Tell Yourself Every Day: I See You Trying

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To put it bluntly, living with a new diagnosis or a chronic one forever can be soul-sucking.

So, I simply give you this solution: tell yourself every single day, “I SEE YOU. I see you trying. You are enough.”

One of the things I have done for over two years is to make my bed every single day, regardless of how I’m feeling or how hard it can be sometimes. I see my bed several times throughout the day and now I do not feel complete unless it’s made.

You can set your bar higher, or lower, depending on your physical and mental limitations. But for me, it’s the bed because it’s an in-between physically.

Can I physically do it that day? Can I walk around the queen-sized bed and make it? Yes. But sometimes it’s made sloppily because my back is spasming, or if I’m up to it, sometimes it’s perfect. Or maybe I have to sit on the bed for a few to relax my back before I keep going. Or sometimes I make it sloppily, tossing the covers up towards the pillows and then slowly straighten it when I go past throughout the day.

The point is that it’s made and if there is nothing else accomplished for the day, I did that for me.

You could make this as simple as flipping a colorful card across the room. Every day. After you wake. You are present and accounted for. You are important to yourself. You see yourself trying and you reward yourself with that made bed or flipped card as the acknowledgment that you are trying, but always you are enough.

It’s how you frame this in your mind. It’s not that you can “ONLY” make your bed or flip a card. Do not use this as yet another tool of frustration. Instead, it’s that you did it, and you did it for yourself, and you’ll keep doing it. Every day.