Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 252 of the wildly successful Lifestyle podcast. Have you shared an episode yet? It’s easy to do just click on the 3 little dots at the bottom and hit share if you’re listening to apple podcast and while you’re at it give me a 5 star review if you’re loving them! Thank you!
I talk a lot about us each being the best that we can be and giving ourselves every opportunity for things to work in our favor and a lot of that, most of it has to do with our mindset and being consistent with good habits and routines.
You can do all the good things for yourself and work on being aware of your thoughts and taking responsibility for your own life and you will still have bad things happen.
Your car is gonna break down, someone in your family is going to disappoint you, you are going to be told no to something you want, People we love are still gonna die. This is all part of our human experience.
The other day I started my day with my normal routine but I had a sense of dread from the get go. You know that underlying sense when something isn’t going quite right, and it just hangs out in the back of your mind causing a little bit of anxiety? I had that.
So My day started and even though I had that little bit of dread, I still did my routine and my thought download and my journaling. So that was all good but as I got my day started I got the call that my sweet little neighbor, I’ve talked about her before but she had passed away, it hit me kind of hard. Then I was checking my email and I got a no, not yet to something I really wanted a yes to. So now things are adding up and then I got a message that something had been promised would be delivered to one of my big projects was delayed again and it literally has us at a stall on that project. This is not turning out to be my favorite day. This all happens in a relatively close time frame. Eric is not home and I know I have to manage my thoughts. So I just let myself cry about Betty and feel that loss. I’m really gonna miss her being over there. She’s been my friend for 15 years. I also know I’m upset so I know I need to give it a little time before I respond to the delayed project call and my other email telling me no.
I don’t have a lot of full days like this one and it felt bad and I let it feel bad. I got out of the house and went for a drive in the sun, I really wanted to go get an ice cream but I don’t eat dairy so I got an almond milk smoothie which was delicious. And I even had two glasses of sparkling rose’ with dinner which I normally don’t do during the week, So I was going all in in letting myself just feel bad but here’s the thing.
I didn’t want to compound any of my problems. I don’t want to feel bad tomorrow because I had a bad day today. So I only had two glasses of rose and lots of water so that the next morning I still feel good. I waited two hours to respond to the delayed project so I had let my frustration fade before I talked to anyone. And I thought of three ways the email telling me no was working in my favor. Because things are always working in my favor and yours too, we just have to search for how they are.
You see had I had a third drink I would have caused myself to feel bad the next day too.
Had I responded immediately out of frustration to the delayed project I could have
wreaked havoc on someone else’s day and now I feel worse about thAt and I’ll be having to make amends tomorrow. And had I only started making excuses and ruminating over the disappointing email, it could have taken my mood from bad to worse.
But I didn’t do any of those things, even though my primitive brain wanted to.
So the next morning I felt really good. I journaled that today is going to be an amazing day because that’s what I’m going to create. And that’s what I did.
We are going to have bad things happen, now hopefully they don’t all happen in one day, like they did for me but sometimes they do, even when they do, having self awareness even in the face of frustration and sadness and disappointment which I felt all in one day very closely together. Having self awareness that these are true feelings, I’m feeling them but I’m not living there and I’m not compounding them by making poor decision after poor decision because of them. We don’t want the momentum to get going in the wrong direction. Bad things are going to always be part of our experience. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you have a black cloud following you or your luck is bad. It doesn’t mean that at all. It means your human.
But how you respond to it creates the momentum of where you go next. It’s ok to feel sorry for ourselves for a minute but don’t wallow in self pity. Its disappointing to be told no but what new door will you open because of it? It’s ok to feel sad for a little bit, appropriated even but you don’t want to live there. Let yourself feel the sadness, really feel it but keep up your good habits and don’t cause yourself more sadness by making bad decisions. It’s ok to feel disappointment but find a way to search for what’s working in your favor about it, that breakup you’re going through may give you the chance to work on yourself and could be opening the door to your dream relationship. And here’s the thing. When I came up with the three ways to turn that no into a positive, I didn’t all of a sudden feel happy and exuberant but I did feel a little glimmer of hope and that’s all I needed right then and was the best I could do but it set the momentum for the next day in my favor instead of not.
When something bad happens we don’t want to throw all our good habits out the window with it. We don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We keep our heads about us while we feel the feeling, we keep doing our good routine while we feel the feeling, we give ourself time to breathe when we feel frustrated, we don’t respond in frustration because that can cause us a lot more problems.
It’s about momentum. When something bad happens and it will, it’s appropriate to acknowledge and feel your feeling. But don’t live there. Don’t make decisions from there. How can you find that little glimmer of hope? How can you feel your feelings without shifting the momentum towards the sadness or frustration or disappointment. For me, I went for a drive in the sunshine, that’s always going to make you feel a little better I got a healthier for me smoothie, I didn’t derail myself completely by going to baskin robins and getting full on chocolate mint ice cream that would have had me breaking out in a rash and given me tummy problems. For a minute that’s what I wanted though but I still kept my head about me and went for the smoothie instead.
If something feels good short term but makes you feel really bad long term is that really showing yourself love?
That’s something I always keep in my back pocket. Is this going to soothe me short term but derail me long term? If so I don’t want to do it.
My challenge to you today is to accept that we all have bad moments and sometimes bad days, It doesn’t mean anything bad about you, it just means your human. And when those things happen, keep your head about you. Make sure you allow for the feelings and love yourself without shifting the momentum to where you are on a downward spiral. I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
