Tag Archives: depression

Living up to your own expectations.

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as a child growing up in Utah, my father was overbearing.

He was a big man, at least to me growing up.

When I was a teenager I was thin and constantly was called skinny by bullies and my father.

I always wanted to live up to his expectations so I drank protein drinks which killed my stomach, lifted weights all because I wanted my father to love me.
What I discovered afterward is that he was thin in school and maybe he didn’t want me to be that way.

Later, I joined the military only to be discharged soon after arriving at boot camp.

I felt like I let him down by not being able to finish boot.

In the last year I discovered all the times I was trying to make him love me, I wasn’t loving myself.

I gave up on myself as a child because I wanted my father to love me, but in the last year I discovered I should love myself over anyone else.

Now that I’ve put this in practice for a year I’m finding that my life is better caring about myself and not those around me.

I love my father though I don’t talk to him anymore, but he taught me that the love I have for myself is more important than the love anyone else will have for me.

I no longer worry about living up to his expectations, only my own.

Struggle, Depression and Climbing from the Rabbit Hole.

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Our struggle to survive is equaled by whether we feel we should.

At times of great struggle we’re bent in half, struggling to discover why we’re in a dark place, why we hate ourselves and how to get out of the darkness.

The struggle is helped only by having people around us who understand what we’re going through, otherwise we’re left to our own meager defenses.

These defenses, though sometimes great, are no match for the darkness which proceeds to swallow us whole. This entire struggle, seems determines to sink who we are, take away our lives and leave us asking why.

The why of the struggle is the greatest determiner for how we got to that point. We don’t see the small things, the little pieces of who we are and only see the larger pieces, the big things which led us to this point.

But, it’s the smaller pieces. The moments of struggle which have led us farther down the rabbit hole and have left us scrambling to crawl from the rabbit hole, scathed, broken and scarred.

The scars of the struggle, physical of mental could last for months, possibly forever, but getting through the fight, standing at the opening of the hole and being alive, that is the greatest struggle.

Getting to that point of the struggle leads us to salvation and to getting better, but we often must seek help to get better.

Seeking help doesn’t mean we’re weak, it only means we couldn’t go the path alone any longer.

Good luck, and have a great week.

Bri

Transcendental Meditation, E-Books and Keep Moving Forward

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A few months ago I took a break from writing DoI (Delusions Of Ink). I wanted to write other things, plan things for the next few years and spend more time with my family.

Each of those things have happened, but I felt a longing, that something was missing.

I started a new blog, one that is different from DoI, and I’ve enjoyed it, but I miss feeling like I’m helping people. Which is why this post is important.

Over the next few months, I’ll be working on a new e-book, that will incorporate all the things I’ve discussed on DoI.

The book will be focused on TM, and though things have changed with me, my wife brought it to my attention that Transcendental Meditation is the one thing about who I am that I’ve chosen.

TM brought me out of a deep depression and showed me the person I was (he wasn’t as nice as I thought) and taught me that who I am to myself is more important than who I am to others, which was a major breakthrough for me.

I found that when I wrote DoI and readers connected with me outside the blog, either through Facebook, or e-mail, I felt something I’d never felt, humbleness.

I realized that what I wrote was reaching people who needed help, and this was more important to me, but it also became a distraction. I wanted every post to do that, and when they didn’t I was upset and a little depressed.

Then I took my break, wrote other thing, created other things and found that it doesn’t matter what I write, it matters what people feel and how if I can help them.

That’s when I thought about creating the e-book.

I’ll post more information soon, but I will be trying to post more on DoI.

I hope you’ll come along with me and I hope I can help.

Bri

A Work In Progress

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This is a guest post from my wife. She’s been practicing TM for three and a half weeks.

The Phoenix

When people make changes in their lives they often point to a breaking point, a specific incident that made them decide to make a change. For me, however, learning Transcendental Meditation (TM) is not about experiencing a breaking point, but about realizing I could no longer accept the person I had become.

Although I experienced some depression when I was younger, I was always able to overcome those feelings.

As an adult, I’ve had a difficult time doing this, and have been on and off various medications for the past six or seven years. I came to accept that not much made me happy even though I have a wonderful husband, who tells me how he feels more often than I probably hear, and two kids who love to play and laugh. Even painting and drawing that I used to love, would sit untouched for months because I didn’t find joy and satisfaction in it.

Over the past year, I’ve seen what TM has done for my husband, but kept telling myself that there was no way it would help me. After all, everything else I’ve tried has only been a short-term band-aid.

I have been doing TM for three and a half weeks, and can say I am starting to notice how 20 minutes twice a day can change how you view yourself, your relationships with others, and the world around you. Although I still take my medication, TM is helping me in ways a pill has.

I’ve been able to enjoy the time I have with my family. I don’t find myself getting as angry, or annoyed when my kids do something they should not do. I’m able to find the humor in things I previously ignored. Best of all, I feel better about myself, and who I am, than I have most of my adult life.

Everything is a work in progress, but with TM my hopes and expectations for the future are positive for the first time.

Why Some People Didn’t Like How Transcendental Meditation Changed Me.

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Life runs through the woods, often being chased by wolves. We stand still, waiting for life to pass through the woods, outrun the wolves and tear into a clearing of pure light.

Life reminds us often that no matter what we change, there will always be those who don’t like change. These people are comfortable with who we are, they know how we’ll react in certain instances and when we do change they try to talk us out of change.

“You’re not really leaving.”

“You don’t need to quit—enter substance—it helps.”

They do these things out of comfort. It’s not truly anything against the person you’ve become.

It’s the instance of who you are now and the fact they were comfortable with the person you were. They knew that person, or thought they did.

When I began TM 10 months ago, it wasn’t the people who accepted me for the changes that surprised me, it was the people who’d make comments about, “something wrong with you” or “what are you taking?”

Each small fraction of these comments started to make me think about who these people are and how I should deal with the fact they weren’t liking the person I’d become.

There are always going to be people who don’t like who you are, that’s a fact of life. But, the people who noticed you when you were the other person, really noticed you, those are the ones who will be supportive of any changes you go through. Those people don’t care as long as you’re happy in your own skin.

There is truly nothing you can do about the other people. They liked the other person because of what you brought to the table. All the things that create a relationship.

What those people didn’t understand about you then, is that you didn’t like who you were and they never saw that part of you.

The people you let in, the ones you talk to daily, the people you’d do anything for, those are the people who love you regardless, the other people want you to be the same.

Change scares people. It makes them uncomfortable and when we find discomfort in things, we begin to hate them.

Change in yourself is what’s important, that change that makes you wake up, get out of bed, meditate, exercise and become who you want to be. That change is the important part of who you are and who you’ll become after those other people are still in their same lives, doing the same things.

Those who crave change, who need to become something else, we are the ones who do things that make life better for others.

I never understood that last part until I started receiving messages about how my posts about TM have helped people and how what I wrote led people to learn the Transcendental Meditation Technique.

If I can help one person with every post about TM and what led me to practice it, I believe I’m helping the world be a better place.

Remember, no one can cause you pain without your permission. Never give them the permission. It’s your life, run it!

Brian