more information about it just suscribe to me or DM me and we could be in touch directly and when I have time I will be pleased to help you if you’re struggling with my situation or a similar one, as I said I’m not a therapist but I have a lot of experience treating myself on this issue.
Thanks for your time if you get here and see u on the next post
