Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 468 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Im happy to be with you! Thank you for listening and don’t forget to subscribe and give me a 5 star rating if you think this episode helps you. Ok…
This last year has been a busy one. I love being busy when it’s doing things I love to do like my design projects or traveling or spending time with friends and family. Do you find that too? When you love what you do it doesn’t feel like work? I feel that way about design and my podcast. They are two different realms but I feel both in a way make the world a more beautiful place. And I love that about what I do. I have also been busy spending more time with my mom and dad and older sister which has been so enjoyable. So overall my life is going really well. Overall. And overall I hope your life is going really well too. Together we spend a few minutes every week working on our mindset and it’s a crucial thing for us to do because let’s say we are having a particularly rough time sometimes that happens, right? Sometimes we think man, this is bad. Maybe you’re dealing with divorce or a death in your family, a job loss, maybe it’s an election year…those are always full of fun, right? Those media people know how to get in your head, don’t they? So yeah life overall is good.
But it isn’t always rainbows and unicorns. And with life, it never will be because we have natural highs and lows. Everyone does. We have highs and lows with our friends and our family, we have highs and lows with our work, we have highs and lows when we travel. Highs and lows are a natural, very normal part of life. It’s just that we often make it much harder and much worse than it needs to be. Life doesn’t have to be so hard. I think that’s one of the lessons we all have to learn in some way or another. We think if something upsetting happens or something doesn’t go the way we think it should or we hoped then we must be doing something wrong or our luck has run out or dang if we can’t catch a break. We get in our own heads about things and make them a million times worse. I know, I used to excel at that. We can make ourselves miserable over the littlest things….Now…
I don’t have a lot of pet peeves, I don’t get annoyed very easily, so it kind of took my husband by surprise when he realized that one of my biggest pet peeves was how long it takes to get off an airplane especially if you’re sitting in the back of the plane. I would get very irritated about how long it took for people to get their things and exit the plane. I would have thoughts like “It didn’t used to be like this, this is the airlines fault because they charge so much for luggage that now everyone has a carryon or that person has way too much they’ve carried on, how did that get past the attendant or if someone was really slow I would think my goodness did they have no idea we were unloading, I mean why weren’t they more ready when it came their turn? I would just think one mean thought after the other and the more negative thoughts I would think the more irritated I got.
There have been times where I would have quite a bit of anxiety if I didn’t have a podcast episode ready when I thought it should be, it would weigh on me deeply to the point where I would try to force one which made me even more anxious. I didn’t love it any less but I would fret about it. Same thing with my design projects, they would keep me up at night. I can remember the first time I gave a client a quote, which to me felt like a very large amount of money and I had so much anxiety giving that quote to the point where I almost didn’t. And over the years just every big scary decision would make me almost sick to my stomach. Here’s the thing though, I was creating most of that anxiety and irritation all in my head. Seriously. You know what happened when I gave the quote to my client that I thought was a massive amount? He cut me a check..for the whole thing. No problem with it at all, but the night before I had thought up all these horrible things he might say. I used to be in my head A LOT. For the longest time I would just tell myself and anyone close to me that I just don’t handle stress well and when you tell yourself things like that you just make it so. And don’t even get me started on the anxiety I created over family stuff. I would just torture myself with thoughts that were making my life so much harder and making my relationships so much harder because when you think negative thoughts about something or someone you act differently to them or you do things differently than you would if you were excited or grateful or in love….your life is a product of the actions you’ve taken due to the thoughts you have about anything.
But I’ve found this new way of doing things, now it’s new for me it’s not new at all to the world but reading Wayne Dyer’s books and Eckhart Tolle’s books has me thinking back to how silly I have been and how much harder I used to make life and how much easier life is when you learn the lesson life tries to teach us over and over and over. And that is that the more you stress the harder it gets. The more you think negative thoughts the harder it gets. The more you force things the harder it gets.
This is true with every facet of life, especially our relationships. Have you ever seen a little kid trying to hold a cat or a puppy and they just think if they hold it a little tighter the cat or puppy will stay but the opposite is true? Have you noticed this goes for people too. If they feel like a prisoner, they’re gonna want to be free. Our thoughts about anything matters. Big or small.
If you can’t stand that person at work, regardless of how well you think you’re hiding it, they know it. If you dread going to work, your performance suffers, if you’re having negative thoughts about the people on the plane, it’s not hurrying anything up, it’s only making you more miserable, oh and the energy you’re putting off is contagious..…
It really doesn’t matter what we are going through, big or small….big stuff happening or little annoyances…history has shown that the people who have the best attitude usually land on their feet just fine. So what do The people who have the best attitude do? Let’s start with what they don’t do…they don’t isolate themselves, they don’t ruminate over negative conversations, not for long, they don’t make things worse than they are and when they start to, they catch themselves. They don’t dwell on the problem they are looking for a solution. They don’t focus on negative news constantly because they know it’s not benefiting them, in fact it’s hurting them and they absolutely do not allow their thoughts to run on autopilot.
What do people with the best attitudes do? They search for the reasons things are working in their favor. They tend towards giving people grace and the benefit of the doubt. They do have thoughts pop up that aren’t great but instead of entertaining and feeding those thoughts, they catch them and change them. They intentionally create the thoughts that make them feel the way they want to feel. And finally they let things go that they do not control. That’s a biggie.
We all have stuff. We have little stuff that pops up, and then we all too have the big stuff like family drama, job related challenges, health concerns and yes, election years.
I’ve been busy this week, but I can handle anything that comes my way and I know you can too. Remind yourself of that. Tell yourself “I’m strong and I can handle anything that comes my way.” With that attitude you’re already ahead of the game.
My challenge to you this week is to think about the challenges you are facing. Big or small. How much of the things that you’re dealing with do you control? If you do control it, then by all means do something about it. But if you don’t have control of the thing, then you have to let it go. That’s one of the biggest things you can do for yourself to give your life a sense of peace. Share this with 3 people who deserve to live in peace. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
