We've all had those days when we feel like the bottom of a State Fair port-o-john. We get depressed, we get down on ourselves. We begin to feel helpless, hopeless, unloved, and unwanted. We'll feel as though nothing is going our way. Everyone has been there.
It's time like these when we need to stop and look at everything that has happened to us throughout the day. Because I HIGHLY doubt that LitErAlLy everything has gone wrong for you today. You are alive, you have fresh air in your lungs, and most likely you have access to drinking water. Those are three things that a lot of people in this world DON'T have.
Not trying to guilt you into having a better day, I'm saying don't take the little things for granted. Don't forget to be grateful. Gratitude is almost like a drug. A GOOD drug. Gratitude helps us appreciate, and allows us to be thankful for something that we have in our life. The things that go well.
Martin Seligman, the guy who fundamentally founded positive psychology, has spent years of his career researching gratitude. He even had a group of moderately to severely depressed people spend ONE WEEK doing a gratitude journal. The task was simple:
Each evening, they would write three things that went well. Then, they wrote about why they went well and WHY they happened. For example, "my kids did their homework without me asking." is something that went well. Why did it go well, because they listened to you for once. And it happened because you are a pretty amazing parent. Everyone who participated in this for a week reported SIGNIFICANT increases in mood and overall well being. Depression levels dropped.
Here - save this little gratitude journal and use it in your IG or Snapchat story. Or just make a note in your "notes" app - or if you're feeling randy, grab a pen and paper and do it old school.
Either way, focusing on the things that went RIGHT instead of what went WRONG is going to help shift your mindset to a more SOLUTION based style of thinking. This is positive psychology 101, and what we work with you to achieve here at HeartHead.
All too often, we beat ourselves up with the mistakes, the downfalls, the strikeouts that happen in our lives - and we forget that these things happen all the time, and are completely out of our control. We have to focus on how we react to things that life deals us.
Human nature is to focus on the broken and spend time worrying about WHY these things happen to us, when they have already happened and are in the past. What really builds your character is your attitude moving forward. If you think of what happened, even if it went wrong, as a learning experience - you can be grateful for the life lesson. Now you have changed your negative attitude into a more positive perspective - and are going to be more productive moving forward with your new knowledge.
Life is a journey, none of us are experts. If you don't have fun along the way, and appreciate the small things - you'll regret it down the road that you weren't more present.
Be grateful. Practice gratitude often. Pass it on. m
-Riggs