Well, I want to talk today about something I’ve been noticing, both in myself and from people around me. We seem to be slogging through our days, unhappy about what we’re doing, wishing we were somewhere (or someone!) else. We don’t seem to be enjoying our lives. If you look at Facebook or other social media, we watch people moving from event to event, one vacation to another, with no gaps in between. Maybe we’ve started to believe life is supposed to be like this; a never ending series of fun events.  But really, since when did we decide to live from vacation to vacation, for long weekends and holidays, for days off and retreats? What about all the time in between? If I only enjoy the vacations, time off, and rest time, that means that the experience of the vast majority of my life will be time that I do not enjoy. I want to look back on my life with joy, not through rose colored glasses of revised memory, but knowing that I was able to find happiness in the ordinary, routine, but still precious days that I lived on this earth.

 

It doesn’t always come together though.  I just spent two hours mapping out an office and call schedule for myself and six other doctors, and was aggravated when I didn’t see the breaks in my weeks that I wanted to have there. That tells me that in my mind, I’m expecting the work days to be hard and unpleasant, and that I should be looking forward to the off times as light and pleasant. But who says this has to be true? What if I could look forward to my office days with anticipation instead of dread? That sounds crazy! Almost…

 

Schedule making…

 

 

Here’s the thing: I think we’ve trained ourselves to think this way. We have become a society of complainers. Now, I’m not pointing fingers: remember, I’m that girl with the glass half empty. But listen to the conversations around you – people are constantly talking about how hard their lives are, and the dynamic in the conversation is of commiseration and a downward spiral of whose life is tougher. This is not Polly Anna speaking. I am aware that we face real situations that cause us to feel that things aren’t going well. Sometimes, we are facing real tragedies, like job loss, financial ruin, addictions, grave illnesses and death. Those things are tough, and real. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about complaining because we have to go to work, or because our kids are in basketball practices every night of the week, or because we have to wait in line at a busy grocery store checkout. Yes, we are busy and yes, we are tired. These aren’t true hardships though. Might we be part of the problem?

 

Mommy, I don’t want to go to work!

Before you get offended, I need to remind you that I write these posts about things I am either learning, working through, or have at some point been grappling with in my own life. So this is what I am learning: When I actively think about all the good things in my life, when I remember to focus on the positive instead what I’d rather have or do, I am a much happier person. I can’t choose not to go to work because I’m tired, but I can decide that it’s a good day for a hot steamy cup of coffee and be glad I get paid to do something! I haven’t found a way to decrease the amount of moving parts in my household of two adults and four children (no one is volunteering to adopt them!), but I can choose to remind myself that this time is a season and I’d better enjoy their giggles and silly games before they turn into big hulking teenagers. I may not be thrilled with the number on the scale today, but I can choose to be glad I’m strong, healthy, and able to exercise and eat well. It’s not easy to control my mind because it wants to run away with predictions of doom and gloom, but I am learning that those thoughts aren’t real. They’re just thoughts, and my mind is not in charge of me: I am in charge of my mind.  The bible says it best in 2 Corinthians 5b “…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” I don’t think it would be written that way if it were not possible to do it. Difficult, maybe. Requires lots of practice? Certainly. But not impossible…

 

Practicing hard!

 

 

A few years ago, I read a book that helped me a lot with my thinking. 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp (aholyexperience.com) was transformative for me. She writes about some incredibly hard things in her life that formed her into the woman she was, and then how the Joy Dare caused everything in her life to change. She tells it better (so get the book if you can), but the Joy Dare was a challenge to write down three things a day that you are grateful for, and in one year you will have a list of 1000 things that you’ve seen go well in your life. Nothing is too small; it could be a clean sink, or the sun shining in the window, how pretty your water looks in your glass, or that you have AC in the house. But you have to write it down. Something happens in our brains when we write things down: they stick. And you can go back and review it later, which starts changing your thinking while you’re reading it. I’m finishing my second year of my 1000 gifts list, and I’m not planning to stop. It helps me find the beauty in my craziest days!

 

I’ve also been doing some brain experiments from my friend Lisa Washington (setthetablewithlove.com). She puts out a practice for a group of us to do, like repeating positive affirmations about the day, playing our favorite happy song over and over, or putting out positive ideas for what we need or want into the universe and expecting them to happen. Then we see what comes from the practice. It’s always amazing how when I expect and look for great things to happen, they do! We get to rewire our brains from using the worn out, easily traveled negative pathways into new, fresh positive paths. It can be done – you create new neural pathways all the time, not just when you’re little. I’m learning that my outlook actually is coloring my days, and the energy I put out is what I’m getting in return. I want strong, positive, loving energy coming to me. Don’t you?

 

Ok, the doctorly statement: Our thinking isn’t set in stone. We’ve just created maps in our brains that our thoughts are able to find very easily, because we’ve used them so much. We have plasticity: the ability to redraw the maps. If we practice, we can rewire our brains to have new paths for our thoughts to follow. We lay down new neural pathways all the time, remember? We have to actively work at it, but it can be done!

 

Mapping it out…

 

Life is a gift! Living as we do in this realm, we can only go forward, We can’t go back and do-over our years. So I’m going to enjoy all the good times, routine or not, and really enjoy being happy. I like me better happy and positive! Being negative and angry and frustrated and judgmental hasn’t been a good place to live, at least not for me. The good news is, I’m watching myself change, and I like it!

 

My mini me, my happy girl!

So, what about you? Are you dragging yourself through your days or are you enjoying the life that you live? Have you found ways to transform your thinking? Tell me about your insights in the comments below!