Ever have a less than ideal day at work? No matter how hard you tried to accentuate the positive, you wound up feeling, well… kinda negative? Tell me about it, sister. Yesterday, I was feeling great – riding the wave of life and hanging ten. Until I wasn’t. Suddenly, a conversation with someone who was angry threw me off my surfboard, and I crashed into the waves.
I tried to get back on my board, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself up.
People who work in call centres deal with this kind of thing every day. Some folks are just plain angry. They bulldoze and bulldoze until they get what they want… and they’re not very nice about it in the process.
So what’s a girl to do?
According to Robert Holden, the author of “Shift Happens”and creator of “The HappinessProject”, it’s a no brainer. His work in psychology and healing, he says, has taught him that mental health is the capacity to choose your thoughts.
It’s the difference, he says, between pain and freedom.
You can let your run-in with that angry person ruin your whole day or just a few minutes of it. The choice is always yours: Pain or freedom?
Such a simple question. Such a simple answer.
Who knew it could be that easy?
Suddenly, I feel like I’m back on my board again. 😀
A friend of mine was downsized a few years ago at the age of 52.
He was really good at what he did. The employment counsellors told him that he had a great CV, wonderful references and an impressive portfolio.
Then they told him that the phone probably wasn’t going to ring because he’d be perceived as being “too old”. They said prospective employers might think he’d want too much money, too. My friend found himself between a rock and a hard place.
As places go, there aren’t many that feel worse than that.
But then something interesting happened. His neighbour was diagnosed with brain cancer. His mother-in-law died. And slowly but surely, he began to realise that lots of people in the world had it much worse than he did.
So he made a decision to do something many of us don’t.
He decided to “focus on the small good things and keep smiling”.
And those nine simple words have changed everything. Instead of letting bitterness and negativity take hold, he has built his own business and is taking one step forward at a time.
Has it been easy? No. Has it been gratifying? Absolutely.
Those nine simple words can change everything for you, too.
All you have to do — is do what they say — day after day after day.
Focus on the small good things and keep smiling.
And watch how life begins to spin in your direction. 😇
Ever feel like you’re in the middle of some version of hell? Maybe you’ve been diagnosed with a disease, maybe your kids are acting out, maybe you have a job that has you feeling stuck and frustrated.
Dr. Rick Hanson knows all about it. He’s a psychologist who writes about resilience and happiness in his weekly newsletter “Just One Thing”.https://www.rickhanson.net/
Hanson offers up one simple practice each week that can bring us more joy in life. This week’s ‘one thing’? “Accept Difficulty”. Somehow, so many of us have this idea that life is supposed to be perfect – the continuous unfolding of our dreams in every way.
It just doesn’t work like that.
Hanson says that we add a lot of unnecessary frustration, anxiety and self-criticism to our lives when we resistwhat is difficult. We often cling to our opinions that “It shouldn’t be this way!” But it’s that very clinging that is the source of our pain.
No clinging, no pain.
How do we stop? Be open to the thing that hurts. Let the experience just “be”. Step back from it and observe it, witness it, create some space between it and you. Then let it flow through you and on out the door.
Notice that when you stop struggling, you start feeling better.
Now you’re free to honour yourself for the difficult things you’ve been tussling with… and feel gratitude for all the many, many things in your life that are actually good and supportive and wonderful. Accept them, and watch the difficulties start to feel less stressful.
Do you sometimes feel you have to suffer in order to be happy? You know… “pay your dues”, “tough it out”, go to the “school of hard knocks”, “keep on trucking”?
What if you’ve been wrong all this time?
What if you’ve spent your whole life swimming upstream – tolerating feeling bad– when all along you’ve been missing the real reason you’re actually here on Earth — to feel GOOD and have FUN?
You’re not alone.
Remember that episode of “Seinfeld” where George Costanza takes stock of his life and realises that every decision he’s ever made has been wrong? Every decision has caused him to suffer.
Thanks to a flash of insight he has while talking with Jerry and Elaine at the coffee shop, he vows to start doing “the opposite”. And suddenly, his whole life begins to change.
George finally understands that happiness doesn’t depend on his circumstances. Heck, he’s unemployed and he lives with his parents. His happiness depends on the choice he makes to go after what he really wants, and actually be… well…happy.
It’s one of the greatest forms of self-care ever.
Do the opposite and watch the heavens part. They will. Really.
Ever notice that when you feel stuck in life, you’re focusing on what ISinstead of on what you want? Energetically, you can’t move because you’re not vibrating at the level of what it is you desire. You’re down in the proverbial dumps. Literally. And ya gotta get out.
Here’s an awesome energy hack to raise your vibration. Two little words: “What’s next?”
“What’s next?” focuses your thoughts like a laser beam on what lies ahead. It encourages you to shift into anticipation mode… to get excited about what’s around the corner… to take your attention away from what is, and focus instead on what will be.
It’s the law of attraction, pure and simple. Focus on what you want. “What’s next?”
Spiritual teacher Mike Dooley, author of the book “Notes from the Universe”, is known for his philosophy that “Thoughts become things”. He’s made a career of it, in fact. But he’s still talking about it, years after starting the “Notes from the Universe” franchise, because it’s true. Your thoughts manifest your future.
Just try it. Whenever you’re tempted to dwell on what’s going on in your life that you don’t want, redirect your thoughts and ask – out loud – “What’s next?”
Ever watch “The Voice”? You know the show I mean. Celebrity judges like Adam Levine, Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson sit in big red chairs with their backs to the contestants on stage, and listen to each “voice”.
Which artist should they coach to superstardom?
The judges are very smart. They’re usually gorgeous, too, but that’s not the point. The point is… they don’t rush the process. They have to be sure. They focus on the sound and the tone and the range. Does that voice speak to them and them alone? If it does, they follow their gut and hit the big red buzzer.
We have a voice, too. One that speaks to us and us alone.
It’s called our intuition. Some spiritual teachers call it our “internal GPS”. And just like the GPS navigation system in our cars, all we have to do is listen to the instructions it gives, and follow them.
But some of us have never learned to listen. It’s not our fault. No one ever taught us.
How do we cut through the white noise of life and actually listen to our inner voice? Two steps. That’s it.
One:Close your eyes for ten minutes every morning and focus on your breath to quiet your mind. Two: Spend time in nature as often as you can. That’s it.
Go ahead. Feel yourself in the big red chair. Listen. Really listen. When you hear something that feels good, hit the big red buzzer. Your inner GPS just gave you directions. All you have to do is follow them.
