Road to Recovery by Anna Vilchis

 Road to Recovery

A Simple Guide to Overcoming Anxiety and Depression in Uncertain Times

 By Anna Vilchis

On the road to recovery from experiencing years of depression and anxiety, I have discovered seven stations that have completely transformed my life around 360 degrees, by changing the way I look at things in a powerful way. So that external circumstances, don't ever have to affect the way I think and feel about myself and others, or the quality of my life. Therefore, I have chosen to take this very unique time, that this global crisis has thrown upon us all into, as an opportunity to wisely use the time I am saving during lockdown, from not having to commute to and from work every single day for two hours, and I have decided to finally sit down and write that ever elusive book I've been saying for years that I was going to write and share these powerful techniques with the entire world.

It is my life's mission to ensure that no one in the whole world should ever suffer from anxiety or depression ever again, irrespective of any outside circumstances that surround us. These simple techniques are so powerful that they will empower you too, to transform the way you look at life and set you off to live your best life possible, and not just during these uncertain times, but for the rest of your life. 

That's why in my forthcoming book Revival: Seven Acts of Recovery I explore how these powerful techniques have changed my life. You can see them as positive acts of being or required places to regain full sense of oneself. At each place I stopped, I found fresh renewal and by the time of completion, then once again, I was whole, complete and perfect.

These are some of the stations I faced on my way to my own revival that I'm going to take you through here now...

  

1.    Breathe: Being Present to the Gift of Life

2.    Awareness: Truly Knowing Yourself

3.    Acceptance: Separating Fact from Fiction  

4.    Freedom in Surrender: The Magic of Love, Forgiveness and Letting Go  

5.    Clarity: Deciding What You Want 

6.    Faith: Meditation & The Power of Self-Belief

7.    Gratitude: The Key to Happiness  

Life Before Revival

To the extent that I am now so grateful to have learnt from my own personal experience, these powerful simple techniques that will enable you to overcome the same too. I want to share this with the world, as it is my life's mission that not a single person on the whole planet should ever have to suffer from any of these again. I learnt this myself the hard way and the long way, but there is no need for you to wait to hit your rock bottom, or have to spend years suffering looking for answers like I did. So, I trust these will make a valuable difference in your life too.

My search for answers on my long way to recovery, after experiencing many years of anxiety and depression started several years ago when I hit my rock bottom. The journey took me to places I had never dared to imagine before, and emerging from it, has much on the wonder associated with the Wonderland that Lewis Carroll’s Alice experienced, along with bringing all of the inherent darkness into the light of awareness. Every twist and turn, every corner was a new adventure, full of new discoveries, both about me personally, but also about what it means to be human and being truly human being, not to mention, the purpose of life itself. 

In the process, not only was I able to finally see light at the end of a long dark tunnel, but I finally found that ever-elusive love and happiness. The kind I've been searching for my entire life and hadn’t been able to find, no matter how hard I’d tried to before. It may not surprise you to know that it had been there all the while, but the process towards that revelation might. It was in front of my own eyes and I didn't see it. I just didn't have the key, or the perception to see it. Once that is attained, the key almost delivers itself to your hand.

This story is that very key I uncovered, and, in ‘Revival’, I reveal my own personal account of how I discovered each of those seven acts of recovery along my path to recovery and how I healed myself through these and especially learning about self-love.

In Revival, I will go deep into exploring each of these seven acts and show you how they can also make a massive difference to you and the quality of your life too, by sharing intimate details of how my life was like before I discovered them, what drove me to start the process of inquiry that lead me to discover them, over several arduous long years, and how they each helped me to overcome my own anxiety and depression, healing myself in the process from my deepest and most inner hurtful wounds.

People often let their circumstances stop them from getting what they truly want in life. That was me for many years, so I know what it's like and how debilitating it can be, having suffered from stress, anxiety, and depression myself for many years, searching for answers. And I know that, because I have been there myself before, and I really suffered from it for many years.

"If you are depressed you are living in the past.

If you are anxious you are living in the future.

If you are at peace you are living in the present."

~ Lao Tzu

This quote has become my daily mantra. However, my long journey to recovery from anxiety and depression began several years ago when, after years of suffering from lack of love, drowning my sorrows in a variety of multiple addictions and self-defeating behaviours, I finally hit my rock bottom... There I was, seating in a beautiful open tiki bar in Mauritius, one like I always used to dream about escaping to in my days of day dreaming, and there I was in the most beautiful picture-perfect setting in the world, crying my eyes out, instead of being extatically happy, I was upset but still managing to drink my favourite cocktail of the day. I was sat by myself in the corner of the bar, away from the crowd and everyone else. My friends were there, but I wasn't engaging with anyone, as I was feeling so upset, I didn't feel like talking to anybody, furiously sipping my drink once again (like I had for the past 20, or so years since leaving home, to drown yet again another one of my sorrows), fighting back the tears, trying to drown down my sorrows and forget I was even there, with a flame-like mojito in hand.

