Comfort in the Discomfort

Another thing I'm learning is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.  I don't mean that in the "you should be ok with someone being creepy" kind of way, I mean that you have to be ok with uncomfortable feelings and situations in order to process and get past them.  Being afraid and acting anyway is where growth lies.  Accepting discomfort is the first step toward making real and lasting change.  If you run from or deny those feelings, they just keep chasing you until you deal with them or push them so far away that you don't deal at all.  Dealing is much faster and easier on you in the long run.  Making peace with discomfort and accepting that those feelings, situations, and events are part of life is the way forward.  Struggling with these things just gets you deeper into the quicksand.  Instead accept that you're uncomfortable in some way, acknowledge the presence of discomfort and know that it's ok.  Discomfort is normal. Like all things good and bad, this too shall pass. Staying in your comfort zone is the quick way to a boring and disappointed life.

If you wait around for the perfect circumstances to move forward in life or to deal with discomfort, you'll be waiting forever.  There's no "perfect", whether it's doing the right thing, or something you've always wanted to do, or for someone or something to change.  If you need the perfect circumstances for things to be "right", it's already not "right" out of the gate.

Accept where you are and base your decisions on that reality.  Then get off your ass and go get what you want.

Save yourself, princess.

This is not an exhaustive list of things I've learned during this experience, but just a few things I needed to get out there for now so they'd stop driving me nuts.

1.  You have to actively create your own happiness.  No one else can do it for you, nor should you want them to.  Love yourself wholly and completely.  No one else can do that for you either.
2. Life is too short for bullshit and pettiness.  I no longer tolerate petty people in my life, though I didn't have much room for them to begin with.
3. It's entirely too easy to take our bodies for granted until they don't work for you anymore.  Eat good food.  Get some exercise.  Your body will make you pay one way or the other if you don't.
4. That said, there isn't much you can actually do to prevent cancer, aside from not smoking.
5. Take responsibility for your own thoughts and behaviors.  It's easy to blame yourself for what other people do and the ways they do or don't treat you, but those things are a reflection of them, not you.
6. You can't control what other people think, feel, say or do.  But you can decide who you want to be in any given situation and act accordingly.
7. You only have to answer to yourself at the end of the day.  No one else's judgment, perception, assumptions or demands matter unless you decide they do.
8. Don't do anything you don't really want to do out of fear, obligation, or guilt.
9. Whatever you believe about yourself you'll make true, so you may as well believe some awesome shit. You don't have to feel confident first in order to act in confidence.
10. And the most important thing:  No one can save you once cancer happens to you (or from anything else, really). No one can do it for you. No one can take it away. No one is coming to rescue you.  Save yourself, princess.