life

Getting to Know Ourselves Better

Nathan Smith3 Comments

Getting to know ourselves is a lifelong journey – full of twists, turns, surprises and disappointments. What doesn’t matter to us one year could be monumentally important the next, and so on and so forth throughout our lives. I used to think that learning new things about myself was more cinematic. Time would slow down, and my moment of clarity would spring forward. But as with many things in life, perception and reality don’t always link up. We don’t always choose to learn new things about ourselves, and dealing with that can be tricky.

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We All Deserve Nice Things

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Today’s post might be short, but that’s because the message is simple. Over the weekend, I checked off one of the biggest things currently on my bucket list – I saw my favorite musical on Broadway. And even though it still makes me uneasy to gush on this blog about things I love (here’s hoping I can get more comfortable with that!), I want to share some thoughts about what came to mind when I’d realized I’d done something that made me incredibly happy.

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Spring Is Here! Kind Of. Maybe?

Nathan Smith2 Comments

As I write this, I am looking out the window to another 50-degree, so-so winter day. But I don’t care because to me, March means one big positive for my mental health – the no-good, rotten, very bad days of winter are almost at an end. And even though spring isn’t “officially” here yet (at least not according to the calendars I looked up), I’m an early adopter of spring because of what it represents and what it can mean for our mental health.

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Learning to Find Comfort in Messing Up

Nathan Smith7 Comments

I get annoyed at myself a lot. Like, a lot. Multiple times a day. Part of that is my natural inclination after years of experiencing depression and anxiety, but part of it feels like human nature. No one is is happy about every single choice they make. We’re humans and we make mistakes. The problem is, I can hear that a million times, but an aspect of that never sinks in. Failing is extremely uncomfortable to me, and even though I’m discovering why, that doesn’t make it any easier to manage.

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Fighting My Instincts Toward Negative Thoughts

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I think a lot about instincts. Whether it’s the instinct to think something or feel something, I’m pretty fascinated by the concept of instantly having a thought or feeling throughout my body because of something I’ve experienced. Unfortunately, people who experience mental illness can often have natural instincts that create negative thoughts or feeling, which can be very frustrating. It’s difficult to live in a world where every instinctual thought about yourself is negative, but that’s the reality for many people who experience depression.

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Five Reminders About Building Your Mental Health Toolkit

Nathan Smith3 Comments

Earlier this week, I wrote about some of the new symptoms of anxiety that I’ve been experiencing in the past few months. While it hasn’t been fun to learn how to manage and live with these new symptoms, it’s been another opportunity to work on what I like to call my mental health toolkit. Over the years, I’ve been able to create different coping strategies and methods to manage my mental health, and it’s played a big role in changing the way I view my health.

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I Don’t Want to Leave My Anxiety At Home

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Every day, people go into the world and do things. We run errands, we go to work and school, we exercise…the list goes on. And when we go out into the world, we bring our whole self with us. If we’re happy, we’re going out into the world with a smile on our face. If we’re upset, we’re not in a good mood, and the world is going to hear about it. Either way, we still go out. I’m usually annoyed at the fact that I have to continuously interact with the world, because it means I have to bring my depression and anxiety with me. But everyone once in a while, I can actually use that to my benefit.

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Defining Success During A Pandemic

Nathan Smith2 Comments

When someone asks what it means to be successful, the same words come up often. Wealth, fame, finding love, living a comfortable life. There so many seemingly obvious answers to this question, and sometimes it seems objective in the way we define success. Whether or not you agree with these answers (personally, I don’t), that definition isn’t relevant right now – and we need to get used to that for the time being.

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Improving On My Post-Vacation Blues

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Sometime last year, I wrote about the post-vacation blues. I’d just gotten home from a trip to Texas and even though I go there every year (sometimes more than one), I was particularly down. Fast forward to this week: I once again visited Texas, and when I returned from my trip I felt a little bummed out. There were two key differences here, though. The first difference is that I was in Texas for my twin brother’s bachelor party (!!!), which of course is something I’ve waited my entire life for (being a twin). The second difference is that this time, while I am a little bummed out, it didn’t hit me as hard this week as it did then. And I’d like to expand on that second difference.

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Understanding Our Impact on Others

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the word ‘influence’ this week and what it means to me. That word gets tossed around all the time now because of the term ‘influencer’ but honestly, the reason an influencer goes by that term is accurate. If an Instagram influencer posts about an ad or a product, they’re doing so because that company recognizes their influence and knows that what they say matters to tons of people. And while not everyone might have an audience of thousands or millions hanging on to our every word, we all have some sort of influence on others. But the thing is, we don’t always know in what way.

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