Finding Happiness

Be miserable or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done. It’s always your choice.

Life is a funny thing. It seems to be this never-ending constant of being busy and it can be really difficult to stay positive and in a healthy mindset as you go through your day-to-day tasks. I started doing these quotes of the week for a specific reason. I wanted to take conscious time each week to reflect on my life and check in with myself.

The Results May Surprise You

What I’ve found is that so much of our attitude towards everything that is thrown at us is of our own choosing. I really love this week’s quote, “Be miserable or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done. It’s always your choice.”

Taking the time to sit down and set my intentions for my own emotional well-being has been imperative to my mental health. It’s an opportunity to check in, assess my attitude, assess my goals and figure out where I want to go from there.

Am I having a hard week? Maybe. Do I have to dwell on it? No.

Work on What’s in My Control

Some things I won’t be able to change, but I can change my reaction to or how I handle them. Even giving yourself grace to accept the hard and be sad or angry might be what’s needed. However, you can’t let that control your entire life. I’ve dealt with some really, really hard things this year that are completely outside of my control and do not pass quickly. I’ve had to learn how to work around them.

Sinking into a hole of grief is not an option. However, I still need to give myself permission to grieve. If I’m having hard moments, I might go take 10 minutes to myself to have a good cry, do a quick bit of yoga, make some tea, or just sit outside and breathe. Doing this allows me to feel, focus on what is bothering me and embrace it rather than hide it.

I accept that the day will never be full of perfect moments.

Moving On

After I’ve taken that time, I take a few more deep breaths and focus on what’s next. What’s the task in front of me that I need to handle? What’s something that’s really exciting me at the moment? It could be a task for work, scheduling a day out with friends, doing an activity with my daughter, or finding a new crochet project.

One foot in front of the other, focusing on the goals of the day. While the quote mentions motivation, that’s actually a word I’ve always swapped out for determination. I understand why people use it, but I am rarely motivated to do the things that need to get done. I am certainly never motivated to handwash dishes or fold the laundry and I have never met another person who is either.

However, I may be determined to keep the house clean or to keep up a streak of working out 5 days a week, or fill in the blanks with whatever. It’s about setting goals and figuring out what needs to be done to achieve them.

It’s Always a Choice.

In those hard moments, it’s always a choice. You can sit and wallow, or you can make the decision to keep moving. I think that’s the heart of the quote for this week. You set your own destiny and you are in charge of your emotions and how you respond to them.

By giving yourself permission to feel and then also permission to move on, you are making a decision to keep going. To find things that you are passionate about, to better yourself and reach your goals despite whatever hard things life may be throwing at you.

To be clear, just because you may only allow yourself a small portion of time to wallow, it does not mean that you have moved on or no longer feel that strong emotion. It means you have given yourself time to acknowledge it, and are willing to let other things in simultaneously. Humans are complex and capable of feeling multiple emotions at the same time.

You don’t need to let the grief consume you. In fact, if you do, you’re more likely to get stuck in a downward spiral for a greater amount of time. Think about spilling a cup of coffee on the way out to work. It sucks. It also has the potential for the single event to ruin your day. You had to stop, clean things up, potentially be late to work, rush through things, didn’t have time to remake it, etc. All these little, and in the grand scheme of things they really are miniscule, events that can add up to an awful day. But starting off with the frustrated mindset, can leave you searching for the bad in everything you come across.

How long did it really take you to clean up that coffee spill? Probably less than five minutes. Are you going to let that five minutes ruin the next 12+ hours? I hope not! Clean up that spill, change if you need to, and acknowledge to whoever needs to know that you may be a few minutes late. My guess is that it won’t make a significant dent in the rest of your day if you can just slow down and deal with the situation as it happens. If your boss knows you’re behind, you don’t have to worry about rushing which would likely lead to more mishaps. It allows you to use the time to work to listen to some music or a podcast to calm yourself down so that when you get in you can be productive instead of feeling frazzled.

It’s all about perspective.

So, all in all, I’m going to keep finding within each day to remember the little bits of happiness and let go of the things that cause grief and uncomfortableness. I will allow myself time to feel, but to not allow negative thoughts to consume me – it’s an active choice - and I hope you will do the same.

Lots of love,

Nikki