“This morning had a still, quiet feeling as drizzle fell from the sky. Getting up this morning was hard and I decided that I wanted to find someway to help me feel more energy, so I asked Alexa to play up beat music (or something along those lines) and she picked a station. The song “Hall of Fame” by The Script started playing. I think that the whole song is worth listening to, but here is just the beginning:

Yeah, you could be the greatest

You can be the best

You can be the King Kong banging on your chest

You could beat the world

You could beat the war

You could talk to God, go banging on his door

You can throw your hands up

You can beat the clock

You can move a mountain

You can break rocks

You can be a master

Don’t wait for luck

Dedicate yourself and you can find yourself

Standing in the hall of fame

And the world’s gonna know your name

‘Cause you burn with the brightest flame

And the world’s gonna know your name

And you’ll be on the walls of the hall of fame

Hall of Fame by The Script

The feeling of empowerment and optimism stuck out to me in this song. I’ve recently been rethinking about my beliefs and to be honest, it’s been a really rough road. Even before that, life had its ups and downs. Times when I wondered how much trying was worth it. Reevaluating my beliefs brought a whole new level of questioning and wondering. Some thoughts were utterly depressing. I found it hard to wrap my mind around them.

But, I’ve pulled through and recently been feeling a lot more optimistic. Just a few days back I found myself reflecting on this. I thought about how I went through something really tough and found myself in a very dark place emotionally at times and–I survived. I came out of it still being able to feel hopeful and at that moment, optimistic and inspired. I’d learned a new way to value life. To value trying. I let myself soak that in. I wanted myself to be able to look back when the inevitable time of feeling low came again and be able to think: this won’t last forever. I can get through this and I will. I’ve already shown I’m strong.

The thing is, I know that I’ll have low times again. That’s life. And in those moments it’s felt impossible for me to feel happy and optimistic. I think that is okay. Life if full of feelings and I think it’s about time I let myself accept that and feel. It’s what I do with those feelings that matters to me. 

Optimism is great and something I want to have more dominantly in my life. It feels empowering thinking that I can let myself have my lows, where I don’t feel super optimistic, and that is okay. Can you imagine giving yourself that kind of permission?””

I wrote this about a month ago before I started writing this blog. This was when I was starting to feel more positive. I thought that it would be good to share because it helps give a glimpse into how I am doing after my belief shifts

To give a little background, it hasn’t always been easy for me to accept how I’m feeling. Even after realizing it was okay to feel things, but what wasn’t okay was acting any way that I wanted because of it, I’ve still had to remind myself of this. It’s not easy to admit that I’ve had really low times — even to myself. But, I have and I know I will again. It felt good to be able to write that that was okay and to finally feel that a little bit more as I did. 

Realizing that I could feel so optimistic and good when I’d wondered at my darkest moments of my faith crisis if I ever would again, helped me realize that it is possible to heal and move forward. To even thrive later. I’m still learning how to move forward, but I’m so grateful that I don’t feel broken anymore. Knowing that I can feel good again is something I am hopeful will give me strength when I feel low again.