Latest / feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell / "maybe this year i'll feel better..."

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"maybe this year i'll feel better..." · feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell

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  Maybe this year I'll feel better.
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  Maybe this year my brain won't feel under the weather.
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  I'll have some problems, but I'll find some solutions.
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  Simply being happy is my New Year's resolution.
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  So maybe this year I'll get out of bed and feel excited for the
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  day. And my bones won't be brittle,
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  my skin not made of clay. But if I don't feel better, I'll
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  just look in the mirror and say, well, maybe I'll be happy next
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  year. This was a poem that I wrote
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  several years ago, just after New Year's had passed.
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  And I saw everyone around me making resolutions and swearing
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  to be a better version of themselves.
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  They set all of these grand goals, and many of them went on
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  to achieve them. And I was faced with the same
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  mental health problems that I had been dealing with for years.
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  And I thought to myself, wow, it's just going to be another
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  year of feeling bad. It's going to be another year of
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  struggling while everyone around me seems to succeed and thrive.
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  It's going to be another year of being me.
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  And I was so upset. I was so deep in my struggle
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  with mental illness that I felt like I was broken because I
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  couldn't just set a resolution. I couldn't find the energy
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  within me to set a goal to to be better for the next year.
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  And I felt like a complete failure because I'd given up
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  before I'd even started. And that is inherently the
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  problem with how you may be facing healing your mental
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  health. It wasn't until I broke down the
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  barrier of needing a place to start and instead just started
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  not worrying about anything else started ridiculously small.
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  That is when I began to see real progress with my mental health.
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  My name is Ethan Jewell and welcome back to Feel Your
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  Feelings. It's Tuesday, which means I will
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  be dissecting a poem that I wrote.
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  I'm still workshopping a name, maybe Poetry Tuesdays, maybe
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  Together Tuesdays. I'm working on coming up with a
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  name. But what matters is today we're
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  going to be talking about the new year and we're going to be
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  talking about specifically how it pertains to your mental
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  health. If you're anything like me, this
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  time of year is really hard. You are dealing with the grief
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  of another year going by, of perhaps feeling like you wasted
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  it, or feeling like you didn't hit the goals you wanted to.
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  Maybe you didn't heal as much as you wanted to.
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  And at the same time, you're faced with the overwhelming,
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  crushing, impending feeling of the next year coming far too
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  fast. I've been dealing with this
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  feeling every single January for the past six years, and it's a
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  really hard feeling. You're letting go of what was
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  and simultaneously trying to set your sights on what is going to
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  be. And there's this pressure to set
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  goals. There's this pressure to go into
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  the new year being the best version of yourself.
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  But the problem is when you're depressed, when you're
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  struggling with your mental health, it is very hard to set
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  realistic goals because of course, you want to be the best
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  version of yourself. You want to heal.
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  All of us want to heal, but we want to already be healed.
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  The process of healing is so difficult it can feel almost
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  impossible. How can we set a goal for
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  something that we can't even understand?
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  How can we set this goal of healing when we don't even know
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  what healing looks like? So every year we try and we say
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  this year is going to be different.
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  This year I'm going to improve. And then by the second or third
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  week, we're back to square 1 and we think, what is wrong with me?
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  I can't even commit to healing for a year.
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  And that's the problem. We're setting our goals far too
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  high. I remember many times going into
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  the new year saying this is the year that I heal.
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  But the problem is I was too zoomed out.
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  I was focusing on the entire year.
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  I was focusing on these great grand, big moments of healing.
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  And in your mental health journey, those moments almost
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  never exist. There is no one grand moment.
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  There's no one moment where you're going to be ready to
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  heal. There's no one moment where
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  you're going to know exactly what you're supposed to do.
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  This is a trap and it is a cruel one because you keep setting
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  expectations and then inevitably being disappointed in yourself
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  when you shouldn't be because you're trying.
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  So today we're going to talk about what this looks like, why
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  we do this to ourselves, how it hurts us, and ultimately how we
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  can go into this year to truly heal our mental health.
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  So the new year can feel heavy because we've been taught from a
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  psychological, from a social standpoint, that January is a
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  starting point, that if we don't start in January, well, then
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  that's another year wasted. And that is a totally ridiculous
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  lie that were sold. You know, this idea of New
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  Year's resolutions, I think it's great to set goals for yourself,
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  but at the same time, it puts on this ridiculous pressure at the
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  start of the year to go into another year being the absolute
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  best version of yourself. And that's just unfair.
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  I mean, we're coming off of seasonal depression.
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  The weather is cold, the days are still short, and you just
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  expect yourself to jump into the best version of what you can be.
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  It is unfair. We're sold this belief of if I
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  don't change now, I never will. We treat January like a doorway
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  to change, but most of the change happens in the hallway
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  after that door. It happens when you allow
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  yourself to walk through that door and keep going no matter
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  what. The problem with starting fresh,
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  with having this moment where everything is supposed to
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  change, where you're supposed to let go of everything, the
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  problem with that is that you are a person with history.
