I wish I had better eyesight! Why didn’t I take care of my eyes? Why do people that use the computer more have better eyesight than me? I don’t even play video games!

Blame. Jealousy. Negativity.

This string of emotions has caused me to be depressed about my eyesight. And whenever my parents told me to improve my eyesight, it was like pouring salt water onto an open wound.

In my mind I would think, “You think I don’t want to improve my eyesight?! I just don’t know how to!”

They would suggest wearing my glasses less. I can’t…

With a prescribed -5.75D and -5.5D in my right and left eye, respectively, there was just no way to function without my glasses. I may be able to take them off periodically, but to go long periods of time without them is just unrealistic.

I understood where they were coming from. My family and I both wanted the same thing: to improve my eyesight. But neither of us knew what steps to take. So I began researching:

After some quick Google searching, I first stumbled upon a woman’s journey toward eyesight improvement. Her eyesight was slightly better than mine, but close enough for me to relate. I watched through her entire playlist from oldest to newest (last to first video of playlist) and was very inspired. I also referred to the links in her video descriptions to see where she got her information from.

Through this, I discovered Jack Steiner’s website and YouTube channel. I spent several days educating myself on this topic and have now taken steps toward improving my eyesight.

The extremely summarized version of what I learned, and I encourage you to do your own research, is that I have lens-induced myopia (nearsightedness). This means that the stronger my lense prescription, the worse my nearsightedness becomes. The sellers of lenses usually prescribe stronger prescriptions than you need, which leads your eyes to become more and more reliant upon your spectacles.

So what have I done to take my first step towards actively improving my eyesight? After watching and reading through a lot of Jake Steiner’s content, I took his short quiz (which gives me an idea of where I stand) and swapped out my most recently prescribed glasses with the one I owned previously. I also ordered some weaker-lensed glasses (-5D on both), which I got in and started to wear yesterday. I have also began to take more frequent breaks, going outside and relaxing for a few minutes every hour. And so on…

I know this is something I cannot force; if I truly want to improve my eyesight naturally, it’s going to take many years.

So what do I feel about my eyesight now? I am very grateful for having the eyesight I have. I know there are people that are pushing to get my eyesight, and there are people that have better eyesight than me that take it for granted.

In the long-term, I am going to be very appreciative of my vision because of the journey I had to go through to correct it. I will realize my previous mistakes, take steps toward righting my wrongs, and seek to help others embark on their own journey towards bettering themselves.