All you history buffs will hopefully understand why I included the photo above but actually it was the photo below, found on Facebook, which compelled me to write this article.

I know I am writing as much to remind myself as to encourage you. I need inspired to keep going when times are tough, when my efforts appear to produce no results , when all of me wants to forget it and give-up.

I look for inspiring people, places and things, anything that will guide and support me.

A child learning to walk will pull themselves up on almost anything to have a go, furniture, people’s legs, the dog. They look for support everywhere and they try it out. They do not give up when the dog walks off and leaves them flat on their face, they have wee cry then off they go again looking for the next thing to try. Once up and used to cruising the furniture they give walking a go, there is no stopping them.

We need support to keep trying too, again and again. 

Alcoholics Anonymous has a phrase I love:

“Stick with the winners.”

If you want to get and stay sober hang around with sober people who are making progress in healing themselves and their lives.

I absolutely love this idea, ask my kids, they are sick of me telling them to stick with the winners in life, the people who will help and support you, cheerlead and be there for you. It’s exactly the same for all of us. We need to stick with the winners. If they are not here on your doorstep connect with them through social media, books, films, on-line courses, pay for support if you can afford it, there are always ways.

• If I had known 30 years ago that I would go through emotional hell trying to heal from the affects of my childhood would I have kept going?

• If I had known 20 years ago sitting on Brighton beach that I would still be trying to meditate 2 decades later would I have kept going?

• If I had known 5 years ago that it would take this long to heal from ME/CFS would I have kept going?

Probably not, but if we can be like a baby and just get up and try again and again we will change, we will move forward from where we are towards where we want to get to, and one day we may suddenly realise we have actually arrived.

Like the baby, I saw others doing something I wanted to be able to do, living lives that I wanted, people who had dealt with horrible things in their lives and made the changes which then felt impossible to me.

Change is a process which can take time, sometimes lots of time so do we give up and forget about it, roll over and say it’s not for me? Moan and groan and lament that it’s too hard, we can’t do it?

NO

We take it one-day at a time or maybe even one minute at a time, and we remind ourselves constantly why we are doing it, why we want to get up and have another go. We also have to deal with the resistance and blocks, the stuff that would have us stay exactly here we are, but that’s for another post.

I can’t tell you the number of times I wailed into my pillow that I couldn’t go on trying to get well from ME/CFS. I tried to convince myself and anyone that would listen, namely my poor husband or
therapist that it was too hard I couldn’t do it and what’s more it wasn’t even working.

“Do it anyway” was the phrase which I clung onto. “Do it anyway because it has worked for others and it might work for you too.”

This is a massive motivational factor for me, to listen to the stories of those who have overcome adversity themselves, people who have changed their lives around. If they can do, it so can I, and so can you.

With the right support, inspiration and guidance,

Change Is Always Possible.

Get up and give it another go.

With love