My best friends were around in the bar with me, as was the most beautiful and loving man I had met in many years. His name was Chris. He was mixed race, a creole, born in Mauritius to a black family with Dutch ancestry. His features were beautiful, and he was so strong, I called him my Tarzan boy because besides other things, he was the only man I’ve ever known who could peel open a coconut like a banana for me. He didn't speak any English, or Spanish, only French and creole. Neither of which I spoke myself. Yet, somehow he understood me perfectly and so did I. Somehow, we were able to communicate in a deep and meaningful way without needing any words, something I had never experienced before. Love has its own language and speaks fluently when you are feeling it, and I felt from both his tone, touch and looks that he had fallen in love with me instantly, from the moment he saw me for the very first time, casting his spell over me on that first night, right until that fateful moment. For you see, on that first night, we had danced until dawn, locked in each other’s arms.  As I sat with my Mojito in that beautiful tiki bar, it had only been 10 days since that first encounter. I had arrived in Mauritius to celebrate my 40th birthday with my best friends and didn’t expect to also find the most amazing, romantic relationship you can ever imagine in such a brief and sudden time.

Happiness had proved very elusive to me prior to that and while I am aware of a certain level of need, I had hoped that I had moved beyond expectation, concentrating only on the moment, so when one came with such force and power was almost hopeless to resist it.  

It was only then I remembered that it had only been the previous year that, I had met Owen, a handsome Irishman from Dublin whilst on the way back to London from Cannes, after the famously acclaimed film festival was over, and it turned out we were in the same flight back to the UK and it was instant love at first sight back then too. By the time the flight had taken off and we were mid-air, we were already in each other’s arms and planning when we would meet again once we were back on dry land and when I would go to visit him in Dublin. Kissing like teenagers on the plane back to London, things soon developed once we touched down and the proper touching began. To me, it felt like the love affair of the decade until seven months down the line, when I miscarried one day after yet another disappointing heartbreak. 

Owen was supposed to come back to visit me in London for the weekend that October, and I was feeling really excited to see him again and give him the good news, but he never showed up. Later that night, when I rang him to find out what had happened, and we spoke on the phone he told me he had somehow wound up in Germany to meet a complete stranger he’d only just met online to talk to her about writing his book into a film script; she was a young student that needed the money, yet he couldn’t afford to come to London to see me. That made no sense to me at all. Still, I told him I had just found out I was a few weeks pregnant and he went completely silent. Speechless. Not a single word he said, as we put down the phone. I cried my tears out that night and for the next few weeks, and a few weeks later I lost the baby. It was the most pain I had ever felt. It hadn’t been the first time, yet it hurt like never before. I never saw Owen again after that, though from time to time he still continues to write to ask how I am doing, like nothing had happened. He’ll never know how much pain I suffered following that deception. I played it back in my mind time and time again, until it started to drive me crazy. A pain so great that I ended up at my GP practise only a few weeks later, telling him how I no longer wished to be here. He prescribed me antidepressants at the time, and referred me to St Mary’s after none of the medication he’d prescribed me had worked to relieve me from all that pain and suffering, and deep, deep sadness.  

It was then, that I embarked on my counselling journey, after deciding that antidepressants weren’t really for me. I had been so sick at heart, mind, and body, I had lost my will to live, and didn’t believe in any magic pills. I just wanted it all to end.

This was already the lowest point in my life. Throughout my life, and as far back as I could remember, I had endured a long string of failed love affairs, one after another, that would give Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City a run for her money. I could write a whole collection of books just on that subject alone that would fill the entire British Library. But this story isn’t about more dramas. It is a story of victory and self-realisation. And all those stories I had created throughout my life of failed love affairs, they were all rooted in one single narrative, and all ultimately fed into the same narrative that had run throughout my entire life for as long as I could remember, and that I myself created when I was a child, the simple credo being:

“I never get what I want.”

This story started at a very early age with my first love, as a young schoolgirl, Federico. He was my first ever love, yet he never knew it because I never ever told him. So, I broke my own heart by never telling him my feelings. 

