What living with a chronic illness has taught me in my 20s?

Well, yes, it took me a chronic disease to realize some fundamentals of life. If you are going through one and you hate the advice “Stop worrying”, here is something that might be more practical. This is no advice but something that I have come across for myself (in no particular order).

TL;DR

• Open-mind & Irrational Optimism
• Self-acceptance
• Mindfulness & Moderation (M&Ms)
• No judgment
• Be vulnerable
• Being independent is a weakness
• Indispensable value for my time and my energy
• Old habits die hard

Open-mind & Irrational Optimism

If you are a rational realist, you are an irrational pessimist. Instead, be an irrational optimist. No one is charging you your money/time/energy for your optimism, they why not dream. If dreaming, why dream realistically. If anything that is going to cost you more is going to be your pessimism/realism. This is exactly why Ph.D. candidates and entrepreneurs have to keep an open mind with hope and optimism because that’s the only way forward when the times get tough. (Yes, The Shawshank Redemption was right on this one — Hope is the best thing!). “Be positive” is another claim that basically has the same idea.

Self-acceptance

Self-love, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-respect and self-love all are fruits of the same tree. This tree is called self-acceptance. Once you can accept that whatever happening with you and around you is beyond your control (e.g. faith in god) and the only thing that is within your control is your response, that is halfway there to self-acceptance. When you realize that everyone is going through something as terrible as your issue and whatever you are going through could have been way worse, that’s when you have reached complete self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance = Introspection + Gratitude

Mindfulness & Moderation (M&Ms)

The best way to live life is mindfully and in moderation. Be it your aggressive goals or long term plans, they should be sustainable or long lasting. It’s no fun to be crazy rich for one year and broke for another 5 years. Similarly, it is worse to get fat after you lost a bunch of weight — as that lowers your self-confidence even below than what it was before because your mind realized that you could not keep up with your success. If you could not keep up with your success, what’s the point? If anything is done in extreme, you will relapse or burnout which will cause further distress. If you are not mindful, you are not in control. If you are not in control, then you are a slave, slave to your monkey brain — monkey brain makes you hate yourself.

No judgment

Whatever you see has a very good reason behind it. If someone is not able to love themselves or is going through an extreme phase, don’t judge. If you don’t know it, ask but be okay with not knowing. Being okay with not knowing and understanding the other person is not ready to share is real maturity. Don’t assume or judge anything about yourself or others. Most people know only a part of your story and so do you about yourself and others. If you have to assume to move forward, think irrationally positively. One of the harder lessons for me.

Be vulnerable

If you want others to understand you and if you want to understand others, be vulnerable. If it embarrasses you, work on self-acceptance first. If you are worried about how others are going to respond, learn not to judge — their reaction and responses are a reflection of them and only them. However, we all remember how other people make us feel so an adequate response from your end is definitely acceptable. As much as I knew this before and thought I was vulnerable, I was so not. Being vulnerable about easy stuff is easy. The feeling you get when you become vulnerable about the heavy stuff is of the greatest relief one can get.

Being independent is a weakness

This was another hard realization. If you have the courage to ask for help, you have the courage to face your biggest fears, like fear of rejection and fear of uncertainty. Asking for help makes you vulnerable and tests the strongest of our bonds and connections. It’s the most direct way of understanding who cherishes you the most — I think only thing that tops it is who will remember you after your death. Independence is just a cursor for avoiding to deal with the biggest fears. This is true for all kinds of independence, even financial independence (from first paycheck to aiming for early retirement).

Indispensable value for my time and my energy

We all have heard that time is limited but we hardly know it for a fact. Even if this is a fact, this gets broken every time we are in a boring conversation or at a very hard task when time starts to feel unlimited. We take naps and sleep at unreasonable hours or don’t workout every day to revive the energy that we lost. My chronic illness taught me first hand that my time and energy is limited. My illness could strike in at any time without any consideration about my deadlines, meetings and tasks at hand — leaving me helpless and sorry. This realization has made me choose where I spend my time and energy and when I do, I give all of me! 200%.

Old habits die hard

The oldest and most ingrained and “harmless” habits of ours are sometimes causing us the most trouble. These are what define us and therefore, are most difficult to change. If you are in trouble, look for these habits which are self-sabotaging you in ways that probably are not direct. That’s why it will take time. Give that time to decipher and then act upon it.