Hello lovely ones! How on earth are you? The weeks speeding by are really beginning to scare me now. It seems no sooner do I hit publish on my Morning Monday post, and bam, it’s Wednesday and here I am again! Not that blogging is the issue, but when you have a hobby, that schedules your life in such a way, it soon becomes very apparent just how time is flying!
However, panicking or moaning about the passage of time, is the exact opposite of what I actually want to chat to you about today. The fact is a lot of time has passed since Christmas, and in many ways I couldn’t be happier to have put that big old chunk of days and months between where I was then and where I am now. As I sit here in my living room, cross legged on the floor, I’m pretty sure if you put a mirror in front of me, and showed me a reflection of who I was in December, I wouldn’t recognise myself.
Does that sound a little far out? Maybe it is.
A friend the other day said I’d always had it in me to become a bit of a hippy arty type, and that it is finally happening. Well if that is the case so be it, because I’d far rather be the hippy peaceful positive type than the negative Nancy I had become.
I’m still a little cynical and sarcastic sometimes, and I still have my wobbly days. Hec just last night I caught myself crying, convinced I would die alone. I’m not afraid to admit that to you. I’m not afraid to admit to you, that I can feel a dip in my self esteem just at present, and I’m not afraid to admit that I’m human, but it does scare me that for a while that looked like becoming a way of life for me.
I don’t want to be a negative person. I’ve met negative people, I know negative people, and when I am around them I can feel my energy levels drop. I feel myself pulled in to their vision of the world, and very quickly everything seems a little harder. It’s not up to me to change these people, but it is up to me how much power their negativity has over me, and the power I let my own negative thoughts have too.
So what changes have I made this year? I’ve changed big things like my diet, and I’ve changed my routines. I’ve changed little things like how my furniture is arranged, or where I sit and read on an evening. I’ve changed my hair once or twice and I’ve changed outfits daily. But the biggest change I’ve made, the one which has made all these other changes have any impact at all on me, while it may sound by far the most complicated is actually deceivingly simple.
I’ve changed my outlook.
And all that change really boils down to is this: Every time I think, say or hear something negative, I counteract it with something positive. And I’ve applied this rule, not only to the way I think about myself and others, but to conversations I have with other people, my work and well, everything.
There’s an awful lot of psychology and philosophy literature out there that will tell you all about the magical powers of positivity and what it does to our happiness levels. I’ve read some of it, and some of it was even a little too out there for me but the simplest way I have found of thinking about it, is that ending a conversation or a stream of thoughts on a positive note, has the same effect on your mood, as the ending of a film might.
If a film has a positive uplifting ending, we feel happy, if a film has a defeated, tragic and negative ending, then you’re probably going to go home, feeling a little haunted and in need of a hug. And while the later, has it’s own merits, reminds us to be grateful of the good in the world, I’d know that on balance, I’d rather have more happy endings than sad ones.
So if I’m stood in a fitting room about to go into melt down because something doesn’t fit I focus on something else, how nice is the colour on me? What about the neck line? If I’m Facebook stalking somebody I shouldn’t be, and my immediate reaction is to say something nasty, I stop myself, and say something nice instead. Or at least if I don’t quite manage to stop myself (sometimes, I’m just too quick witted for my own good) I ask myself why I feel the need to make that comment. Does it make me happier? Or will saying something nice, taking a deep breath and shutting down the laptop ultimately mean the rest of my day can carry on in a better light? And if somebody else is making a negative comment about themselves or somebody else, then I step in with my positive vibes too.
Even if that does make me a arty-zen-like-hippy, at least I’m a happy one, and hopefully, once people get past the slightly ‘far out’ attitude, eventually positivity will make me the type of person people want to have hanging around.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to meditate, sing with the birds, and not wear shoes.*
Live life & end on a positive note x
*I am learning to meditate, I still can’t sing, and while my feet aren’t the nicest things you’ll ever see, shoes are too pretty to give up anyway.
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tea in your twenties 