And that was the beginning of many years of many other heartbreaks and deceptions throughout my life, because I had simply never learnt to express myself, let alone express my feelings and emotions freely. That was when I started a long history of withholding myself and became attached to looking good to others and addicted to others’ approval of me, never really allowing myself to be seen as vulnerable. I developed a strong sense of self and identity of never looking weak, or frail, hiding my vulnerability and true feelings by withholding my emotions, specially my deep inner thoughts and feelings from everyone, including me. On the surface, to the external world, I appeared to be happy, socially outgoing, everyone knew me as the life and soul of the party, so no one ever knew how I was really feeling inside. I was an open book, or so I made it appear to be, because I openly spoke about what “others” always did to me, especially those that hurt me the most. I villainised them and turned myself into their victim in my own narrative and viewpoint of the world. And spent the rest of my life looking for evidence to prove that I was right. I was the poor-little-victim of every bastard I came to meet along the way. And looking back, once I rolled up my sleeves and really got down and dirty digging deep into my past, after trying all sorts of counselling and therapies, I finally remembered how that story started even earlier in my childhood. In fact, for as long as I can remember, it has always been there. I can’t even remember a time when it wasn’t there. I have all the evidence to prove it that I gathered over many years. 

I grew up in Mexico City, brought up by my granny and nanny because my mother was a working mum, whom I thought at the time, was more interested in her Bacardi and Coke than looking after me, and my sisters, and I felt routinely used as a punching bag. So, I had to grow up very fast and take care of my baby sisters myself from my own earliest days and I became their protector. I used to spend the evenings watching a cocktail of Mexican telenovelas back to back, after spending the day taking care of my baby sister, cleaning the house and cooking for the whole family like Cinderella, with my nanny Annie, which remained my favourite and most pertinent Disney fairy tale. 

In Mexican telenovelas, it is always the pretty poor maid that gets the prince charming, albeit not before suffering countless amounts of drama, every time losing the love of her life, often at the expense of the rich and powerful girl next door, who despite her glamour is always the wicked witch, who got the boy.

It was then no surprise, that I wound up creating drama around my burgeoning love life. It was after all a massive part of my life survival training.

So, somehow in my mind, I twisted love with a great deal of suffering, forcibly translating fairy tales into my reality. I was aware of the differences but also hopeless before them. After all, in my eyes, I was not a Disney princess, but was instead the ugly duckling when I compared myself to my beautiful sisters. Something I always got reminded of somehow. At least, that’s what I decided I was because everyone was always complimenting my sisters for being so beautiful, but never me. I made it mean, not only that I wasn’t as beautiful as them, but that I must have been so fucking ugly that nobody ever noticed me, other than for the work I did to please others. So, I also became a people pleaser. Always giving the best of me in order to get the love and admiration, or at the very least attention, no matter how little, I craved so much for. Because not only did I not have a voice to express myself, I even appeared to be invisible to others otherwise.

In the story of my life, I was always the victim that wanted to disappear the moment that things got too good to be true. Always pushing away every man that ever loved me too much, or even a little, because I felt so uncomfortable, I would run faster than Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride, feeling something close to asphyxiation. The resultant effects were predictable, as I became infatuated with every bastard who gave me even a little attention, making him my prince charming and accepting the meagre crumbs of affection he spent to salve my hunger, while knowing I craved both his validation and approval. To put it simply, I didn’t know how to be loved because I didn’t know how to love or even value myself.

I lived out and supported the numerous stories of disenchantment I had become attached to, without realising that it had been me that had been creating all of this all along. My misery and suffering came from an inability to give up my victim’s story. I truly believed that I was worthless and unlovable. I had gathered so much evidence throughout the years to prove it and show exactly how well I fitted the definition that I felt I had become mankind’s biggest victim. And I didn’t know myself any other way. So much so, that I could never recognise myself whenever I was in a relationship.

It had all started when I was molested as a four-year-old child by someone I loved and trusted and lost that day my innocence. This had been for me an unforgivable act, so abhorrent to me that I spent the rest of my life trying to pretend it never happened and forget all about it and the trauma I had endured. Except, somehow, I kept re-enacting the same exact situation time and time again throughout my life. You see, that day, I left my body for the very first time. As I watched myself like in a movie, in horror from up above, I was inside screaming to myself: “do something to make him stop”, “cry”, “scream”, “shout”, “kick”, “just do something”, but instead I did nothing. I just froze there, speechless. Terrified for my life, not knowing what to do, so I wanted to disappear and left my body and spent the rest of my life angry at myself and the whole world, for not having done anything about it back then. And spent the rest of my life disconnected not just from myself but from others too. Never telling a single soul about what had happened, I buried that little dirty secret so well, even from myself, deep in my unconscious mind, for well over forty years that I almost forgot it had even happened, or at least I thought I had done so, until I was ready, willing, and able to go there, deep into the core of my wound in order to heal it.

