Recently, in the past month or so, I have started noticing myself getting more and more sad. I know that winter is on its way, and I also know that EVERY year, around October, I start to feel like this. I tried to be proactive by taking Vitamin D and a multi-vitamin daily, but like any habit I’ve tried to keep up with, it didn’t last long.

I’ve dealt with many ups and downs throughout my life, but unfortunately, I think I’ve seen MANY more downs than ups. The crazy thing about it is, I don’t WANT to feel this way, but it’s like my brain will catch a hold of a negative thought and then just spiral out of control. Last year, was one of the BEST years of my life, I made a huge life change, made new friends, and found new love. I can honestly say that the happiness I felt was surreal,  I know I had NEVER been that genuinely happy before, and I cherished those moments. I remember thinking to myself “This is happiness… I am happy… I deserve this.” I always gave my gratitude to the universe because for the longest time I prayed to be happy and the time had finally come.

I held onto those feeling for a long time, but now a year and a half later, I’m struggling. I had a small episode where I reverted back into some of my deepest emotions. I never wanted to go back to those, but I’m not naive to think that I was permanently rid of all the negativity I once held onto. I also know that I am in control of my feelings. I’m glad that I can notice the change in myself, and I can see how it is negatively affecting my relationships and my own behavior, and that I am really TRYING to better myself. I just read and article on NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, which is a way to help your brain create new connections. It takes daily, mindful, practice, and I know that I was doing this exact thing (without knowing it) when I realized my level of happiness last year. I need to start with finding the positive in my negative situations, or what I believe are negative situations. It’s weird how 10 people could look at a situation 10 completely different ways just based off of their own perspective and feelings at the time.

So, starting today, I am going to practice being aware of my thoughts and actively working on changing them from negative into positive.