the story
“Wow girl, I hope things get better soon. Seems like you’ve really been going through it.”
I was hanging out with a friend last week when she said this to me and quite frankly, I was a little confused. Had things gotten that bad? If you read last week’s newsletter, they absolutely had. But at that moment, I was feeling just fine. As I walked home later that night, I realized another way I’d grown tremendously since the beginning of this year. I’d finally learned how to shift my perspective.
At the top of the year I noticed how much my outlook on life had really been holding me back. I didn’t expect good things to happen to me, I would wake up feeling stuck and uninspired, and the overall vibe in my head was just kinda…meh. So many of my thoughts were laced with anxiety, fear, or general discontentment. As one would imagine, my mind wasn’t a particularly fun place to be.
The bright side? Never heard of her. Worst case scenario? Already thought of a million of them. I simply did not have the expectation that life was in my favor. Of course a pandemic, the remnant effects of the unhappy relationship I’d left a couple months prior, and regular consumption of the media didn’t make it any easier. It got to the point where I was so used to focusing on everything that went wrong that it just became a normal part of life. I had no idea how much it was influencing my perspective and everyday thoughts.
I was tired of feeling stuck, tired of assuming the worst, and tired of being consistently low vibe. A mindset shift was desperately needed, here’s a few lessons I learned along the way.
the lesson
Everyone goes through seasons of highs and lows. It’s totally normal. The expectation that we must be happy and positive all the time is unreasonable and probably a little unhealthy. However, after a certain point it’s your responsibility to shift back into a perspective that’s a bit more balanced. This isn’t some kind of on/off switch either. It takes conscious and consistent effort to change your outlook.
With that effort comes the need for patience. If you’ve been stuck in a rut for awhile, chances are there will be more than a few times where you’ll find yourself feeling like you’re right back where you started. I got frustrated a lot, especially when I was trying to actively change my perspective and something came around to challenge my efforts. Taking a second to breathe and acknowledge the fact that lots of friction often comes when we’re trying to change something always helped me move through the difficult moment.
Small steps can often count just as much as big ones do. Here’s a few practices I maintained that slowly but surely made me feel lighter and a bit more like the Universe was on my side:
Consistent exercise - for moving through and releasing tough emotions
Sunday gratitude journaling - summarizing all the things (big and small) that really sparked joy throughout the week
Joy jar - adding little slips of paper with gratitude, memories, and things I’ve loved to a big jar that I can read on my next birthday
Putting myself out there - doing things I was nervous about that ultimately turned out in my favor proved that it’s possible for great things to happen
This high vibrational playlist on Spotify
the light
It wasn’t clear to me how much my perspective had shifted until just a few weeks ago when I’d been hit with a lot at once and still found a way to process and recover without falling into a doomsday hole. I’d had my moments when I needed to feel my feelings, take time to rest, and recover, as we all should do. However, when push came to shove, I was able to balance two truths: a lot of tough things had occurred over a short period that I needed extra time to process and it was absolutely possible for more great memories to come my way that would make the past few weeks fade into a distant memory.
To me, it’s not about constantly being happy. That’s unrealistic. However, I do have the power to choose what I focus on and how it impacts me in the long run. It’s about understanding that temporary feelings don’t have to diminish my long term happiness if I don’t want them to. I can choose to tend to a tough feeling and then choose to connect with something that I know will bring me joy. I can choose to have a preference for finding the positive and act accordingly, but also know that sometimes there isn’t a positive side. I have the power to spend less time on the things that give me the grumps and more time on the things that bring light into my world.
Not every day is the happiest, but I know that I am much happier because of the effort I put in to focus on the things that bring me joy and release the feelings that no longer serve me. So as the weather gets a little chillier and we get stuck inside with our thoughts a little more, here’s two questions for you. What’s one thing that you really enjoyed about this week? What kind of consistent practice can you do to make more space for the good stuff happening to you and around you? That’s all for now my friends, talk to you next weekend ❤️