Little did I know that the mind never ever forgets, even when you are not even aware of it, and when we experience trauma, the mind will try to complete for itself situations where we are left incomplete, unconsciously recreating similar situations time and time again, searching for a solution and seeking to get closure. This resulted in me years later, unconsciously putting myself in stupid, dangerous situations so many times over and over again. So much so, that I ended up being abducted not only once, but twice in my life. Both times I had the same experience again of leaving my body and wanting to disappear completely. And somehow, I always managed to escape from even those tricky situations, without any real harm done to me other than a major fright, then thinking I was very lucky to have escaped such escapades, so I got even more daring in my behaviour, when it was really because I was already dead inside and I didn’t even know it.

I’d been refusing to see how easy it had been to assume the feeling that I had created it all myself and that the full responsibility lay with me. I had already been seeing a counsellor for months after Owen left and I had my miscarriage. Yet, here I was, doing it all over again. Pushing Chris away for loving me; telling myself stories about how he didn’t really love me, how he couldn’t possibly, we’d only met 10 days before, plus after all, no one ever had. Not really, I told myself, not even me. So, in that moment, I made a resolution that day that things had to change. They simply couldn’t go on any longer the way I was going. I was a car crash wreck waiting to happen and I had to put a stop to it, once and for all. I had to change the direction of travel. My story, my life had to change once and for all. That was when I hit my absolute rock bottom! Or so I had naively thought at the time.

  

  

  

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you're heading."

~ Lao Tzu

I came home from Mauritius that year determined to do whatever it took to stop this madness once and for all. I simply couldn’t continue in the same path of self-destruction I had been on for so many years. I had finally had enough of the same all, same all bullshit never ending stories. I wasn’t really planning to celebrate my 40^th birthday, as the trip had been my own gift to celebrate the occasion. But at the last minute, I changed my mind and put on a big show for everyone. I was once again, the life and soul of the party, or at least appeared to be (remember I was a master of disguise when it came to my thoughts and feelings) and threw another big party, and nobody had a clue how I was truly feeling inside. Over 30 of my friends were there to celebrate with me and it was a really great night, yet I felt completely alone still.

When I came home from Mauritius, all hell broke loose at home also and my biggest nightmare was yet to come, when I decided to stop withholding and people-pleasing and tell my flatmates once and for all, exactly what I thought of them. Unsurprisingly, I fell out with both of them, as until then, they had only ever seen the “nice” side of me that let them walk all over me like a doormat. That year was absolute hell for me. The girls did everything they could to kick me out and get rid of me, between lying to the landlady, the property agency and the police, when I finally stopped being too nice and started speaking a few home truths, standing up for myself for the very first time ever, like I’d never done before. Little did I know that all that drama was a blessing in disguise. Things got so bad with them at home that it pushed me to finally do something about it and I was finally propelled to a) speak my mind and express myself, and b) do what I’d been wanting to do for years, but never had the balls to do so, and I finally bought my own flat in London. And not just any flat, but the flat I’d always wanted for myself. It was my dream home. It was just perfect, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t need to share it with anyone else. It was all mine and I couldn’t have been happier. However, it wasn’t an easy ride, and I had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to get it. This time I was so desperate for change, that there was no one going to be able to stop me again from getting what I wanted. So, when I saw the opportunity, I said yes, then figured it out, and pushed myself to my absolute limit in every sense of the word, including money-wise. That it meant, I had put a noose on my neck financially. “Holly shit!” I told myself. This was real, but I was excited for the changes that I was experiencing, and I had to find a way to make it work somehow because there was no way in hell I was going to lose this feeling. So, I started a new business in health and wellness, which was the single best decision I have ever made after buying my own place. I had a lot to learn, but it gave me the power and hope for the future, which I’d been longing for, for so long. 

