I’m accepting of the fact that I’m a recovering pessimist (more here). Most days I look at the bright side of life. I find the joy in the little things, and it feels wonderful.
But 20+ years of negative thinking are hard to shake, and sometimes I start falling into bad habits.
I’ve recently noticed a pattern though. It happens when I’m feeling overwhelmed. When that happens those dark cloud ‘buts’ start to accumulate and threaten lightning and rain, ignoring their silver lining.
I’m still in that overwhelmed mode right now.
- Overwhelmed with work.
- Overwhelmed with tying up the loose ends of my dissertation.
- Overwhelmed with certification classes.
- Overwhelmed with having some semblance of a social life.
- Overwhelmed with cleaning, cooking, caring for the pets….
- Overwhelmed with the trip to Europe during the holiday break.
So as good as life is, those ‘buts’ start leaking through. But now I know the pattern. Now I know to keep my eyes and ears open for them when they start to infiltrate when I’m talking about the good things going on in my life.
There will always be logistics involved with the runnings of life, but they don’t have to be ‘buts.’ Instead they can be part of the journey: the bumps in the road that you would never mention on an awesome road trip.
Sometimes the bumps even become part of the reason the trip is awesome!
Moving forward, I’ll be keeping this in mind. Life is like an awesome road trip. A few bumps in the road shouldn’t detract from that…