Believe good thoughts, let go of the toxic ones…
Thoughts are not generally birthed from within you… you spend life learning, absorbing stories, then regurgitate them for the world to hear. When you hear the news, what do you do but talk about it? Do your discussions lead anywhere? In my experience, talking about the problems only gets in the way of the effective solutions.
We get stuck sometimes, in patterns, cycles and more… in wants, desires and longings. We look around us at this big world full of increasingly complex narratives that confront society and demand for it to change. Where is the stability? Where is what every child needs, a reliable world that is somewhat predictable in nature? Do not those struggling with mental health challenges require the same?
Change is a difficult thing to endure and survive; in a world that changes daily, are we safe in it any longer? Are all the environmental and societal evolutions responsible for The Mental Health Pandemic, the one nobody is naming for what it is? Is capitalism truly to blame for everything? In a cultural famine, has The West lost its soul and its heartbeat? Are, The Greedy, killing us all?
The only way to dismantle your life and come to protect yourself from belligerent advertising and subliminal messaging (it’s in everything you watch), from those who want you to spend as much money as they can force you to, is to turn off the television. Scary right? I haven’t done it entirely yet. But one thing I did do is get better at choosing what I consume. I also stopped going to the shops, and when I do go, I buy the thing that I need, and nothing more. It has changed my life in truth, stopping going to areas with adverts everywhere.
I lived in the remote jungles of Brazil for 4.5 years, it was there that I let many Western concepts go. In rural life, in community spirit, in song, dance, prayer and shared grief, I became a part of the whole. Here, in this greed-ridden place, I only see Hell. It really is what I have come to see The United Kingdom as. People are sleep walking as though they are privileged, when all they are is a meat market… the rich are making you chase debt, expensive cars, even plastic surgery (which makes me so angry).
Just because something can be done, it doesn’t mean that it is ethical to do it. This world has celebrated ‘The Celebrity’ for far too long, and in these scary days, even these beautiful human beings are feeling the force of fear that is causing us all to hate what we see in the mirror. The saddest outcome of the normalisation of botox, fillers and plastic surgery, is that people without a show of age are changing their faces for life (not that there’s anything wrong with an aged face revealing time spent living on a magical planet we’ve labelled as The Earth).
Every single woman, man and person injecting anything into their tissues needs a psychological treatment pathway, in my honest opinion. Self-loathing is a symptom of an unloving and uncompassionate world, it is a symptom of celebrity and popular culture. Just like any illness, if one can determine the cause, they may yet save themselves if they take in less of the ‘poisonous’ energy. This world will not stop trying to hurt you tomorrow, it’s making too much money from your pain to do that, and so, you must learn to gift your mind with new thoughts to think.
It may feel alien at first, uncomfortable, unbelievable to even consider that one’s thoughts can change… but mine did. I am the proof in the pudding. Many years ago now, I’ll admit it, I despised myself, not in a logical or even conscious way, but there it was, I simply hated what I saw and wanted it to look different. In this year of my life, as I approach the final quarter of my thirties, I see crows feet, I see forehead lines, and you know what – I love them! I also have a lot of grey hair that is working its way out to full length. The only point I am making is this… for how much I did not want to be me, and for how much I now enjoy being her, I only wish someone had told me what I am telling you… turn off the toxic trash, stop looking at fake images of women dressed up by a team, and enjoy being you, because she’s perfect as she is.
Time, it all took time, a few years combined with healthy eating, safe socialising, jamming with musicians, and more… The truth is, I did not change the thoughts that I had or manage to get rid of them entirely, all I did was stop believing that they were true (by steadily contradicting them with reality), until the day I saw myself clearly, and she was lovely enough. I really hope that the Affirmation Posters designed to serve you do the trick, and that whatever ripples from here feels way more beautiful than the stories this ugly world has been telling you. From now on, remember that Ana Maria Santuario has told you (and she’s a pretty reliable gal), that the capitalist world is the ugly thing… not you.
Please remember that how you see yourself is likely how any children you bear will come to see their own reflection. This is about so much more than a few wrinkles, this is about accepting life as the gift and stopping ourselves from wasting anymore time on things that make us feel like rubbish; we must stop spending our money on resolving imagined, nonsensical, made up problems (those advertised as existing). Aging is never a problem unless you believe that it is. And as a last resort, if you still do not agree, just look at the celebrities who couldn’t stop, because they are your future should you fight the aging process with barbaric solutions that will cause you tremendous levels of loss and grief by your old age.
Take care of your mind, for it sees everything based on what it learns and thinks it knows… and if it thinks you’re ugly based off of the world’s fantasies, then it isn’t being very honest with you. This is just one exploration of how the world instructs the mind to behave, try reprogramming it daily with the posters available to you in the Affirmation section of The Self-Help Library:
Time to help yourself…
The truth is, many of us expect help to show up when we need it to. Likely, the world has made it pretty hard for anyone to truly show up for you these days. We cannot foresee a future that is fogged by physical health scares, mass-declines in mental health, and food that makes us metaphorically deaf, dumb and stupid.
The truth is, there are no heroes. No one is coming. You can of course ask for help, but now that so many human beings are suffering acutely, the sad reality is, I think there may be too many people to recover via a 1:1 support system. But do not fear, you hold so much power in your choices; unfortunately, choosing the right things when your cognitive functioning is impaired can become very challenging, which is why we recommend the book, Recovery Foundations, to anyone trying to recover from darker times.
