Nothing improves in Isolation

Why Fixing One Thing Never Works

I’ve never been good with resolutions. I’ll get a wild hair and start something new. I remember at the beginning of 2021 writing a big public post on the “21 things I wanted to do differently in 2021” including reading a book a week, walking a certain number of miles per day, losing weight, learning a new language, and so on. It was nice on paper, and got its fair share of “likes” on social media, but it wasn’t realistic.

Suffice it to say that I didn’t stick with a single one of those 21 goals throughout the year. Most of them were done within a couple of months at the most. And that’s been like every diet I’ve ever gone on or every time I get excited to go back to the gym, which last for maybe a few months at the most. Then it’s right back to laying on the couch and binge eating Chick-fil-A while I waste time watching mindless television.

But the real kicker is more on the mental health side than the physical. I’ve wrestled with depression my entire life, and I’ve sat in enough therapist offices talking, breathing, digging up the past, to have real experience with the roller coaster that is the human mind.

My past trauma and all the BS in between could fill dozens of notebooks and therapists’ binders. I’ve seen psychiatrists, neurologists, and behavioral therapists. I’ve been off and on SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and sleep meds. I’ll try to fix something with therapy and then fall apart somewhere else. I’ll decide to get off a medication and start taking a supplement and then everything else crumbles. I resigned myself to this way of living a long time ago.

Ever since I was a little boy, people have made comments about how much I feel deeply. Almost every relationship that I’ve been in, my partner has brought up my mood at least once or twice.

All that to say, I’ve tried to fix these things, but I chalked it up at some point to my genetic make up, my lack of discipline, what truly brings me pleasure in life, and my entire deal about having lived a sad life, which I’ve repeated over and over like a worn-out mantra.

The Spiritual Angle

I tried approaching it from the spiritual angle as well. I thought I could “fix“ myself through church, counseling, theological books, men’s Bible studies, and even going to things like AA for my struggles with substances or addiction. But in truth, none of these things ever last because I never fixed the core issue. I only ever came at it from one angle.

The mind affects the body and the body affects the soul and the soul affects the mind. It’s a hamster wheel of the human dynamic.

Typically my motivation has always been wrong. I’ve tried to get healthy spiritually to please God. I’ve battled to get healthy physically to land a girl. Or I’ve tried to better my mental health to calm everyone else down around me who feels like I’ve got “issues”. Meanwhile, it’s all a cover for validation and acceptance. It’s that endless search for approval from others and quick dopamine hits.

At least it was up until about eight or nine months ago.

Searching for Validation

We're all hunting for it

But I want to circle back to that little word called validation. I have hunted for that feeling my entire life. Like an old man on an endless beach twisting his metal detector back and forth over the sand: searching and searching.

Many times I’ve said out loud that I’m looking for love but I have consistently mistaken love for validation or approval. I’m looking for that next fix. The tiny boost of feeling I get when someone tells me how good my voice is or how much that song spoke to them or how good I’m looking these days after working out or starving myself for a week straight. In short, I’ve done a lot of the work be it mental, spiritual, or physical for other people. And quite frankly almost never for myself.

This year that changed. I showed up for myself in the weight loss, the workouts, the nutrition, the supplements, and the therapy. I finally began showing up for myself with the way I journaled, the way I began to think critically, and the strategy of implementing discipline and wisdom into my life. I worry less about what people think of me. Both the good and the bad. I pressed pause on the endless pursuit of the online façade. Or at least I’m trying.

I’m finally realizing my own worth. My worth is found in who I am and how God sees me. It’s not found in how many likes I get on an Instagram post or the amount of texts I get from single women.

As I began to show up for myself in these ways, it’s like a wheel started to turn. The wheel that caused me to move, to go to the gym, to walk more and to get sunlight soon caused me to make better decisions in the kitchen. Those better decisions in the kitchen led me to go to bed earlier at night and get better sleep. That change caused me to look into certain supplements I had never researched before. Working those supplements into my routine slowed me down and put me in the bed earlier in which case I had more time to read and expand my knowledge. Reading was a discipline that then helped me develop wisdom over time, which I’m still learning day by day.

Incorporating that wisdom into my life has helped me take each moment in stride, and be less anxious without the help of certain medications. Reading more has also led me to pray and meditate on a more consistent basis.

The point of all this is that I finally began showing up for myself, and worried less about what other people thought of me. By doing that, I finally learned the connection between my head, my heart, and my body. Nothing improves in isolation.

There’s a happiness that comes through realizing that connection. For the last year, I’ve been praying to God for more meaning in my life and by finally giving me the idea for INTGR, he has shown me what the next step is. For once it’s not about making money, becoming more famous, or creating success. It’s about creating and developing something that helps other people. And I know by helping others, a sense of meaning is definitely beginning to grow in my life.

If any of this sounds like your life, I’m building this for you too. You’re not finished either.

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