the year i stopped trying to ‘fix’ myself

for most of my early 20s, my entire personality was “self-improvement project.”
new planners. new routines. new “this time i’m serious” speeches in the notes app.

and under all of that?
a quiet belief that i was broken.

when my mental health crashed and my meds side effects hit hard, my body changed fast. i gained weight. i lost routines. i didn’t recognize myself in photos. and for a while, my brain translated that as:
“see? proof. you really are the problem.”

what actually changed my life wasn’t a perfect morning routine or a new supplement. it was this one uncomfortable shift:

i stopped asking, “how do i fix myself?”
and started asking, “how do i take care of myself as i am… today?”

that looked way less glamorous than instagram makes “healing” look:

• going to the gym and walking for 10 minutes instead of skipping because i couldn’t do 60

• journaling one messy paragraph instead of forcing a 5-page spread

• choosing one non-negotiable per day instead of rewriting my entire life in one night

slowly, my emotional baseline shifted. i didn’t turn into a new person overnight. i just stopped abandoning myself every time life got heavy.

bounce back better, for me, isn’t about becoming some hyper-optimized robot version of yourself.
it’s about learning to build systems that work with your brain, your body, and your reality — so you can keep moving even when things aren’t pretty.

the glow up starts the day you stop treating yourself like a project and start treating yourself like a person.