Things were still far from perfect at work. And things went from bad to worse when my original boss was made redundant and I wasn’t getting on with my new boss. In my despair one day, I almost ended up under a bus after another argument with my boss. I was so consumed by overwhelming anger and rage, after yet another disagreement with her. As I walked off the curb without turning to look behind to see if there was any oncoming traffic, to overtake the vast crowds at Oxford street in the middle of the early evening rush hour, when a complete stranger suddenly reached out to grab me by the shoulders and pull me right back into the safety of the curb and saved my life by a fraction of a second. Just as he did that, a bus sped right behind my ear, it was so close, merely an inch or so away from my head, almost touching my hair. I had been rushing yet again to meet someone and was really angry with my boss, still having an argument with her in my head, imagining telling her all the things I’d never dare say to her face-to-face, as was usually the case after work. This wasn’t even the first time an argument with her had a lasting impact on me. The last time it happened, only a few months earlier, I ended up in the hospital, after I nose-dived down the stairs at Oxford Circus station and broke my head and nose, and was taken to ER by an ambulance. My new friends came to visit me straight away, but there was no sign of who I thought were my best friends. They hadn’t even bothered to reply to my messages letting them know where I was. That’s when I discovered who my real friends truly were. That was my biggest lesson of all. No one really was who I thought they were. It was then, I became even more determined than ever to find answers and start my life newly all over again. That was my moment of choice when I chose to revive and return to being present and took a long deep breath!

Breathe

Breathe: Being Present to the Gift of Life

  

The first technique in my long process of recovering was learning how to breathe properly, and I felt completely alive, as if for the very first time. When I did a course in emotional intelligence, where they basically taught me how to breathe and how breathing affects my state of mind and my wellbeing. Learning the science behind it and how the body works has made me appreciate every single breath and how I can use it to calibrate my emotional state and calm myself down. Before then, I had no idea that everything I had been creating and experiencing was starving me of oxygen and my responses were perfectly normal for human beings when they are in survival mode.

In my book I go deep to explaining how the mind and body work together, and understand both how and why breathing is key to our happiness, and not just to keeping us alive and surviving. And how the fight or flight mechanism actually help you to manage your emotions and choose to be happy by keeping you present every single moment that you choose to focus on your breathing and re-awaken your mind and senses. This practise was completely life-changing for me and allows me to now choose powerfully every single moment to be how I want to really feel and not be just subjected to constant amygdala hijacks that had my life running havoc. So look out for the book when it comes out in the Autumn this year.

The Power of Awareness

Awareness: Truly Knowing Yourself

Learning that took me further on a journey of self-discovery, as I asked myself many questions like: “Who am I really?” Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” “Why can’t I ever have what I want?”

I had to separate myself from everyone, including from who I knew myself to be, to have even a fighting chance to start fresh and re-discover myself, for the first time ever. That journey took me in many different directions and, on many occasions, I still fell flat on my face many times over. However, every time I fell, I just got back up and kept going, and little by little, I started finding the answers I was looking for to my ever-increasing list of questions, piecing myself back together and creating my life in a way that made more sense to me and was more authentic and purposeful, and that’s when I started to really feel a whole lot better.

Looking back at my life, I had become like Hulk, the green monster I used to watch on TV in the eighties. Every time I pushed my own limits and made myself really angry yet again, I somehow managed to find the strength and courage to find my way out of any situation I got myself into and got myself to a new place. However, whenever things looked like they were finally starting to go my way, and I seemed to be getting what I wanted, I would always find a way to sabotage myself and blow it all up again. That was my long-established pattern of self-destruction and I needed to understand why I always did what I did, and find a way for me to stop me from self-sabotaging myself, this never-ending cycle of self-harm and self-defeating behaviours that I had adopted and kept my story of always being the victim alive. That was my vicious circle until I discovered why I did what I did and when it all began. That’s why the next act of recovery that I’m going to take you through and how it changed my life, is awareness. Because awareness is crucial to healing anything, even our deepest most hurtful wounds. 

But first, let’s examine the dictionary definitions of depression, anxiety and worry:

Depression

The state of feeling very unhappy and without hope for the future.

Depression is a mental state in which you are sad and feel that you cannot enjoy anything, because your situation is so difficult and unpleasant.

Synonyms: despair, misery, sadness, the dumps.

Anxiety

An uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future.

Anxiety is a feeling of unease, worry or fear.

Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress. It's a feeling of fear or apprehension about what's to come. 

Synonyms: apprehension, disquiet, misgiving, nervousness, restlessness, suffering, uncertainty, unease.

Worry

To feel or cause to feel anxious or troubled about actual or potential problems.

The state of being anxious and troubled over actual or potential problems.

The Buddha believed that worry is a total waste of time. It doesn’t change anything. All it does is steal your joy and keep you very busy doing nothing.

Do you have a problem?   

Ø  No             >          Then Why worry?

Ø  Yes           >          ^                                                   

Can you do something about it? ?   

Ø  No             >          Then Why worry?

Ø  Yes           >          ^                                                   

If you can solve the problem,

Then what is the need of worrying?

If you cannot solve it,

Then what is the use of worrying?

