I came across a quote recently on Facebook and it resonated, so I wish to share it with you today and hope that you find something in it for you as well.

“You throw a bucket of water onto a rock, and it doesn’t do anything. You let a drop of water fall onto a rock every day and it creates a hole; consistency beats intensity.”

I am in the thick of my own healing journey, while trying to balance work, study and life. It often it feels like a lot; It’s overwhelming and it’s exhausting. A lot of it feels like trial and error, and sometimes the error is more prominent than the success. But, I know within myself, that it’s time for me to step up to the plate and work on mending the wounds I carry.

I’m not going to lie, the journey is hard and I’m learning it takes a lot of unravelling, before the rebuilding can happen. It requires new levels of conscious self-care, an opening up of sorts and a lot of consistent and persistent maintenance. I’m working on strategies to help manage the anxiety which has such an impact on my life and how I move within it. I’ve learnt to meditate for connection, but now I have to retrain my brain to learn how to meditate for presence, to learn how to be and to sit within my body, and be present in the present. I’m learning new ways of looking after myself, and starting to build consistent routines. I have a focus on learning and maintaining breathing techniques – I am building a routine that involves practice, in the hope of being able to recognise when my breathing is dysregulated and work towards slowing it down.

With the help of an ap on my phone, I’m learning how to set regular self-care goals – that can be as simple as remembering to wash my face twice a day, to take the dog for a walk each work day, to practice gratitude, to take three deep breaths, or to eat a healthy meal. These may seem like small things, but when you’re knee deep in the muck or feeling overwhelmed and swamped, these small things are the first to suffer. I’m learning how to break my studies down into small chunks, how to ask for help and to use a system that’s designed to support me to be successful. I’m learning how to listen to what I need; and if that means I need space from cognitive overload, then that’s what I allow myself to take.

It’s all a learning process, but I think the biggest thing for me is learning how to be gentle with myself. My approach to my healing journey so far has been like…throwing buckets of water onto a rock and hoping it makes a difference. Flooding it, flooding myself. But now, something within is calling me to a gentler approach. Instead of buckets of water, I’m working with droplets. Consistent, persistent droplets. I’m often mistaken in believing I’m not making progress, and sometimes I need to remind myself that a single droplet won’t make much of a difference, but many droplets, over time will slowly wear a hole into the surface of the rock.

My advice to you, if you’re walking the path of your own healing journey, stop throwing buckets of water and focus on the droplets – the small, consistent things you can do day in, day out, to slowly wear down the heavy things you carry.