The Happiness Project

Yesterday was a good day. It didn’t necessarily start off that way though. I woke up in not the best of moods and from there, everything just seemed to feed off of it. Like… the dishes I didn’t load from the night before still sitting in the sink, the laundry piling up, the fact that our car keys are still missing, something sticky all over the floor that I kept stepping in, AND the list goes on. I hated how I was feeling and I hated starting my day of like that. I was sitting on the couch with the little loves, trying to talk myself to getting up to make some breakfast when I had this thought – I am in complete control of my thoughts and how I’m feeling right now… how can I change this mood and shake off this bad funk I was in?… I started trying to think about all the things that were going right at that moment, like… the little loves all happily sitting next to me and not fighting (at the moment) the beautiful sunshine shinning through our front room window, and the fact that it was going to be 80 degrees! The second I started thinking about all the good, I started to feel my mood change. 

One of my favorite things to do, is listen to an audio book, influential speaking on You Tube or Ted Talks on my phone with headphones while I tidy up the house. I usually will put one ear bud in and leave one out just so I can still hear whats going on in the other room. I love learning and listening to ways to help improve myself, and since I have the hardest time sitting and reading a book when there are SO many other things I should be doing, listening to books was the perfect solution for me, plus it takes my mind off the fact that I’m actually cleaning and I seem to get more done when I’m listening to something. Two birds with one stone. 

So in addition to shake this bad funk i was in, I started listening to The Happiness Project. I loved the new perspective it was giving me the more I listened to it the better I felt. We create our own happiness. What we feed our mind, eventually comes out in some form or other. Being mindful of our thoughts and where they are coming from helps us to be able to control them more and get rid of them the second they enter our mind. Just being aware of them is the first step. And it takes 5 positive actions or thoughts to replace 1 negative one, this was all stuff I had all heard before, but for some reason it hit me hard this time around.

An hour into the book, I had the house looking reallll good and was soaking up everything I was hearing. After the boys came in and asked for a drink, I decided to take a break from cleaning and went to join the little loves outside to soak up the beautiful weather and just be “in the moment” with them. We played tag, (a lot) squirt bugs with spray bottles, spotted birds, squirrels and bunnies in the neighbors backyard and ran away from ginormous bumble bees. They loved every minute of it, and so did I. 

Our sweet neighbor picked these fresh flowers from her yard and gave them to us.

 It was a good reminder for me that people are GOOD. 

“See the good in others and they will see the good in you.”