~ Shantideva

 “Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”

~ tinybuddha

In of itself, worrying doesn’t help anything. Think of all the times you worried about things in the past. Did it help in any way? How many of those worries became true? Notice how you are in the present moment with your current worry, and ask yourself if worrying about it will make it any different.

“There isn’t enough room in your mind for both worry and faith. 

You must decide which one will live there.” 

~ Sir Robertson

Worry and anxiety often come from trying to protect yourself from pain. And I don’t blame you. Our primal brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain; and anxiety is often caused by worrying about the potential pain that we might feel in the future.

Sometimes we’re so afraid of emotional pain and loss that we forget that they can’t physically harm us.

And this is where the saying “make peace with discomfort” will serve you very well; because your ability to be uncomfortable is directly related to your ability to be a relaxed person.

Sometimes we assume that we need to be comfortable in order to be relaxed. But sometimes being relaxed simply means feeling uncomfortable and being okay with that.

Be willing to feel uncomfortable.

This too shall pass!

In my book I have a whole chapter to teach you how checking in your feelings and becoming aware of where you are in the scale of emotions can make the world of difference to how you feel in the present. The aim is always to move up a nudge, not necessarily quantum leaps to the top from one end of the scale to the other, but ongoingly calibrating your emotions. A very powerful book that covers the scale of emotions in great detail is “Power vs Force” by Professor/ Dr David R. Hawkins and I highly recommend everyone reading it to really appreciate the impact of emotions on our physical and mental wellbeing, and long-term health implications.

Becoming aware of what we are doing to feel the way we feel and also aware of who we are being, in any given moment, that is giving us those results.

The aim is to transition from what people normally focus on:

Ø  Doing > Having > Being

Into focusing on being rather than doing:

Ø  Being > Doing > Having

How people have it all backwards and they start with doing, in order to have and then being. This leads to perpetual dissatisfaction in life. Being becomes the carrot we spend our whole lives chasing, and never getting to that destination. What I call the someday/one day dream.

Whereas if we start with who we are being in the present, we can then become inspired to take the necessary actions consistent with our being, which will in turn mean that we achieve whatever we want with pleasure and certainly feels less exhausting than doing, doing, doing and all in order to chase pipe dreams.

The Power of Acceptance

Acceptance: Separating Fact from Fiction

Once I became aware of my self-defeating patterns and the vicious circle I was creating with them, I took full responsibility for my results and everything I had created in my life that brought me right there to that very moment where I was finally able to face my truths make peace with myself. It was then that I finally I accepted that everything in my life is absolutely perfect exactly as it is, and has always been perfect and that nothing ever needed changing, that I finally found my peace within and fell in love with myself and my life.

Accepting that everything is exactly as it should be and stopping trying to control, change, avoid, or manipulate and force outcomes gave me the freedom to finally free myself from my old behaviour patterns and allowed me to choose what I wanted to create in my life for real in any given moment. That to me was a truly miraculous revelation, which transformed my entire life without ever needing to change anything. As a result, I now feel free and able to create whatever I want.

Also, accepting I am where I am precisely because of all my past history and everything that has ever happened to me, has led me to this very moment, to finally accepting being who I am, right now and that it is all perfect exactly as it is, and how much I truly love myself for it, with all my virtues and defects has been my greatest gift and that’s why I want to share all of this with you. Because anything is possible when we accept what is already there without any judgement.

Not making myself wrong and being able to separate what happened from all the stories that I told myself about what happened and what I made it all mean about me and others, even though none of it was ever true. It’s never what happened to us that hurts us, but the meaning we give to those facts, and what we tell ourselves about what happened that cause all our suffering. And we have the power to stop that in a split second, and in any given moment, irrespective of the circumstances, with the right tools, accountability and support.

We are all already whole, perfect and complete. When we accept ourselves fully, exactly as we are able to create anything we want in life and you can do that too.

What we resist persists. It is wanting to change what is that causes the persistence of what we don’t want in our lives. Accepting what is, however on the other hand, and not wanting to change it, causes everything you don’t want to literally disappear. Leaving us making peace with our past and ourselves.

Recognising in me all those self-defeating personality traits that I had developed over the years to help me survive. Becoming aware of them, by learning how to shine the light onto their awareness and recognising them as my own creation, and the benefits I had drown in from them over the years and learning to love them unconditionally because even when they failed me to achieve, or succeed, they also brought me something else that I recognised as of value to my personal development and growth and learnt from it. As without those critical moments in my life, where things definitely didn’t seem to be going my way, they all turned out to be my greatest blessings in disguise. Although I didn't know that they would be, at the time. I strongly recommend you read “A Return to Love” by Marianne Williamson.

