Help with loneliness, depression and time management/discipline

Hello, I’m new here but I know the feeling all too well. I struggle with the same things and have self esteem issues as well as struggling with having confidence and loving myself. You are most definitely not alone friend.

@Sensitive54

Hi,

I've also been thinking a lot about time management skills, and my own struggle with them. The struggle has been very, very real during quarantine. There are some lifestyle bootcamp websites out there that offer decent advice. One particular tip resonated with me recently: look for ways that your disorganization is creating hardship, and try to untangle the cause and effect of that hardship on paper, so that you can plan a way to avoid it. For instance, I realized that I wasn't setting a day to meal-plan and go shopping, I was running into trouble over and over again during the week, with lots of little grocery trips and so forth, that were eating up my time.

I also realized, recently, that some of the times in my life when I felt "happiest," were days when I didn't have to think about the question "what do I do next?" I tend to feel kind of paralyzed or confused when I have to face that question, and I waste alot of time on it. There are so many choices! I'll start to do one task, and then think of another, and move to it, and before it's over with, I've not actually finished anything, and I feel lame. Do you ever feel like this--like you have too many choices and they paralyze you?

There have been times, though, when my day was so tightly structured, by someone other than myself, that I didn't have to stop and make those particular kinds of choices all day long. For me, the most striking example of this was when I volunteered as a camp counselor some time ago. My day was divided into chunks and each block was designated for a specific class or activity, and I just worked solidly, or ate lunch, or hiked, or whatever, with the campers, until that time block was over, and then I did the next thing on the schedule. The blocks were 1.5-2 hours long, which seemed about right for my own attention span, lol. The thought-intensive stuff was in the morning and the more active stuff came in the afternoon, which was great because a lot of people flag, and need a way to re-energize, after eating lunch. AND, the other great thing about that brief time in my life was that I had a tiny living space to work with and maintain. I didn't have mounds of stuff, or tons of clothes at camp because I had pared everything down to the basics... I had just what I needed, and it felt good.

For me, then, too much stuff and too many options does not feel like "freedom." It feels overwhelming. I have to find balance by placing limits on myself and when I get it right I don't feel deprived. I feel liberated from the paralysis of indecision. This month, as party of the whole New Years Resolution thing, I actually downloaded a daily schedule from a camp website (I found a good one at a boyscout camp website), and made a template that I'm experimenting with. I'm assigning ongoing projects to the differet time blocks. I'm also trying to set a more general goal or two (not a task but a general quality like "mindfulness" or a general habit like "journaling") to aim for each week. I'm not going for perfection-- just aiming for "doing better."

If you want quick and dirty tips on how to change your habits, consider this guy: https://medium.com/2-minute-madness/make-it-stupid-easy-but-do-it-every-day-3fdeb6b8db23

Regarding loneliness, try to modify your expectations. If we go into our relationships with others too hungry, we are going to be disappointed at some point. It's not a matter of if, but when, that disappointment will hit. It's better to be pretty much full before we go in to our relationships with others.. In other words, if we seek to get peace inside ourselves first, we'll be less vulnerable to disappointment when we deal with all the other, lovely, imperfect humans out there.

Your are made in God's image and loved; hope you have a good day

@Sensitive54

Same here, I know that frustration. It's something that I know all too well too. Something that helps me is to talk to one of my trusted friends about it and try my best to describe it so they know what I'm feeling it has helped me a lot.