It has been a long road that I have been down over the years of working to make progress in the realm of taking care of my mental health. Eventually I realized that I had to come to terms with the necessity of care of it, but ultimately it is not striving for perfection, but seeing the small wins and the ability to see the progress being made in my mental health recovery.

I’ll admit that understanding that I need to be back where I needed to be required a lot of firms understanding and even when there was bad days,  getting through them because they were hard. Ultimately it was the realizing that I had to start to not strive so much for perfection and totality in meeting the requirements for my benchmarks of my mental health treatment, rather knowing that we are all human beings in life, that mistakes are going to happen, but what matters most understanding that what I had previously believed about things that I struggled to understand were flawed and in a world where there is an extensive degree of uncertainty, that there are constants in my life that are a necessary tool in my life to staying well.

A few months ago I published a blog post entitled Progress over Perfection while it was being stressed to me and not totally in a right frame of mind at the time, I didn’t understand that while some days may be challenging, coming ahead of my struggles,  being honest about them and ultimately seeking help and using the supports I have when I need to was what allowed me to begin the course of understanding that people are to help me when I am struggling with challenging things in my life.

There are times when I would get frustrated when I was not able to do things or that I was not able to do things because of my mental state not being its best because of struggling moments that I was experiencing without learning that I needed to be patient and see the small things that I needed to see in my life. I have so many things to be grateful for yet, there have been times when I would become frustrated with something happening and thinking about getting out of it because it would irritate me when I felt a tough feeling that was difficult for me.

But ultimately it took understanding that while I want to get somewhere in my life, it is knowing that I have to be patient with myself and define my own path that I need to travel, but also knowing that I must continue to not fall into patterns that I have fell into in the past when behaviors and challenges have arisen from not being patient with myself by giving myself grace when things are difficult for me.  It can be hard to be patient when things get frustrating of when things are evolving around me that I cannot control.

I know that I can get to where I need to get in time, but ultimately I must do what I need to do to take care of myself in the process of working to where I need to be. It is being kind to me in the process when things do not go according to plan that it is not something to dwell on, but being the person that I need to be, pick myself up and move forward with my life.