Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 367 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! You guys are awesome for always showing up, not for me but for yourself, now I like it that you’re here so thank you for that too. And remember to share and subscribe and leave a 5 star review if you’re loving the episodes, if you are odds are that your friends will too…..that’s the highest complement I can get is you sharing an episode with someone that you love. So thank you for that.
I read a post the other day, it said let’s clear this up. “The glass is half empty if it started full and it’s half full if it started empty” I love that so much. I hadn’t heard it put that way before. I’m sure it’s been floating around but think about that. Because it really got me thinking. its a perfect example of an exact same scenario with two totally different perspectives on it with one the glass being half empty means somethings been taken away. Somethings missing, there’s a decline. the other being that the glass is half full Means somethings been added there’s progress there’s hope, there’s improvement.
I have been a glass half full girl for I think my whole life. Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t gone through bad times. I have, I just know they’re gonna get better and I don’t tend to dwell on the bad stuff. I also know that I create my own happiness or unhappiness by the way I look at things and that the way I look at things is a choice. I don’t have to just accept someone else’s ideas or opinions, I have my own. Growing up we sort of have to adapt to the hand we are dealt. As fully functioning adults, we don’t have to do that anymore. And if I do there’s only one person I have to blame, and that’s me.
Children adapt to the conditions they’re given they have no choice. Adapting can be positive or negative. As a child you adapt because you have no choice so if you have parents that are alcoholics or drug addicts you adapt the best way you can because that’s what you have, you don’t have a choice. Adapting is good there. Learning to adapt is a good thing. I read a study that showed that people who are able to adapt do better. But that same study, called the Ma Bell study showed that people who truly adapted when tragedy hits do one thing in particular. They don’t dwell on why it happened or what they had done to deserve it, they instead focused on what they could do now to make things better. They did not ask why bad things happen to good people, they asked what can good people do when bad things happen? The ones that didn’t truly adapt asked why me? They raged at the changes and instead of turning to find out what could make things better they turned to drugs, alcohol, they got divorced, they had heart attacks from the stress of it. They didn’t focus on what can make it better they focused on whoa is me, I wish things could go back to normal, I wish this never happened, I can’t handle all this stress so Im going to numb myself and in turn it didn’t get better for them. Fully functioning adults have the opportunity to create a specific condition, Embrace a current condition or even change an unwanted condition if need be… we don’t have to accept the direness of just any given condition anymore. We have more power than that.
Now a lot of adults never grow out of the phase where life is just happening and they are just reacting as they go along. When things go wrong they rage at the problem and say why me…they talk about the good old days, and wish they could have it go back to a version of the way it was. They are living life as if on a raft in the middle of the ocean that’s at the whim of the waves, that’s in peril if their are storms and if one thing goes really wrong the whole thing is going down. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
I can remember as a kid we would clean houses for extra money, I told myself that when I was older I wasn’t cleaning anyones houses including my own I would have someone that does it because I did not like the way it made me feel. And look there is no shame in cleaning houses or doing whatever you can do support you and your family but if you have ambitions higher than that then you can and should be changing it and raging at the state of your life and crying over wishing it were back to the way it was is not going to get you there. We have had our house cleaner for 15 years, we view her as family. She does really well and she has several girls that work for her, I love seeing it. She is a true entrepreneur though. She recently saved money and bought a food truck so that she and her friend could make money doing something they really loved and it’s just opening up and I can’t wait to see what it does. She isn’t just reacting, she’s creating. She sees the glass as half full. She knows the future is better if she grows and takes risks and keeps creating. It would be super easy for her to just keep cleaning but that’s not what brings her joy….she didn’t cry because she doesn’t have opportunities, she didn’t cry because the language barrier is tough, she proudly and happily worked doing something she didn’t necessarily love doing, but knowing that cleaning houses allows her the money to do things moving forward that will make her life better. She is grateful for that at the same time hopeful for bigger and better things….Now I hope she keeps her cleaning business as well but that’s selfish of me, we were laughing about that when She told me her inspiration for why she wanted to start her own food truck. she spends a lot of time at a pub where there’s community and social interaction around food and it brings her joy, she said I didn’t see anywhere where Honduran food was a part of that and so Im going to make that happen. I love that about her. She’s not simply raging that no-one has created a Honduran food restaurant, She’s not waiting for the perfect time, or wishing someone else would do it, she is creating a better life for herself.
It begs the question…..
Are you creating? Or are you simply reacting to life as it unfolds? Are you maybe longing for past times wishing things were “back to a version of normal” or are you looking to how to make things even better than they were before?
We recently bought the house next to us and we have put it on the market to rent. It’s a big change for us, it’s a risk that we are not used to. I found myself talking to one of my friends recently and saying I almost wish things could go back to the way they were before we bought this house because it has added unnecessary stress to our lives but I was doing the exact thing that the people in the Ma Bell study showed caused people to make things worse…instead of focusing on what I could do to make it better, I was focusing on wishing it were like it used to be or focusing on the stress of it all. Now….As you know if you have been listening to my podcast for a while, I have really been focused on catching those negative thoughts pretty quickly and I noticed that one as I was saying it, and I thank my beautiful friend Donna for pressing me a little to get it out of me, which allowed me to get to work on changing it. So I asked what can I do right now to make it better? I made a beautiful flyer, I put a sign out, I got busy doing the things I knew I could do to make it better and I immediately starting feeling better! It’s sometimes those subtle thoughts we have that send us into spirals. We may not even realize we have them until we speak them out loud so if you’re feeling stuck or feeling down, talk to a coach or a trusted friend..they may not have the answer but you do and sometimes talking it through can bring out the answer or at the very least, show you where your heads at.
Right now, if you watch the news for even two minutes it’s easy to see the glass as half empty. It’s easy to just feel negative, it’s easy to be worried about the future. It’s easy to say, Im gonna hunker down, Im staying in, shutting the blinds, eating ice cream and watching movies. Because we don’t want to put ourselves out there. It’s easy to react to every new crisis and pull back rather than adapt and step forward. It’s easier to drink the crisis away or avoid it all together by drowning in social media or netflix. But are those things going to make it better or are they making it worse? That’s the question we each have to ask ourselves.
Are you a in a life boat right now flailing with every crisis just praying there’s not a big one that takes you down or hoping for someone else to come save you? Or are you figuring out the best bath forward? Are you figuring out how to create a sail from something so you have direction, are you figuring out a way to create a sea anchor so that your boat has stability, once you have stability and direction, you’re in business.
We live in a society that thinks government is the answer or that someone else is the answer when in reality no-one is coming to save you, no-one is coming to make your life better. I know that doesn’t seem positive but it’s the most positive thing I can tell you because it’s the truth. Believing the alternative leaves all the power to someone else.
But not us, you and me and all of the listeners of The Wildly successful Lifestyle podcast, We want our power in our hands, we create our own stability and our own direction. What can you do right now to give your life much needed direction and much needed stability?
My challenge to you this week is to do two things, one that gives you direction and one that gives you stability. It could be as easy as making a list of the things you’re doing that make things better in your life, and if that’s hard to come up with that gives you something to work towards. It could be as easy as making a list of the things in your life that are really good and stable so that you don’t forget. Eric and I did this just this morning. Our relationship is better than ever our health is better than ever our finances are solid, this reminds us of our good stable base that’s OUR sea anchor.
What does that look like for you? That’s my challenge for the week. Share this with 3 people who are up for that challenge. I love you guys, Ill talk to you in a few days.
