Plan your day as if you’re telling someone what a great day you had
Wake up
Be grateful for at least one thing
Plan one thing you’re going to do for another person today
What’s one thing you did that was essential for your present happiness?
What’s one thing you did that was essential for your future happiness?
What did you do that was fun?
Be grateful for a terrific day!
Yesterday afternoon I was listening to music on Alexa and my favorite song of all time came on. That caused multiple memories of a very special friend – the woman who passed away two days after my brother – Reverend Anne Kunath. So I started journaling about the memories and decided to listen to my “neuroplasticity” playlist – the playlist that I use for the great memories that keep me from going down the old engrained (or is it ingrained) thought pathway. But that’s not really important today.
As each song played I wrote about the events or people that it brought back.
I haven’t experienced that much love all at one time ever before. It was amazing. But also kind of sad especially given my career in the military. I would meet people, develop wonderful friendships and love and then have to move. The friendships lasted but the ability to see these people when geographically separated is limited. And that is what’s very sad.
I encourage you all to spend as much time as you can spending time with your friends and loved ones. They are the most important thing in the world. We must never forget that.
I also encourage you to play some of your favorite songs and write down memories while listening. I am so moved by music and its power that when coupled with remembrances, there is no greater force in your life. It may bring some sadness if those in your memories have already passed on as many have with me. But it also intensifies the beauty of their memories and makes them stronger and easier to embrace with love more than sadness – at least for awhile.
I have lost my brother and two amazing mentors/friends recently so this practice I discovered today will become more of a habit since it has helped the emotions surface and get out of the depths in which I have previously buried them.
Today’s gratitudes:
I am so grateful for all my wonderful friends – living or not
I am grateful for the new friends I have made in the past year
I am grateful for music and the feelings it brings to the surface.
Happy May Day (as opposed to Mayday..lol)
So this just came to me this morning. If we want to change our health and improve it, we need to work conscientiously on our nervous system and calm it down – decrease the stress chemicals and increase things like Oxytocin (the Love drug). There are so many ways to calm your nervous system but they need to be done consistently. I have talked about that many times before so I’ll spare you today.
Thinking and feeling optimistic and having hope are important to our health – not just our mental health but physical health as well.
What happens when you complain – either out loud or even just to yourself? Your body starts to react to what it perceives as stress and danger because you’re not happy with something. The brain doesn’t know that you’re just p.o’d at someone cutting in front of you in traffic. It just senses danger and does what it’s supposed to do – release the chemicals that makes you take evasive action so you get to safety. This leads to the feeling of “anxiety” which is just a chemical response not necessarily a mental health issue. Once we have that initial feeling of anxiety and we don’t recognize it as just a temporary thing, then it will continue to flood your system with more chemicals. I am pretty sure I wrote about the 90 second rule before. If you just allow those not so pleasant feelings to exist and not perpetuate them by being more afraid and worried, then the chemicals will metabolize in 90 seconds and you should be back to baseline. This is where deep breathing helps you get through those 90 seconds especially if you focus on having your exhalation be longer than the inhalation.
If you’re not aware of this phenomenon, you will most likely continue to be upset and maybe even more upset that that person’s actions have just totally ruined your day – and the stress chemicals keep flowing. And your day may, indeed, be ruined because you’re just perpetuating things. If you can wait the 90 seconds and let things get back to your normal physiological state then your attitude should be back to baseline and you can have a good day.
So…are you up for trying to go 31 days without complaining? Everyone uses the word “challenge” for everything so I won’t. It’s not really a contest. It’s you taking care of your mind and your body and your overall well being.
Use the 31 days to observe what happens inside you when things don’t go exactly as you’d like or as you planned. Even if you end up complaining, watch what is going on in your system and you will have benefitted from it.
Now this is not one of those things where you have to a) start over if you complain or b) report in or c) do anything you don’t want.
But it will be beneficial to observe your body’s chemistry at work and see what you can do with your mind and see how creative you can be to turn a complaint around. For instance, I got a jacket from Amazon today. It’s heavier than I’d like so I won’t be taking it on the event i wanted to. But i can use it. So here’s my choices:
-I can think “I wish it were lighter” and “I could return it” or
-i can think “damn it, why don’t they ever give you the weights. This was a waste of my time and now I have to either keep it or go to the post office to return it and with the pandemic I don’t want to go out, Blasted Covid”
Geez, even as i wrote that second one i could feel my pulse increase and knew that the adrenaline had been increased in my blood stream – AND I was just giving an example.
I’m going to do this and see what a different it will make in my outlook. Join me if you’d like. You certainly can’t lose.
Today’s gratitudes:
I am grateful I didn’t get caught in any flash floods yesterday
I am grateful I got done walking and could make it to the clinic to pick up my meds
I am grateful that I am happy and healthy!