Time for a change!

[Ninja]

Hi, I'm Ninja (rather not mention my real name on-line) and I'm a 21 year old girl from the Netherlands. I've been 'lurking' the forum for a while and finally decided to register. I found Steve's blog about four months ago and, corny as it may sound, it changed my life. Perhaps even saved it, because things weren't looking too peachy for me. I wasn't really 'all out' depressed, but a train wreck was definitely in the making. I wasn't happy with myself, how things were going, my sleeping habits, my terrible habit of procrastinating and then kicking myself over and over again when my room was filthy or I had to stay up all night to meet a deadline. I was beating myself up and felt worse every day, which only resulted in more procrastinating.

Same for sleeping habits: I was a nightowl in a house of early risers (I live at home) and I was jealous of my parents: when I got up around 1PM, they would have already done what for me would be a day's work and STILL have the entire afternoon and evening left! I stayed up late and couldn't really get much done at night since I felt horrible and lonely: there was no sunlight, it was quiet outside and almost the entire country was sleeping... everyone was in bed and resting for a brand new day filled with opportunities, a day which I would throw away by sleeping and then waking up past noon with a major heachache to boot (which I tried to ease with caffeine and painkillers).

Our (Dutch) schoolsystem is difficult to translate, so what I say next might not make sense. I will try my best: I finished our version of highschool at a high level, that allowed me to enter university (HAVO and HBO for dutch people ). However, I was tired of studying and went to do MBO, which the translator tells me is somewhat comparable with 'trade school' which took me less time and effort and would still leave me with a diploma and a chance to land a job. I finished it and then got a job that bored me to tears. I was too intelligent for it and whished I could do something more challenging. but alas, I wasn't qualified...

I kept working the badly paid and unchallenging job and saving money so I could get a place of my own. That was the next step, right? Graduate, get a job, sign up for a cheap 'social' rental house and get put on a waitinglist (no money for buying or renting a place in the private sector), save money for about 2-6 years depending on where you want to live, move out. Like a good little Dutch adolecent.

I stumbled on Steve's blog during one of my nightly self-beating sessions and got inspired. Especially since I could recognize myself. There was something different about his blogposts than from the self-help books I sometimes read that only seemed to offer me advice that did not do anything for me. Procrastination, for example. The books al said "You just need to get up and DO it!". I got angry with those and thought: "Uh huh... no ****, Sherlock! Do I LOOK like I'm stupid?! Don't you think I figured that out myself by now? I just CAN'T do it!". Then I thought: if everyone gives this advice and all those books sell so well, maybe the advice does work and I'm just a hopeless case.

More self-beating ensued.

Then I read Steve's theory about willpower being a muscle that you needed to train. I wasn't hopeless, I was just out of shape! I was normal! I tried doing small things and getting used to those before moving on to bigger challenges. There was no way I could get myself to vaccume my room every week on the same day without putting it off or forgetting about it. But every two weeks on a saturday? Well... if posted post-it notes around my room and put it in my dayplanner, maybe I could bring myself to do that. It was hard because I still felt the urge to put it off ("meh, I'll do it tomorrow"), but it got easier everytime I did it and quickly became routine. This did wonders for my self image ("hey, it works! my muscle IS growing stronger!") and now I do it every week without even thinking about it.

I now saw that I had to tackle my problems one step at a time, rather than blindly attacking them and wearing myself out. The next step was terrifying, but I'm proud I still did it: quitting my job and signing up for University. I could not last one more second in that mindnumbing place and decided to live on whatever I had managed to save until college started.

I will have to live with my parents and put off looking for my own place for four more years, but we get along fine so it's no problem. I've been in college for ten weeks now and though it's hard, I know I made the right choice. I am being challenged and know that I will be able to use the knowledge and skills I gain later in life, whether it be in a job or maybe even my own business. I'm now investing four years to gain a much happier life later on.

Four months since stumbling on this site and I'm a different person. I have never felt so happy, just because I realized that I'm in controll of my own life and I can improve it if I want to.

I'm on a roll, and two weeks ago, I started tackling another bad habit: my stubborn inner nightowl had to go. I used to stay up till 4Am and drag myself to the train to college in the morning, only to keep myself awake with caffeine (I hate coffee and most sodas, but I'm addicted to cactustea!) and catch up on all lost sleep during weekends.

I read the article about becoming an earrly riser and followed the instructions. I haven't entirely given up on caffeine, but cut back a lot and only drink non-caffeinated herbal tea in the evening. The first few days I felt horrible and staggered from place to place on autopilot like a member of the walking dead. But I held on and suddenly fell asleep at 11PM rather than 4AM and waking up at 7AM rather than 2PM. Not only can I enjoy mornings, but I also sleep less: 8 hours instead of 10. Sometimes I only need 7! I also got rid of the headaches.

A nice bonus is the morning sunlight I now catch, since I'm apparently quite sensitive to that. I'm a lot more positive and cheerful now and my parents still sometimes ask me who I am and what I did to their real daughter

I have plenty of more goals, which I won't list here because this post is becoming way too long . But to make a long story short: thank you Steve! If I hadn't found your blog... well, I don't want to think about what could've happened. Looking back I see that I was actually dangerously close to developing a full blown depression and things would not have ended well