Hit the Reset Button

I love mornings. Not early mornings. But slow, sit at the table with my coffee, watching the birds morning. Mornings signal a new day. New means you can start fresh. You can put aside the old of yesterday. You can forgive the mistakes of yesterday. You can start again.

It's like hitting the reset button. Each day you have a new beginning, new opportunities, and a new 24 hours with which you can plan your adventures. 

We have to stop thinking about another day being a continuation of the day before. It doesn't have to be. Each day we wake up, we are given a new day. You can do anything with this day. What will you do?

Yesterday I ate too much junk food.

Today I will eat carrots.

Yesterday I was grumpy with my kids.

Today I will play games with them.

Yesterday I watched a lot of TV.

Today I will go outside and take a walk.

Yesterday I worried about a project.

Today I will do my best and leave work at work.

Yesterday I wasted time all day.

Today I will use my time intentionally.

Yesterday I dreamt about my passions.

Today I will do something I'm passionate about.

What will you do with your reset button? Which part of your life needs to be reset, restarted, refreshed? You can do it. Go ahead. Hit that reset button!

Don't Blink

Here in the South, we go "back to school" before Labor Day. Presently, we only have about 3 1/2 weeks left before my kids have to return to school. This reality had me thinking about how little time we have remaining and how fast time flies. My kids are growing up quickly and I don't want to miss it or waste time with them. In other words, don't blink. Or I could miss it. Their childhood. Their growing up. Spending precious time with them.

A realization then dawned on me. Time passes quickly for everyone. Not just parents. Not just children. There's a lesson here. 

Time slows for no man. Time stops for no one. It keeps moving. It keeps going. You can't buy more time. You can't borrow more. Everyone is allotted the same amount each day. 24 hours each day. 7 days each week. And so on.

What is important is what you do with your time. Work, family, hobbies, rest, fun. Each of these require time. How much time depends on the person. But everyone has the same total amount. Each day every person has a decision to make about how they spend the time they have.

This post is not about giving you advice on making family more important than work. Or rest more important than hobbies. My belief is that each person has to make their own decisions about what takes priority with their time.

So think about it. How do you spend your time? What's important to you? Are you wasting your time in any areas? How do you feel about that? What would do with your life if you had more time? (Hint: The only way to get more time is to let go of other things. Because remember everyone has the same 24 hours each day.)

I often hear that no one gets to the end of their life and wishes they had spent more time on things that didn't really matter to them. Time to get serious about what you want to spend your time on.

Gratitude = Happiness

Everybody wants to be happy. Some people believe they are happy. Some people would say they are chasing happy. Some would say they are not happy at all. Happiness can appear elusive. It means different things to different people. What may make one person happy would not work for another person.

There is good news! One strategy works well for everyone who puts their full focus on it. (What you focus on is what you get. So focus on what you want!)  Gratitude.

So simple. But maybe not so easy. Think of those hard days when you can't think of things to be grateful for. And even if you do, they don't seem as important as those things that are going wrong in your life at the moment.

However, if you focus and you stick with it, gratitude does indeed equal more happiness. Being able to see the positive in your life increases happiness. Being able to focus on the good in life increases happiness. Being able to do this despite having a bad day combats depression and anxiety AND increases happiness. (and resilience)

I had a difficult day yesterday. One of my children was sick unexpectedly and my day became filled with running out for medicine, doing laundry, cleaning carpets, and making sure no one else got sick. It was not a day of ease and at the time, I would have said there was no reason to be grateful.

But here I am, the day after, writing a post about Gratitude. I am grateful for medicines, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, friends who help, restaurants who deliver, and the physical capability and energy to do all that was necessary to take care of my child and family. This morning I found gratitude in sleeping in, kids playing, birds chirping, hot coffee, and a quiet moment.

Gratitude is like a short cut to happiness. When you are focused on all that is good in your life, you feel the joy in life. When you focus on the positive, it becomes more difficult to live in the negative. There will always be bad days. But we can't forget the good. That is when we lose that elusive happiness. We get stuck in the bad, the difficult, the negative. But learning to focus on what you are grateful for in your life can pull you out of that. It can show you the joy, the happy, the good in your life. Focus on that. Focus on your joy. Gratitude = happiness.