Count your Blessings and Find the Balance.

Do you tend to forget to stop and smell the roses?  Or do you get so bogged down with the unhappy parts of life that you forget to counter-attack that negativity with things you love.

I find myself forgetting to do this often, and I am not afraid to admit it.  I am human, and I have flaws; one of them is falling into the “Negative Nancy” trap at times.  I know sometimes I just want to have a bad day.  I want to wallow in my misery and be upset about where I am in my life and dream about what I want and be mad about why I can’t have it right now.  Everybody does it sometimes, and if you don’t, I need your secret!  But, on other days, I try to remember to make an effort to count every blessing.

I have to admit, I get lost in the negative too much.  I have so much to be grateful for and I forget to highlight the more positive parts of my life.  I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter that I wouldn’t trade the world for.  I have a pretty good job, and although it is not the dream job for me, I am not in a mountain of debt, my bills get paid on time, and we have food on the table and a roof.  I may walk around with $1 in my pocket, but if I have food at home I am doing alright.

I used to get so hung up in the fact that I feel I should be worth more than what I  am getting professionally and that I don’t have stacks of money or I am not doing what I absolutely love to do.  I felt so unhappy with it, that I didn’t bother to try to make the most of it.  I let work overwhelm me, and it spilled over into other aspects of life, and it really sucked.  One thing that has been drilled into my head constantly is that whatever I am doing now, is merely setting me up for my future.  I can definitely be impatient at times and I dig my heels in the fact that I want what I want right at this moment.  I try to always tell myself that this part of my life is just a chapter of a bigger novel, and I try to keep myself uplifted in the fact that I have so many things to be happy about that I have no room to be sad or upset.

I decided to make a more conscious effort in finding the balance in my life.  The first thing I did was identify the things I loved doing.  I recently began carving time out of my day to go to the gym at least 4-5 times a week, reading and writing (hence the blog 🙂 ).  I also am continuing with writing my first novel, something that I vowed to finish and possibly self-publish this year.

I realized that I can continue to do things that make me happy, and they will outweigh the stressors of life.  So far, I have done pretty good.  I still have my days, but they are becoming few and far between. I have adopted a new attitude and a new outlook on how I see the things happening in my life.  I have learned that sometimes I just need to take a breath, slow down and see the good in my life, instead of looking at it negatively.  I have to stop saying “this is not how I see my life going”, and say “this is setting me up for the great things coming forth in my life.” I will continue to keep the positivity flowing in my life, because it has made me a better person in the long run.