Dare To Live

You can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Really, whoever decided this? Life is for living and that means living until the day you die.

I have grown up with a few phobias, one of which was a massive fear of dogs and the other was being claustrophobic. But recently, I went away and packed a different mindset to the normal one.

This time, I decided that I wanted to achieve something outside my comfort zone. I wanted new things and new experiences in my life. I wanted to be a participator instead of a spectator. I, as in the real me, wanted to make changes in my normally responsible, safe yet half-living life.

The people I was staying with have two dogs, one is a boxer cross pit bull breed and the other is a huntaway cross collie breed. To say that this was a daunting prospect would be an understatement as I was cornered by two boxer dogs as a child. They cornered me between a pillar and a wall and snarled, barked and threatened me. So, what do I do - stay in a costly hotel or stay with the…

I met the Mask when I was just 17 years old. I fell in love with it. It told me that it would protect me and look after me for all my life.
Well as the years unfold in our lives yes, it did protect me from life - my own life that is. Once I lived by it’s rules and conditions my life was being driven by the mask rules.
It told me how to dress, what to drink, how to behave, whom my friends should be, where I should work. Sometimes I was bold enough to challenge the mask’s rules. From time to time, I did escape with friends and family but once I returned home the Mask would be waiting with it’s words of anything but kindness.
Roll on 35 years and something happened in my life to make me STOP and see that the Mask was actually not a nice mask at all – it served no protection. It merely blinded and misguided me.
I decided to take off the Mask and look at the world without it.And guess what?
I like what I see.
I am a strong person who can live life without the Mask - without it’s rules, regulati…

There’s times in life where we can feel like happiness is a bit of an abstract concept. It’s out there somewhere, maybe we even think it’s only out there for everyone else, and sometimes it can feel just plain unattainable in our own lives. It can feel like there’s a lot of terms and conditions we have to fulfil first in order to get a slice of it.
When you’re in a negative mind-set especially, it can feel like happiness just isn’t on the cards at all. Negative thinking steals away the potential for happiness by blinding us to the abundance of it that’s actually already in our lives.
More often than not there’s happiness to be found all around us, but if our eyes aren’t open to it of course we won’t be able to see it. Nothing external actually needs to change, there doesn’t need to be a huge shift in our lives, we just need to look differently at our worlds and seek out the joy.
When you find that contentedness inside, it’s funny the things that actually create it. For me anyway, it’s no…

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I believe I am here because a power greater than I supported me and helped me when I did not know how to help myself.
It may be considered politically incorrect to post about God, but I don't know of any faith system whose God is bound by human laws, so I will go ahead and type. It may help someone and that is the whole point of this blog. 
I really feel that it is so important for everyone, whatever your walk of life, whatever your background, whatever your current state of mind, to contemplate what you believe in and trust as your personal faith. 
Some people pray; some express themselves through dance or song and find connection with  higher power in this way; some people believe in angels and ask them for guidance. Some people invest trust in traditions with which they were brought up; others find meaning in the very questioning of…

Inspiration is sort of everywhere isn’t it? When we’re actively looking for it, it declares itself into various avenues of our lives. Taking a trip to a gig, setting your sights on a painting, or losing yourself in someone’s writing can provide inspiration beyond measure. Countless places in our lives are the birthplace of inspiration, the place where we look at the work of another and refuel our own passion, the itch of creativity tickling our minds.
But nowadays right at our fingertips, it seems there’s more available than ever. Without having to even get up and go anywhere, we can dive into a world of inspired minds and creators. People doing what we want to do, people who are following their dreams, people who have overcome a serious struggle.
It just takes one look across our extensive world of social media, with a quick search for #inspiration numerous results willingly greet our hungry eyes. There’s blogs, quotes, pictures, talks, and videos not to mention the array of articles t…

It would be hard to deny that we’re active thinkers. Our minds can race around on overdrive exhausting all possibilities, exacerbating many a problem and evoking anxiety from just about anywhere. It has a pretty hectic schedule; but this isn’t necessarily a bad feature, because, while it could have its sights set on the above, it could also be on overdrive dreaming, creating or affirming positivity.  
Like everything in life - it’s what we make of it.
I hadn’t realised the power of my mind until I started working on myself. I knew it could memorise things and figure stuff out, you know everyday normal stuff. But I hadn’t given it credit for the impact it had on my feelings and behaviours. Actually not just really impact so much as absolute creation of them.
It wasn’t medication or some magic operation on my mind that changed my self destruction, panic attacks or behaviours. It was changing my thinking.
This came into my mind yesterday because I had a decision to make. I know from past e…

I've frequently turned to poetry throughout my journey, as I've found it to be an effective way I could express freely and untangle the confused mess of thinking in my head. Quite often they were pretty stormy poems about the struggle I was feeling but identifying that struggle helped me to overcome it.

So more recently, I returned to writing poems but with a completely different mindset and initially I nearly felt unable to write unless I had some dramatic difficulty going on. It was like using an old tool in a new way. But I still love words and using them to create, so I got familiar with using them differently and here's one of the results - my personal journey in poem form; 



Well it’s been a journey, I’m not going to lie, You don’t just wake up one day not wanting to die. I shuffled to therapist rooms one through four, Each time ending with me walking out the door, Collecting diagnoses and Prozac to numb the depression, Weighed down with questions from each exhausting sessio…