I like to think of this blog as a really positive space. I love to share some of the things I’ve done to be happier, healthier, and find more joy in my life.
And it’s a reflection of me.
I’d say 90% of the time, I’m happy and I can find the good in most situations. I’ve found that the more I turn away from stress and towards happiness and self-acceptance, the better each day gets.
But this blog is also authentic.
And I don’t think that anyone is authentically happy all the time. If I only presented happy pictures of myself on vacation or enjoying a wonderful meal, that wouldn’t be the whole story.
So while life is good- and on the overall scale, I have it really good- I also struggle at times.
This week seemed to be full of stumbles, struggles, and challenges.
Despite my best efforts to push those feelings aside, they seemed to show up at every corner. From personal to professional, I found myself in a nasty spin of negativity.
At work I felt like I had one misstep after the next.
From forgetting about (and subsequently missing) a meeting with senior management, to feeling overwhelmed with large projects piling up, the job that normally stimulates me felt daunting this last week.
At home, things weren’t much better.
We found out the expensive airplane tickets we booked so we could attend my stepdaughter’s Parent’s Day at her sorority were for the day after the actual event. An honest mistake on the group calendar by one of her sorority sisters, but it left us missing the whole point of the trip – Parent’s Day. So, we’ll be heading to Long Beach next weekend with our nonrefundable tickets, the day AFTER Parent’s Day.
Even my recovery felt challenged this week.
While I’m generally no longer bothered by others drinking around me, I found myself very envious when we were out to dinner one night. I saw so many people enjoying cocktails and laughing. All the while, I felt this overwhelming feeling of sadness mount inside me.
Why couldn’t I enjoy a drink and just forgot all this crap for a few hours?
And those are just a few of the things in the endless shit storm that hit this week.
After a few days of feeling this sadness, I finally broke down to my husband yesterday. I cried and told him how overwhelmed and down I was feeling. Just talking to someone instead of holding it all in helped tremendously.
He reminded me of all the things I truly believe in:
There is no grade at the end of the day and you don’t have to be “perfect”.
Life is too short to stress about the small things.
There is good in every situation if you look for it.
And thoughts are just thoughts. They aren’t facts. Just because you feel something, doesn’t mean you have to embody that feeling.
I also took some pressure off of myself last night. I had signed up for Barre class after work. Instead of making myself go, I just went home.
Instead of blogging, I went out to dinner with my husband.
And not surprisingly, my day lightened up and I started to feel dramatically better.
Sometimes, I don’t even realize all this pressure is self-imposed. No one is demanding that I be perfect. That is all coming from me.
I just got lost in the momentum of negativity.
And I know the only way to stop it is to just let it go. What’s happened has happened. This workweek is in the books and I’m not interested in carrying those feeling into a perfectly good weekend.
So here’s to lessons learned from not the best of weeks. And here’s to extra gratitude moving forward!
