Life is weird. After so many years trying to be one of those happy people (you know them from TV or Facebook), I came to understand that no one is happy one hundred percent of the time. Some people spend more time in a happy state, some people are really good at pretending to be happy, but everyone has difficult things to navigate. That’s life.
I can wonder all I want about why this is, but I think it’s enough to accept it and move on to what I recently learned. Which is that I can get better (and I have) at regulating after an upsetting thing happens. I can always reach for a better feeling thought or idea. Feelings are in constant flux, changing and moving like weather patterns.
Unlike the weather, I can influence my feelings. I have choices. I can make uncomfortable states such as sadness or anger bigger and more intense or I can make them smaller and help dissolve them. These are choices I did not know I had. In fact when I first heard it suggested I was a little mad. I always thought my emotions were driving me, they’d pop up suddenly and I’d be happy or sad or frightened, without warning, with what I thought was no control. A good thing would happen and I would feel happy, then something else would happen and the good feeling would disappear. I was at the mercy of everything and everyone or so I believed…
Now I accept that yes, life happens, but with this one difference. I know how to regulate myself. I know a few tricks that can soothe me into feeling ok. When I remember to use them, I can return to a calm confident state on my own. I don’t have to wait for something to happen. I don’t have to wait for people to change their behaviors. I don’t have to wait for traffic or circumstances to improve. I can work with what I have to regulate, or I can go get or ask for what I need.
This is a revelation to me because I used to operate from the perspective that I’ll be happy when… when I make this much money, when I have this or that, when more people are nicer and more supportive. When life changes…
Now I see that I had it backwards. I just need to point myself toward happier thoughts and regulate my brain for this moment. When I’m fine in my now, I can reach for more fun, but if I’m busy lamenting or forecasting the worst and finding reasons to be fearful, I’m not helping myself to feel better, I’m making myself feel worse. if nothing else, it’s a waste of time and brain power.
Make the good things bigger and the bad things smaller inside my head. This is what I’m training my brain to do. Finding more things to be thankful for is a shift I made so that the percentage of helpful thinking is more than my unhelpful thinking.
Peace Kit 