Life is to be Lived by Niamh Mannion

I was ecstatic when Laura asked me to feature on her newsletter because I admire this girl immensely and I am so excited to see her thrive. Of the few that I admire, Laura is one of them. I speak openly about mental health on my page as I feel it should be a topic talked about, removing the stigma. I for one know how difficult it can be because I was that person around a year ago.

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Up until the pandemic, I was suffering with depression and anxiety for years, and a multitude of other problems that I was floating through life, wondering why I was here, what purpose did I serve, never feeling like I’d achieve anything. I never thought I would make it past fifteen, never mind reach the age of twenty-five. But I am here, alive and kicking, listening to my inner voice that I finally have found and have actual goals in place, which as a side note, fifteen-year-old Niamh would be laughing her ass off because she didn’t even know what a goal was.

The slowing down of life due to the dreaded ‘C’ forced me to confront someone who I didn’t recognize anymore. Although I still worked throughout all of Covid, having the privilege of seeing friends I had in work, I spent a lot of time alone trying to work on myself, to figure out how I could get my old self back, or to create someone new that viewed life as it is, an opportunity to be, do, become whoever I wanted to be.

Belief Systems.

The MOST important thing I've learnt that managed to change my whole outlook on life is by dissecting my belief system that I had internally ingrained since childhood. Your belief system is made up of: Your environment, your parents, your friends, your peers, teachers etc., the media and your experiences.

Think of how much information you take in and believe as facts when a lot of the beliefs we have about ourselves are in fact, FALSE. I recently started meditation and have found it brilliant for uncovering certain belief systems that were hindering me and were leaving me in a push and pull situation. A belief system that I had upheld and struggled with was ‘I’m not intelligent enough’. This is actually a common belief people have about themselves and this could have been ingrained when a teacher told you that you weren’t capable of doing a certain task or your parents making a remark about how stupid you are, intentionally or unintentionally.

The point I’m making is your beliefs about yourself, make up how you perceive yourself and the world you live in. No one has the same reality, no one has the same experience, so make sure you're making the main characters (which is you!!) world a nice place to live in.

Taking a look at your belief systems, think of a belief you hold true about yourself, something negative. Then ask yourself, Is this belief actually true? Do I have any evidence to support this belief? Would it hold up in court? Beliefs need reference experiences, which means your brain looks for patterns (it loooooves predictable) and will take note of certain situations or experiences that generate a specific emotion.

Take for example, you had a bad break up and you tell yourself you're never going near anyone again. You meet someone a while after and you're starting to have the same emotions you had previously, however, because you had a bad breakup and a bad experience, your brain will automatically send signals to abort mission, get out before you get hurt, remember last time. This cycle of beliefs you have surrounding a specific area of your life will continue until you change the narrative and remove yourself from the vicious cycle.

Positive Affirmations.

I have seen people be in two minds about positive affirmations and I get it, how in the world is saying affirmations going to change my negative narrative? The reason why I feel so passionate about affirmations is because this is what I done first before anything else, mad I know, but these helped me immensely.

What you tell yourself and how you speak about yourself are two important things you need to remember because your subconscious mind is always listening which relates back to where your belief systems are built. Telling yourself over and over again that I’m dumb, I can’t do this, keeps you in a vicious cycle and in a depressive state which reinforces these negative emotions.

When you change the narrative from “I’m not able to do this, I’m so stupid” to “I don’t have the skill set to carry out this task just yet but I am up for the challenge”, this changes the narrative, rewiring your brain to look for the positives in a situation rather than zoning in on the negative. I can only speak from my own experience so it may not work for everyone but it is worth a try.

Reading.

I can’t stress enough how much reading has helped me and it’s no exaggeration. Learning about how the brain works, how the mind, body and soul are connected and finding spirituality, law of attraction and manifestation, my life has completely changed. The amount of knowledge you can gain from picking up a book is insane and allows you to view the world through a different lens and also learn so much about yourself.

Books that have helped me reclaim myself back:

• Awaken the giant within – Anthony Robbins

• Awake your power within – Gerry Hussey

• A new earth – Eckhart Tolle

• Think like a monk – Jay Shetty

• Good vibes, Good life – Vex King

• The code of the extradordinary mind – Vishen Lakhiani

• The Chimp Paradox – Prof Steve Peters

Meditation.

Meditation has taken it to another level for me in terms of finding myself and handling situations better. My anger would always get the better of me and I would get frustrated within a drop of a hat but practicing meditation has allowed me to detach from the immense anger and hatred I was holding onto, to forgive myself, which I think people leave out when we talk about mental health or recovering. I recently done an inner child meditation from Sinead Hegarty's 21 meditation course (highly recommend!!) and I BAWLED my eyes out.

I realized, that I hadn't forgiven myself for some of the crap I put others through, for the pain I had caused in my family nor the pain I had caused to my inner child. It’s hard to take responsibility for your actions especially when your suffering, and don’t get me wrong, we can blame our parents, our friends etc because of what they may inflicted on us but some responsibility has to be taken so that you can start living your life again. And trust me, this took me YEARS, I blamed the people in my life over and over again, sounding like a broken record. But when I owned up to the part I played, a weight was lifted, I no longer felt intense anger at the world but again this can take time (I still get angry but it’s not as intense and really the only person I'm hurting at this point is myself).

If you have made it this far, well done, I do love to drone on but its only because I love speaking about mental health and If I can help someone else then I’m happy. I wanted to put that if you are struggling, please go see a therapist or speak to someone you can trust. I went to many therapists when I was younger and its one of the many reasons why I’m sitting here writing this, feeling extremely grateful for this opportunity.

Your head space is only occupied by you, you have the power to do whatever you want in life, don’t put limits on yourself. This world wouldn’t be the same without you, you have a purpose on this planet so don’t make yourself small in a world so big.