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  You can't just magically flip a switch because it's January and
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  erase all of the pain and the trauma and all of the mental
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  health issues you've been dealing with for years.
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  That's just not how it works. There's this immense pressure to
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  be different when in reality you are the same person.
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  You are the same person with the same hurt that you have and and
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  the same mental health struggles that you've been dealing with.
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  And it's unfair and unrealistic to expect yourself to just leave
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  that all behind. And that's not how healing
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  works. We're not supposed to drop
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  everything or go around it. We're supposed to go through it.
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  We're supposed to carry all of our baggage with us until we
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  become strong enough to live with it.
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  The pain that you feel all year, what you've been struggling
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  with, it doesn't wait for January.
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  So why should the care and attentiveness that you give that
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  pain wait for January as well? It just doesn't make sense.
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  The mental health issues that we face are there all year round,
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  yet we are putting all this pressure on ourselves to try to
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  deal with it starting in the new year.
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  This whole concept, this whole idea of starting fresh in the
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  new year of, of really dealing with all the issues you've been
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  having, especially when it comes to your mental health, it is
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  ridiculous. So let's talk about what we can
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  do instead. Now, I'm always getting on this
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  podcast and I'm preaching about healing not being a linear
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  journey. And that especially reigns true
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  when it comes to something like this.
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  This idea that we start in January and we keep healing
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  throughout the entire year and everything is totally fine and
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  by the end of the year we've reached our goal.
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  It's ridiculous. It's not realistic because
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  healing is not linear. You will have setbacks.
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  And if you have this expectation that you're going to start
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  strong and keep that going throughout the entire year, you
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  will be disappointed because inevitably there will be days
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  that feel like day one. That will happen.
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  I have had more day ones than I can count.
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  I have had more days where I feel like I'm just starting off.
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  I mean, literally in the past two weeks I had a day one.
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  I've been working on healing my mental health for more than six
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  years, and just two weeks ago I felt like I was back to square
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  1. And that is the cruel nature of
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  healing your mental health. It is not some beautiful linear
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  journey where you start one day and then one day you stop and
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  you're healed. No, when you struggle with
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  mental illness, you are always learning and you are always
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  trying and you're always carrying that weight.
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  And I still carry that same weight with me to this day.
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  But what matters is what happened in between.
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  You slowly and silently became stronger.
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  You slowly and silently learned the insurance and outs of your
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  emotions, how you deal with your feelings, how to feel them, and
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  how to carry them without it ruining your life.
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  So yes, I can say I keep having day ones, but I know how to deal
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  with them. The day one didn't ruin my life,
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  it just threw me off for a day or two.
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  I was able to shrug that off and keep going because that's what
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  realistic healing looks like. We need to stop setting these
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  big unrealistic goals that will inevitably lead us to be
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  disappointed and instead we need to zoom in.
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  You know, people always tell you zoom out your perspective, look
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  at the big picture. But I'm going to tell you, you
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  should zoom in a little bit. Go day by day, go hour by hour.
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  Do 1 ridiculously small thing for yourself going into this
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  year. Don't focus on a full reset.
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  Don't focus on being the perfect version of yourself going into
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  2026. Instead, focus on what small
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  acts help you every single day. Focus on the tiny little actions
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  that you can take towards healing.
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  Let today be enough for today. Redefine your progress.
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  Don't be afraid to show up imperfectly, because what
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  matters is you're showing up for yourself.
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  When you're hurt, when you're sad, when you're dealing with
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  your mental health issues, show up imperfectly.
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  You don't have to get it right on the first try.
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  You don't have to get it right on the 100th try, but what
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  matters is you're there for yourself and you're showing
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  yourself that you matter because you do.
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  You are more than your feelings and you deserve to heal one day
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  at a time. So going into this new year,
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  don't set yourself up for this grand.
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  This year, I'll be happy. Instead, focus on today.
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  Focus on one small step that you can do for yourself today to
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  slowly work towards healing. I believe in you one day at a
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  time. Thanks so much for being here.
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  That's going to wrap it up for today's episode.
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  If you need help feeling your feelings, you should check out
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  my music on all platforms under the name of Ethan Jewel.
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  I almost guarantee it'll make you cry.
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  Also, if you enjoy this podcast, the best way that you can
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  support me right now is by getting some merch.
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  I just dropped some merch last month and I think it's pretty
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  cool. You can find a link to it in the
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  description or you can find it at ethanjewel.myshopify.com.
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  Also, drop me a comment and let me know how you are approaching
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  your mental health this year and maybe if there's one small thing
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  that you're doing for yourself every single day.
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  So thank you so much for being here.
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  Thank you for understanding that sometimes you just need to zoom
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  in a little bit and take your mental health one step at a
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  time. And as always, thank you for
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  feeling your feelings. I'll see you next time.