Tag: positivity

Let The Sun Shine In

Today, I feel like I’m going back to kindergarten to sing, so let the sun shine in…face it with a grin…smilers never lose and frowners never win! Why? Like this song, I want to talk about focus.

hand writing with pen in journals on table

I recently had the experience of sharing my guest room with someone who noticed every single bad thing that happened to them. Even the slightest inconvenience was viewed as a personal attack. In their world, everything was personal, and all negative events were deliberate attacks. They put a lot of energy into selling this version of events as the only possible way to view things.

The free drink someone sent over to their table? Didn’t register. The line of thinking being they deserved that free drink because it didn’t even begin to make up for the guy at the car dealership who talked to them like they knew nothing about cars earlier in the day. And on top of that, the woman at the bank misled them and on and on and on and on. All day. Every day.

Needless to say, they were miserable. It was an awful way to live. And there were some real difficulties. But there were good things happening every day as well. Just like the free drink, the positive was minimized or ignored totally.

When we suffer a traumatic event or a long-standing hardship, habit can creep in. We can begin to focus on the negative things that are happening. That focus turns our heads away from kindness, connection, and support that promote healing and positivity. We can get in such a groove that we keep good things at bay.

We often hear about practicing gratitude. It’s a great thing to do! But we may also need to practice receiving kindness, love, praise, and connection.

During hard times, we may learn to stay braced for yet another blow. This can mean we don’t fully embrace a kind gesture or supportive words. We may express quick appreciation while breezing through the good feelings we can absorb by lingering in the moment. Think of how many times you’ve brushed away a compliment to shift the focus elsewhere.

It’s not selfish to fully embrace kindness, support, and help. And it doesn’t just help us. It helps the giver too.

If you’ve never tried letting the sun shine in, create a receiving journal. For 30 days, keenly observe and record kindness, positivity, laughter, and serendipity. Don’t try to turn bad into good. Just be willing to see the good. Then sit with it. Linger in feelings of satisfaction, contentedness, lightness, happiness, and warmth. Stick with each feeling as long as you can.

Once a week, go back and review all the positivity you’ve experienced that week. Try to put yourself back in the emotional space you were in as you remember each experience. At the end of 30 days, see if you feel better.

I’m not suggesting this will be a quick cure-all for anything, but letting the sun shine in is good advice. And the more you practice receiving, the more you will receive because you’ve become more adept at letting in the good.

Where our focus goes, so do our lives. While it may sound hokey to say let the sun shine in, face it with a grin, in practice, it’s effective. Let’s do it with the gusto of a four-year-old singing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyX4TOOgKY

ad

Focus on What You CAN Do

Balance what you can’t do by shifting to focus on what you can do. Right now, there are so many things we can’t do. We can’t go to work. We can’t sit in our favorite restaurant or even take our laptop to Starbucks for some people watching. We can’t have a birthday party. We can’t get always get the food we want, the laundry detergent we prefer, or toilet paper at all. It’s legitimately frustrating and can lead to a pattern in which we get caught in a loop of negativity.

This is a challenge that’s faced during normal times by those of us who have to restrict our diets in certain ways to feel good and be healthy. That too is legitimately frustrating. The key to avoiding consistent low level anger and stress in both situations is to balance what you can’t do by shifting to focus on what you can.

puzzle

I love puzzling through problems. When I have a computer issue, I get so caught up in the steps of trying a solution and observing the response that I lose track of time. Hours can pass before I remember to get up and move around.

It’s not that the problem doesn’t irritate me. It’s not that I’m happy that I can’t get my work assignments done. But I also recognize that my mind is invigorated by troubleshooting and I am usually successful!

Conquering the machine is a great feeling! That’s what I choose to focus on when a computer problem arises. And if I can’t directly solve the problem, I look for a work around. That’s another invigorating puzzle.

My grandmother used to say, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” While that’s a pretty gruesome visual, I took the message to heart. Any time I feel stuck, I repeat that to myself. When I can’t immediately see an alternative, I walk away from the problem and do laundry or dishes or file the papers on my desk–something to keep my hands busy and let my mind wander.

Before you know it, an idea will pop into my head. If that option doesn’t work, at least I know I had an idea. If I had one, I bet I can have another one. Before you know it, I’m in a spiral of ideas that are moving me forward! I get caught in a pattern of positivity.

I’m certainly not immune to the feelings of anger, sadness, and loss that come with giving up what was or how I want things to be. I struggle and fill my friends’ ears full sometimes. I try to be aware enough to make sure that’s part of the process of letting those feelings move through and out rather than a way to wallow.

The past month has presented an ever-growing list of things we can’t do. The upcoming months will present more. Accepting that reality while holding the idea in our minds that there will be other things, perhaps that we’ve never considered, that we CAN do is the key to keeping us from a cycle of negativity. My intention for this week is to be mindful and put my focus on what I can do.

So I’ll end with the obvious questions this brings. What can I do? What can you do?

5 Hard Questions that Can Save a Life (and Spare Some Pain)