Sick Tip #2

Source: healthycarrot.com

I thought It would be time for another SickTip. This one is a follow up of the previous one, which was about motivation to get out of bed.
This tip is about motivation to fight for your health.
Having the right motivation is really important if you want to keep on fighting for your health.
You need to fight for a reason, not for the fight.

Finding this motivation is a journey on itself. Not everyone will find their motivation straight away, this usually takes some time.
The right motivation is different for everyone. I can't tell you what the right motivation is for you, only you can do that.

To explain this all a bit better, I'm going to tell about how I found my own motivation to keep on fighting.

Before I got CFS I didn't really have a goal set in my mind. Something I wanted to achieve in life. I just lived my live as a happy teenage girl, to whom friends and homework were the important things in life.

When I got CFS both of those things got taken away from me. I didn't have the energy to go to school or see my friends and we fell out of touch.
This made me really sad and I felt really lonely.

Because I was so unhappy I stopped trying to fight. I had given up and my CFS only got worse.
It got to the point where I would lie in bed all day for 10 days in a row, not being able to do anything. It was terrible and a really dark period of which I don't remember much.
I didn't know what to do anymore, I didn't know what my life meant anymore. I felt extremely useless and wished I could just disappear.

But then a thought occurred to me: "If I were to vanish of this earth I would leave a lot of people I love behind, they would get hurt" I didn't want to hurt them, but I was already hurting them. All this time I only thought about me and how I felt, but I never thought about my family and my friends and how it must feel for them. As a parent it is extremely painful to see your child being so ill, not able to enjoy life. So I decided to fight again. Not for me this time, because I wanted to get better, but for my loved ones, who would be happy if they saw me get better. I would fight for my parents, for my friends, but also for the people I will meet in the future. I would fight for the family I will have later, I will fight for the children I'll teach later (I want to become a teacher), I will fight for other people struggling with their disease, trying to help them with my stories. For all of them, I'll fight. And I fought.
They were my motivation, my goal, and they still are.

Because I fought again, with only that goal in my mind I gave up on anything else which was useless, but kept wasting my energy on, like school. I knew I had to do that year again, because I missed too many lessons, so why bother with homework? I went to school for 4 hours a day, the hours during which I had lessons with my friends.

Because I put all my energy into getting better and seeing my friends more often, my health improved bit by bit.
After just a few months I felt great, my health was still poor, but I was happy again. I regained contact with my friends. Talked loads with my parents and made ideas for the future, including this blog.

The next school year I went to a different school, one closer to where I live. I went to follow every lesson and not just a couple, and even though I missed about 1 day a week, I was proud of myself. I gained enough energy and health to follow 4 days a week instead of 4 hours.

Even on this day I still fight with my goals in my mind. Without these goals, without these people, without my motivation I wouldn't have been where I'm now.
But I'm also fighting for myself again. For me, for my health and for my happiness.

What I want to tell you with my story is that finding the right motivation can be a difficult and long journey, but when having found the right one... You know it has all been worth it.
I think I've become a better person by making this journey and I can honestly say that I don't feel sorry for myself for having CFS, because it has brought me to where I'm now, to the people I know now, and I think it will take me even further.

This is just an example of my motivation, but yours can be very different. A talent you possess and want to show, a hobby you want to do again, a job you've always wanted to have. The list is endless.
So find your motivation to fight for your health, because simply: "To get better" isn't enough for most of us. Start with a good motivation, a goal, and the rest will follow.

I'm not saying that the right motivation is the cure for CFS and other diseases, because it definitely isn't. If only it was that easy.
A chronic illness can't be cured (easily) and has many consequences on the patient's life.
These consequences are usually what makes the illness so bad, at least that's what I think.
With a lack of energy and health I can live, but I can't live with not being able to go to school, see my friends and live a normal live, or at least as normal as possible.
I think it is important to improve those things first and just feeling happier again. If that's all good, you can start trying to improve other things. Just take one step at the time: Improve happiness, improve health, improve happiness, improve health. By improving your happiness, fighting for your health is easier. When gained more health and energy, you can put more energy in the things that matter to you, and so on.
But that's probably different for everyone.

I hope you've found this useful, if you did please let me know.
Also if you've got any questions or tips yourself you can either comment below or send me a mail.

~Xx

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