Dear Self, Grow Up Already!

“Since when did you want to be an author, Renee?”, my mother asked me last week. Even my own mother didn’t know I was intending to write this book.

You know those bad days that pop up from time to time? The ones that seem to come out of nowhere and last from a few hours to a few weeks? 

On what would turn out to be one of the most important days of my life, the day started out just like this kind of bad. I was in the throes of a funk and had no idea why. Just woke up on the wrong side of the bed as my grandmother would’ve told me.

None of this makes any difference of course, life still goes on. I still had to get out of bed, still had to feed the kids, and still had to clean the house. It was a saturday morning, I remember it like it was yesterday. 

After breakfast, as I stood doing the dishes, the phone rang. 

I was not in the mood to talk to anyone but I looked to see who it was that was calling. It was my best friend. She had been going through some stressful times recently so I went ahead and answered, hoping we’d discuss her life and it might help pass the time while I finished the boring dishes.

I was not that lucky. Like most good friends, she picked up on my foul mood nearly right away. “What’s wrong?” she implored with all the friendly good will in the world.

“Oh nothing…”, I replied. I was hoping she’d drop the subject and get caught up in the reason for her call but again, not so lucky.

She went right to work, like it was her sworn duty, to cheer me up.  She pulled out all the stops. “It will be okay, you’ve been going through a lot lately.” and “Get dressed up and go out today, do something for you.” and “Think about all the things you are grateful for.” She went on with these fluffy statements for close to 10 minutes.

The more she said, the more angry I found I became.

In my head I was silently yelling at her, “Of course it will be okay,” and “this is not the time to go out.” I was getting more and more furious with her but I couldn’t figure out why right away.

I knew that her intentions were good and that she was trying to help.

I hurriedly finished the phone call because I was fuming. I didn’t want to end up yelling at her when I didn’t fully understand what was going on with me.

As I was mindlessly washing each dish, my mind wandered back to that call. Why was she saying those things that I found so infuriating? Why was what she was saying so wrong?

I realized that you often hear people say, “snap out of it,” or “think about how great your life is,” when people hear someone is in a bad mood. Almost always with the best intentions too.

These are not the correct response to a bad mood though. This I knew in the very depths of my soul. The solutions she had been offering me would not help my bad mood, they would only serve to mask it and possibly make me forget it temporarily. How is that helpful? 

“Well,” I thought. “If I don’t think that is the right response to deal with a bad day and it feels so wrong to me, what is the way I deal with bad moods?”

The answer came to me nearly right away. It was 6 consecutive steps that I used every time one of these depressing funks showed up in my world. Masking or pretending they didn’t exist was not the answer, it was very important work needing to be done in these moments. That was why I got so upset at hearing I should distract myself from this mood. 

Instead of distracting myself, and essentially inviting the bad mood to return as soon as the distraction wears off, I cherish my bad moods and use them to make my life better. I work hard in these moments to ensure I never have a bad mood, for that same reason, ever again.

How do I do this? I ran to the living room, sat down with a pen and paper and wrote down exactly how I do this. Every step listed clearly. 

I started writing thinking that maybe I would write a blog post about it… 

Only, I went into so much detail, walking the reader through each of the six steps I use to escape the prison of these mental funks and to build the future I wanted most instead.

Dear Self, Grow Up Already! was born. My blog had turned into a full length book!

I named the 6 steps The BLUEprint Method™. This method shows you how to Build Life Using Emotions and turn that into a blueprint to guide your future choices. 

Emotions get a bad rap today. Most people spend their lives hiding them, denying they exist, and squishing them down deep so no one knows they have them.

However, emotions are terribly misunderstood. They each, even the uncomfortable ones, have a valuable purpose in your life. Dear Self, Grow Up Already! shows you how to make them all work to benefit you every time. 

I know The BLUEprint Method™ outlined in this book will revolutionize your life just like it has mine. Since writing this book and learning so much about myself and the way I process emotions and thoughts, I have become more forgiving of myself, far more productive, and have found that I can really help others to better understand their feelings and know what to do with them. Now, this has become my mission!

I want to share this method with everyone who struggles with emotions or with finding clarity and direction in their life. I want to help everyone who has difficult relationships that they desperately want to repair and don’t know where to start. Everyone who suffers from a high functioning depression can find some quick relief following these 6 steps. It is my life’s work to share this info with anyone needing to hear it. I want to shout it from the rooftops! 

I’ve seen this work so many times in the lives of the people I help using The BLUEprint Method™.  There is no better feeling in the world than knowing that you’ve really helped someone else. 

I hope you will read Dear Self, Grow Up Already! or share it with someone who could benefit from it. Help me to spread the word that emotions are here to help us grow! I’m glad to have you on board.

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