Why does everybody talk about gratitude?!
Gratitude and positivity are easy to practice – but some days we all need a little kick up the backside to remind us just how easy it really is!
I think I am a naturally positive person and I practice gratitude many times each day – but yesterday it was pointed out to me that I had lost my way a little.
When you think you are managing your stress levels really well, always being positive and seeing the good in everything and everyone, it really stirs up some negative and resentful feelings when somebody points out a weakness in your armour!
So let me back up to this weekend…..
A joyous, happy and relaxing weekend.
Marred only by a little pain in my right elbow which I had picked up presumably from moving boxes when I moved house a few weeks ago.
Sunday afternoon I managed to rope my partner Hayley into recording an exercise video with me for my Home Bootcamp group and we had been to a local Reindeer farm to choose our Christmas tree earlier in the day.
All as right in the world.
I went to bed Sunday night as normal. Thinking about everything I was grateful for as my head lay on the pillow and fully rested from the weekend, I gently drifted off to sleep.
Then, something weird happened on Monday morning.
Something I can’t explain.
Everything just felt a little different.
My arm had kept me awake several hours during the night and I felt tired. I had to go to meet a client early in the morning and my car was feeling the frost in the -3 conditions.
I scraped my car and then went over to scrape Hayley’s car before she went to work, but I only managed one and a half of her windows due to the thick ice and what was now, a very weak arm.
Traffic was slow Monday morning, the roads were icy and I was late for my appointment.
The whole day followed this type of theme.
I got caught in what I can only guess was the squall of Christmas shoppers when I popped to the supermarket on my way home and then I got caught for 1 hour in a serious accident on the dual carriageway.
It’s not the worst day in the world, but things are building up under the surface without me realising it.
The ‘final straw’ coming later in the evening as, driving on my way home from a PT session, I swerved around a white van and drove straight into and over a huge rock in the road.
Surely that must be a puncture! If not now, then surely in the morning.
So I went to bed last night and instead of lightness, positivity and gratitude filling my head, my thoughts were all focused on the pain in my arm and my wounded tyre.
I start telling myself stories such as “I won’t be able to work out for weeks” and “I am going to have a flat tyre in the morning!”
It took Hayley telling me to stop being so negative for me to actually wake up from my slump and see how I was actually behaving.
Although I didn’t quite believe it when she told me!
So instead of going to bed thinking I am going to wake to a flat tyre, I simply convinced myself that my tyre would be fine in the am.
Today I woke to a perfectly normal and inflated tyre.
I don’t have magic thoughts. My thoughts prior to going to bed have had no impact on the physical wellness of my tyre.
I could just as easily have woken to a flat tyre and spent this morning limping to a local garage.
However, I had a good nights sleep because I didn’t go to bed worrying about or contemplating the potentially negative outcome of my tyre.
Nothing was to gain from going to bed stressed and negative other than another restless nights sleep.
The same goes for my arm. It needs rest and moaning about it or focusing on the pain will not change that.
So instead I focus on the positives in my life even more today but when you shift what you think about, your life can change for the better.
Can you change the way you think about the situations in your life?
Or can you focus on something more positive today?
Trust me, it will make a massive difference to your happiness and wellbeing.
