Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired?

Is there a part of you that wants to feel better? Even if it’s just 10% or even 1%? If there is, then your healing journey is all poised and ready to go. All it needs is your say so. All it needs is that first step on that journey for it to begin. "But how do you take that all-important first step?", you might be asking yourself. Well, try this;

Imagine you go to bed tonight and a miracle happens - you wake up in the morning and everything is as you’ve always wished, hoped, and dreamed it would or could ideally be.

• What would that look like?
• Where would you be?
• Who would you be with?
• What would you be doing?
• Where would you be living?
• How would you be feeling?
• What would that 'ideal you' look like, sound like, be like?

Take a few moments to conjure up that image in your mind's eye, paying as much attention to the smallest details as you possibly can. Now, ask yourself what behaviours would move you towards that ideal life, in which that ideal 'you' lives.

If the answer doesn’t come immediately, don’t worry; this is not at all unusual, and it can take time. When we practice or try something for the first time it can be difficult, impossible even; remember learning to ride a bike for the first time?

Keep practising - it will eventually fall into place and, in time, you’ll be effortlessly gliding around the streets, park, yard, or wherever, not giving it a second thought.

This can be the same method you apply here.

If, at first, no images come, just go about your daily life and, in time, images, ideas, and thoughts will come; this is your unconscious doing its thing and bringing images to mind for your consideration. Scrutinise the images, thoughts, and memories; make sure they’re appropriate and useful, and then implement them into your behaviours.

Now, go ahead, and from this moment on, practise those behaviours and keep practising them. Make your vision clear, specific, and animated. Use your senses to make it come alive; sight, sound, smell, feel, and taste.

Commit to conjuring up this image regularly, and behave in ways that move you closer to this ideal that you have about where you want to be in your life. Do this as regularly as seems efficacious; neither too much, nor too little. This will differ for everyone, but will also be remarkably similar too.

This is your vision - make it yours by regularly visiting it and acting it out in the behaviours that move you further towards it each time.

Be open to the possibility of moving into that ideal self. Be willing to be healed of past troubles and afflictions. Be willing. Believe. Be.

"Heal me from this addiction, release me from my pain
Believe that you can be healed
Believe that you can
Believe
Be"

Begin with the end in mind - all things are created twice; once in the mind, and second in the world.

In this envisioning exercise, you’re creating the 'mind' image that you then bring into the world as a new lived reality, a new life, a new you. You’ll be moving towards that ideal through your behaviours.

Feel your life force again. When was the last time you felt it? Can you remember? When did it stop and fade away, and why?

We learn through repetition. Remember learning your time's tables? Remember that first euphoric bike ride when everything finally fell into place? Take a moment to recall other things you learnt through repetition in your childhood, and know that it is not only possible but that you have actually done this before.

If you find this difficult or challenging, it might be that there is trauma in your childhood that makes it hard to go back.

Contact a professional

Therapy can help you to connect to those memories that can free you to live in the present, free of the past’s insistence on pushing you into those habitual behaviours you have acquired that promise relief and release from past pain and hurt, or simply promise pleasure that has become short-lived and, in many cases, entirely absent. In fact, it is just the act of staving off the down feelings that keep us habitually returning to the same, tired old habits that have stopped returning any reward, and now just exhaust and empty us, yet we keep repeating them.

The Counselling Directory, BACP, NCS - all have extensive listings of qualified therapists in your postal area with full details of qualifications, orientations, and contact details for you to call and arrange an initial consultation.

Many of them will offer a free initial consultation which allows you to test the 'fit' between the two of you, and many will offer couples and family counselling too should you require that.

Know that you don’t have to suffer alone.

Reach out, connect, and start the journey to the you that you really are, rather than the you that you have come to believe you have to be - you don’t; you can be so much more, and with the right help you can get there.

I wish you immense success and joy on your journey.