Surrender

Freedom in Surrender: The Magic of Love, Forgiveness and Letting Go

A magnificent book I also recommend is “The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection” by Michael Alan Singer

Letting go and forgiving is an act of self-love.

When you hate someone is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. Resentment only ever hurts us, not the person against who we hold onto it, like our lives depended on it. But it’s not our real life, it is our identity we created as a child and we never really grew out of it. Our EGO.

Let go of your EGO. Its only purpose is to help keep you alive and survive, but won’t let you thrive. It will hold where you are you like a chain to an invisible prison where no true joy, happiness, or love is ever possible.

Forgiveness is not saying that others were right to do what they did, or justifying what they did at our expense and letting them get away with it. Forgiveness is an act of self-love and the greatest gift you can give yourself. No matter what anybody did to you. Trust me, as I’m speaking from experience, it will only end up killing you a slow and painful death.

Above all, forgive yourself. Give up making yourself and others wrong and surrender.

And when you think you’ve surrendered enough, surrender even more, until there is nothing left to surrender, and you are left with nothing but love.

The Power of Clarity

Clarity: Deciding What You Want  

What helped me enormously to get to this point and level of clarity with my life was to write everything down. Dumping it all into paper. After my old boss recommended that I read “The Little Book of Clarity” by Jamie Smart and that change my life. Before, I had so much going on in my head, I couldn’t think clearly and was experiencing overwhelm. I was operating in complete fog, not seeing the wood through the trees. Still carrying resentments from the past that have lasted me a lifetime like a heavy baggage I was choosing to carry on my back without letting go. Like holding on to it made me who I am, but also gave me the right to be angry, bitter and resentful, and wore it like a court of arms. 

Dump it all down…

By writing everything down, I could finally see how I was doing it all myself, hurting myself, and above all why I was doing it. Deep down, I was blaming myself for everything that had ever happened to me and turning myself against myself…

From Fog to Clarity

You can write a letter to yourself, or others, to dump all your hurt, hate, and resentment onto paper and get it out of your system. Write until there’s nothing left to write and you will see how you too will uncover love underneath it all.

Start journaling every single night, reviewing what worked, what didn’t go so well and could have been better and over all what went great. This practice will enable you to complete each day by leaving behind anything unwanted, and set you up to start fresh from scratch every single day without any baggage from the previous day. Say what you need to say, and if you really feel like you can’t, write it down and dump it all out and create a new possibility for yourself and your life. This will give you the power and clarity to create a new day each day purposefully and intentionally, and create the life you really want and deserve.

The Power of Faith

Faith: Meditation & The Power of Self-Belief

Believe in yourself and that anything is possible for yourself and your life. Have faith in you and whatever you believe in. Anything that stops you from getting what you want is resistance.

Notice any resistance and let it go.

Really believe that anything is possible for you and practise daily meditation.

If you imagine your brain is like a monkey jumping from one thought to the next, just like a monkey jumping from one tree onto another. Constantly looking for another branch to hang off. That monkey is you. Practise quieting the mind with meditation. You don’t punish your monkey, you train it with love and tenderness. And if it gets rattled hanging somewhere where it shouldn’t be, as in a negative pattern of thought, for example, that makes you feel sad, upset, angry, etc, let that thought go and focus your attention on one that raises your energy, empowers you and makes you feel better. And constantly reach out for a better feeling thought and focus on those that empower you. Be kind to yourself and give yourself some well-deserved love by reaching out to empowering thoughts. If you find yourself swimming in a dump, reach out to a friend, if possible one who understands this process and ask them to help raise your vibration and energy, rather than complain about what’s wrong, or not working as well as you would like it to. That’s why having an accountability person is crucial to our success in life. Always look for something positive, and something to learn in every situation, no matter how bad it seems to be on the surface, if there is something that can be learnt, it will always be a positive experience. And remember, the mind is addicted to looking for all the negative on everything because its job is to help you survive, so it’s constantly looking for danger triggering your flight response mode. Practising meditation daily helps to calm it down and allow you to relax on any situation, no matter how uncomfortable. Remember to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Nothing ever grows in the comfortable zone.

Did you know it’s scientifically impossible to be depressed and running at the same time? Running releases serotonin in your brain, which the happy hormone, so as long as you are running you will not experience depression.

Furthermore, we live in a universe of duality where everything has polar opposites and with the law of polarity the aim is to get to a place of balance and quiet the mind.

It is actually virtually impossible to be both happy and angry at the same time, so choose powerfully which one you prefer in any given moment.

