It would be very easy for me to start today’s message with a little rant about what’s going wrong. Because today, a lot has gone wrong…mainly to do with one website who’ve cost me 2 and a half hours fecking about time…anyway, not getting into it or I’ll never stop!
Especially when we’re in the middle of an annoying situation, it’s so easy to start there, to start with what’s upset us, and why the world would be better if only they did what I told them. But this is a slippery slope. You start with what’s upsetting you, you move on to what you or someone else hasn’t done, and before you know it, you’ve been moaning for an hour about how shit life is.
Only it isn’t that shit. It’s just because you’ve started down the shit life road…and once you’re on that road, it’s hard to pull back. I noticed a bit of this in my morning pages recently…that I kept starting with what I didn’t do or what I didn’t get to that day (because I do my morning pages in the evening…obviously!); which kind of negated all the things I HAD done that day. Listening to my first few sentences, you’d have thought I spent all day farting about on Facebook.
But I hadn’t…(I can’t anymore, I have an app that stops me!)…I had actually been quite productive, but I’d gone down the “I am shit road” and it’s hard to turn round. I called one of my clients on this a few weeks ago. When my clients call, we start with the celebrations, the good stuff, the acknowlegement of progress and what’s going well. Only this client had mixed up the directions and started going down Shit Street instead of Celebration Way at the start of our calls (I take half the responsibility for this, it’s my job to make sure we start on the right road).
This sounds like a fairly innocuous wrong turn, but actually it determines the whole journey. If you start down Shit Street, you’re always trying to come back up to Celebration Way…and you’re in a grump, because you were on Shit Street. Whereas if you start on Celebration Way, you’re feeling good…now you can head down Shit Street with a shield of feel-good on, it won’t affect you as much.
Criticism doesn’t inspire excellence. It inspires pissed off, grumpy, self-flagellation and more criticism…not that conducive to getting shit done and creating an amazing life. Celebration on the other hand makes you feel good, reminds you of what’s good in your life, reminds you of how much you’ve done, reminds you what you’ve achieved, gives you confidence, inspires more action because look how far you’ve come?!
It’s your choice; it’s your life. You get to start on Shit Street every day and end on Shit Street every day if you want to. Or you could choose a new way…Celebration Way. Encourage, support, inspire, back, acknowledge and celebrate yourself…and just see how that’s different; see what difference it makes to your energy, to your mood, to your ability to problem-solve.
Because choosing Celebration Way doesn’t make the problems go away, they are still there. They’re just easier to tackle when you’ve built yourself up instead of undermined yourself and made yourself feel like shit.
And I know that sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes it really feels like you have nothing to celebrate or acknowledge or appreciate. But it’s never true. Even in the darkest times you’re still breathing, you’re still alive, you’ve still done more and you still have more than you think. And if you’re anything like every client I’ve ever worked with over the past 12 years, you’ve got a lot to celebrate, acknowledge and appreciate (much more than you ever give yourself credit for).
When you’re in the habit of starting out on Shit Street, this can be hard to see. But just try…practice. Like any habit, starting on Shit Street can be changed…you just have to remember to start with what’s good, what’s exciting, what’s fun, what you’re proud of, what you appreciate, what you have going for you, what you have done.
It’s much more fun…and there are way more chances for happy dances in Celebration Way! Give it a try…
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