Having lived the experience, I believe everyone who suffers from eczema deserves a better quality of life, the type of life where you can do what you want to do, and be who you want to be.
I would imagine by now, after years of suffering, that you are you sick and tired of the scratching and having bleeding and damaged skin, I’m sure that you are fed-up with feeling ashamed and making excuses for how you look, I’m sure that having lack of confidence and self-esteem because of how you think about your skin is draining, and that the sleepless nights, the stress and loneliness of suffering from eczema is crippling. You have it within you to be free of all this.
The bottom line is eczema is YOUR skin problem, it’s YOUR priority, it’s not a priority for anyone else, it’s only YOU that feels the pain and endures the suffering. Yes, family and friends may have sympathy for what you’re going through, but their sympathy is not going to heal your skin, only YOUR hard work, motivation, and drive will accomplish that, so it’s a must that YOU put some accountability measures in place to live free from this condition.
Habits are the small decisions you make and the actions you perform every day. A habit is a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How healthy or unhealthy you are is a result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are is a result of your habits.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray. Moving from suffering from eczema to living free from it starts with forming better habits. When you learn to transform your habits, you can transform your life.
THE PERSON YOU NEED TO BECOME
You don’t need me to tell you that eczema is a skin condition that can be emotionally, socially and physically draining, just writing this brings back a whole range of memories that I’d rather forget, I give gratitude that they are now just memories, and to be free from it is truly amazing.
So, just what is it going to take to live life free from the condition? Let’s look at the person I needed to become, or the attributes I needed to have, to live free from it, and to start enjoying a better quality of life, and a better state of wellbeing.
Having the right mindset is so important when it comes to dealing with your eczema, this step is about Identifying the person you need to become, and doing the work to become that person, to live life free from the condition.
HAVE A GROWTH MINDSET
You will need a can-do not a done to mindset, you are the one who manages your eczema, don’t let your eczema manage you. So, you will need to let go of any self-limiting beliefs and negative self-talk about your relationship with eczema e.g. I accept that this is me; I can’t turn this around; eczema dictates how I live my life; I am not confident; I hate myself. These types of negative beliefs need to be flipped because beliefs are the foundations of our behaviours, and positive behaviours are needed to live free from eczema.
So, to live free from this condition you will need to be:
- Purposeful: As mentioned above you will need a strong why, a razor reason for wanting to live free from eczema, to get you through this journey and to get the results you desire, e.g. that smooth clear skin.
- Disciplined: You will need to do whatever it takes to get the desired results, even on those days when you don’t feel like it, because living FfE is a much better place to be than suffering day in day out with it.
- Educated: You will need to be willing to learn new things about yourself, about the condition, about how to heal yourself, and put that learning into action, so you get your desired results.
- Efficient: Time as its short, we lead busy lives, so you will need to make the most of the time that you do have to put into this journey.
- Patient: This is not a quick fix it’s a process, you will heal on the inside before the results show on the outside, so you will have to have patience with the process.
- Resilient: To manage and bounce back from any setbacks, sometimes you take 2 steps forward on the road to progress then get thrown a curveball so you then take 3 steps back, that’s life at times, so you must understand this and own it.
None of the above is beyond any of us, we all have it within ourselves to achieve whatever we desire, you just need to want it enough and put the things in place, whether internal or external, to achieve it.
You can build habits around all of the attributes mentioned above, you can build a habit around being:
- Purposeful: You can determine specified times and circumstances when you recite your Why statement as a means of helping you stay on track with your goal.
- Disciplined: You need to start saying “No” to requests that don’t align with your goal.
- Educated: You could watch one YouTube video, or read ten pages of a book per day on some aspect of nutrition, hydration, or sleep, that supports your knowledge of knowing how to manage your condition, then this impacts your behaviour to living FfE.
- Efficient: Time is short, our daily schedules are full, so you have to be efficient with you time to ensure that make time to do whatever it takes to do things that will enable you to live free from eczema.
- Patient: Should you run out of patience you can develop a set of questions that help you to reflect on why you ran out of it to help get yourself back on track.
- Resilient: When planning for setbacks you can put an ‘If this happens, then I will…’ process in place to counteract the setback.
You need to own being the person you need to become to beat this condition, so my advice is to do whatever it takes to be that person, in time your skin will love you for it, and in turn, you will love your skin.