This morning on Twitter, I was reminded by someone that it’s not always easy to choose your mood; that for some, every day is a challenge and “managing a smile” is about their limit. I can empathise with this position, with this choice. I remember times when I’ve felt that everything was simply too much effort, too much like an up-hill struggle. And I made a choice; a choice to embrace positive thinking, to allow that to influence my mood and my outcomes.
I am not suggesting that it is easy. I am suggesting it is a choice and like many choices we make in our lives, there are times when it is more difficult than others. Deciding that it is a choice and one that we can make, gives us back ownership of it, gives us responsibility for ourselves. Many people will find this overwhelming and are, therefore, reluctant to accept that it is a choice they can make.
When circumstances present themselves that impact our lives, we can often feel we have no choice. We are not in control of what is happening to us and therefore we believe choice is not part of the picture. What we can choose is how we react to this situation; how we choose to deal with or embrace the challenge is very much our choice.
It is also important to keep it real. Just because you’ve made a choice to be positive does not mean you’ll never have another day where you feel down, that it’s all too much. As a family, after my accident, we created a “why me?” day every month. Every member of the family got the chance to say “it’s not fair. Why me?” to openly talk about the things we were finding a challenge, the things that brought us down or made daily positivity a struggle. By acknowledging what we were all experiencing we gave each other permission to keep it real.
Start with a small step; think about one thing you react to that always brings you down, zaps your energy and leaves you feeling deflated. You can choose to change the way you react. Create a new scenario – write it out if that helps – and detail how you will be reacting from now on. If your current response is to get cross, choose to get sassy or feisty instead. If you would normally get upset, choose to get determined or confident. There is a person on Twitter who used to “get under my skin” and when I saw how that made me react, I decided to choose that, from then on, I would react by being grateful. Grateful for the amazing people I connect with who make me feel positive and energised.
Give some thought today to how you’ve chosen to react to what’s going on in your life, right now. Are you ready to choose to do that differently?
Dinah 🙂