How much time do you spend making life better? How much time do you spend appreciating how good you have it? How much time do you spend laughing, getting excited, being happy? Is it enough? Conversely, how much time do you spend making life worse? How much time do you spend bemoaning how bad you have it? How much time do you spend crying, getting stressed, being miserable? Is that enough?
Have you had enough of being dissatisfied with your lot? Do you want to see your life get better? Would you believe it’s your choice how you spend your time? Because I’m guessing that if you spend a lot of time on how terrible life is, you won’t have much time left for laughter, play, fun, joy, love, freedom, excitement, appreciation, gratitude, and wonder.
And that is your choice. I was chatting to a friend yesterday, and saying that I have stopped (largely) getting stressed out about money and such. How? By withdrawing my attention from worrying and stressing. It’s a choice. I made this choice because over the last 20+ years, worrying has NEVER helped me to get more money or deal with a situation. Complaining has NEVER made a situation better. Fear NEVER helps me to find a creative solution.
I haven’t yet had to live on the street, so I’m doing ok! It’s all good. So, I’m putting my time and effort into being grateful, having fun, enjoying life. As is so often the case, this is a simple concept that isn’t always easy to put into practice. So to start with, it’s enough just to notice that you are choosing to spend more time in worry than in laughter (by the way, laughter costs nothing, whereas worry can cost your health and sanity).
Pretty soon, you will make a new choice. And this gets easier and easier with practice. Our worry, stress, misery muscles are well developed and fed with the steroid of misery news, so it’s really easy to use them. But maybe your laughter, joy and fun muscles are flabby from lack of use?! The answer is simple: choose to tone them up. Make the effort to have some fun this week – trust me, life looks a lot better when you’re bouncing on a trampoline or standing on your hands (not that I can do that anymore).
– Something To Play With –
What ratio of time do you spend on misery:joy? Eg 90% misery, 10% joy. Are you ok with that ratio? Notice this week how many times you choose the dark side over the light and see where you can choose joy, fun, lightheartedness, silliness and laughter and crowd out the glum, angry, irritable, miserable, stressed times.