Emotions get trapped in the body, eventually causing pain and eventually leading to all sorts of illnesses. You can do exercise to release any pain or feeling of discomfort. Yoga and moving the body, breathing into the pain to release it. How yoga, and healing meditation helped me relieve pain by releasing past resentments.

If you find you have a conflict do the conflict resolution exercise.

Meditate to elevate your vibration and …. Wellbeing

Believe before you see and the power of faith

Read: Louise Hay “You Can Heal Your Life” and Joe Dispenza “The Placebo”, “Changing the Habit of Being You”, plus Joe Dispenza meditations: “Belief Change” and “Healing of the Energy Centres” are also very powerful for disintegrating any negative habitual thought patterns

The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude: The Key to Happiness

Be in a constant state of gratitude.

When you are grateful you are in a state of receiving.

You cannot have anything that you want and don’t already have, until you start to appreciate what you already have and are deeply grateful for having it.

Your mind is like a magnet that attracts everything it focuses on. Human beings are subject to the same gravitational laws of the universe. And whatever you focus on will expand. Say affirmations daily in the present tense, feeling the emotion you want to be feeling and feeling it in the present as you say your affirmations, and be grateful for having received it already.

Tony Robins refers to this as ‘Incantations’ – the more power in the feeling you emit, the more you will accelerate your results.

My return to God, Jesus, and the church seven years ago made me realise that I had stopped being grateful for my life and what I already had a long time ago, and that was a massive reason for the breakdown on the way I was experiencing life.

I am now incredibly grateful for my life, for my past, the good, the bad and the ugly; including my history with mum, whom I’ve since made peace with a few years ago now, and I’m even grateful for the worst things that ever happened to me, as I now see them all as my greatest blessings, without which, I wouldn’t be where I am now. As ultimately, they have led me back to God, my faith, not just in myself but in a higher being and have helped me define my true purpose in life, which is being of service to others and making a difference in the world by being a contribution to others, in whichever way I can.

Conclusion  

Practice these to reach the elevated emotions of love, joy, and enlightenment. My greatest teacher and mentor is God and life itself. Without them in my life, I wouldn’t be here to share my story with the world, seeking to make a difference in people’s lives.

So remember to Breathe, get present to now in each and every moment, become Aware of your thoughts and feelings, Accept everything already there, exactly as it is, Surrender and take full responsibility for everything in your life, forgive others and specially, forgive yourself, get Clarity on what you want to create and let go any hurt or resistance, practice yoga, meditation, or any exercise you enjoy and resolve any internal conflicts as soon as they show up and be super Grateful for everything in your life. 

I also recommend that you practice “The Morning Miracle” by Hal Elrod, exercises daily:

1.    Reading

2.    Writing

3.    Meditating

4.    Exercising

5.    Eat Healthy

6.    Gratitude

Like the weather, problems are all part of life, but they are also all temporary and they soon come to pass. Don’t make it mean anything about yourself or others, and above all never take things personally. Take 100% full responsibility for everything in your life and never compare yourself to others.

When we stop worrying about what others think, say and do, we will have nothing to worry about again. 

Comparison is the death of all joy. Other people’s opinion is none of your business and never worry about what others think about you. Accept that everyone is doing the best that they can. Nothing they do is ever about you. It’s all about them. Focus on yourself, your internal dialogue, check in your emotions, resolve any internal conflicts. Only ever compare yourself to how you were the day before and always strive to be that little bit better than the day before, each and every day of your life and accept the bad days, as well as the good ones and learn the lessons. They are always gems of wisdom. 

At all times, remember to breathe purposefully and deeply, become aware of any resistance to what you want, accept yourself and others exactly as you and they are and exactly as you and they are not. Surrender any resistance to acceptance. Review your days daily, take with you what works, leave behind what didn’t, and always aim to do your best. Get clarity and decide to be happy and choose love, over any other negative emotion, allow yourself to be happy, loving and joyful. Keep a journal and give up all your past and resentments and always be grateful for what you already have and what you are about to receive and everything you want will show up.

Biography:

Anna is an emotional intelligence coach and entrepreneur with a passion for making a difference to others. Founder of DestinySculpting - emotional intelligence made easy. She is an original Mexican Scott, half-Scottish and half-Mexican, born in Mexico City. She then lived in Glasgow where she graduated with a BA in Mass Media and Communication before moving to London to work in television. She has over 20 years’ experience working in TV and is currently writing her first book: ‘Revival: Seven Acts of Recovery’ a simple guide on how to overcome anxiety and depression, based on her own personal experiences.

You can contact Anna at DestinySculpting.com

©    Anna Vilchis has asserted her moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.