Something that dawned on me in the past few days is our participation in happiness. We can actively participate in happiness or we can passively participate in happiness, although both are equally as valid, sometimes we need to push ourselves to actively participate.
When I go through periods of feeling down or not having immediate access to happiness I find I tend to passively participate in happiness. I will spend time doing things that are comforting but ultimately don’t make me feel better. This is why I am making a new commitment to actively participating in happiness even when I feel this way.
I see the difference between actively and passively participating in happiness more about the mindset than the actual energy provided for activities. I’m not going to randomly wake up and start running 5ks or meeting all my friends to feel happy its more just viewing the process differently and choosing activities which are more mindful to my happiness. Also about the way I am speaking to myself, saying thank you to myself when I make a good decision or comforting myself if I’m having a bad day.
A couple times last week when I’d woke up I’d not wanted to get up, I felt rubbish and couldn’t think of anything to be excited for. So instead of letting this feeling continue I planned for a few days getting up and making myself something really simple, but delicious to eat, so that when I woke up in the morning and didn’t feel like getting up, I had an active reason to get up, I had something waiting for me. Also, once I’d made whatever I’d planned, I felt accomplished, my brain felt like it has done something massive and it made me feel happy.
This is a small example and it could even seem silly but it was that activity which then made me get on with my day. When I feel rubbish, I find it so easy to either stop habits I usually do to keep me in routine, or go the opposite way and try to do 101 things in a day and then get upset that I don’t, but both of these are counteractive and both of these ultimately make me feel worse.
I have decided that from now on out, I will actively participate in my own happiness, I will make decisions based on my internal feelings and sometimes choose the harder option to see how if it works for me. Some days this may look different to other days, whether I have high energy or low energy but that’s ok. If I try my best every single day and learn from what helps me feel happy and what doesn’t then I can’t do anything more. I am also lucky enough where I am now in a head space that I can see it as a challenge and treat it in that way, make it almost like a game of collecting points of happiness, which makes it seem rewarding and exciting to do.
That’s all for this week and it’s a wee bit more personal to me but I still hope if you have some days where it’s hard to motivate yourself, you can maybe take advice from this, or even comfort knowing we all feel this way.
Beth