Three, Simple Ways to Shift Your Mood From Crappy to Happy
You know those days when you just don’t feel like yourself. You’re easily overwhelmed, cranky, tired and quite frankly you feel like shit. All you want to do is go home, get tucked into bed and pull the sheets up over your head. But you can’t because you’re a fucking adult and you’ve got a laundry list of things that have to get done before you pick up the kids from school.
So what do you do? You pour yourself a big old cup of coffee, tell yourself to “women the fuck up because the day must go on” and then you start your bucket list of chores you need to accomplish before the day comes to a close.
You get on with the laundry, the dishes, the work phone calls, and those thank you cards from a month ago that you keep pushing off. You sluggishly shut yourself off to what you’re really feeling and pretend to feel something else, happy. But who are you kidding? You know you’re not.
You’re tired and the monotony of having to do the same shit over and over again is exhausting you and those feelings of overwhelm continue to bubble up inside. Waiting for that one day when you’ll be left with no choice but to crawl up into a tiny ball on the floor and cry it all out.
Just wait. It will come.
Don’t worry I’m not judging here. I actually feel that this is a position that society has placed us in. You push aside how you’re feeling as well as your own mental and physical health just so you can continue doing, but are all the your doing really that important?
I imagine that if you examined it a little closer you might just find that sleep, exercise, or even time spent with your kids may have just been what your body and mind needed. But you don’t allow yourself that time as there is much more doing that needs to be done.
But you’re not a human doing you’re a human being.
And in your mad rush to keep up with the Jones’s and accumulate more and more, you’ve lost touch with what really matters most, yourself.
So when times get tough and you’ve simply lost you way what’s the best way get back to yourself? You’re probably thinking “Melissa I have no idea. I imagine that might be the reason why I’m reading this.” And to that, I say well I have a few tips that might just help you feel your feelings, stay in the moment and spend a little less time in the “I have to do it all trap” because you don’t have to do it all you just have to be you.
Use these prompts below to break free from overwhelm and begin loving your life once again.
Must I have this to live a happy life?
As you push to increase your wealth, design your own home in a fancier zip code, purchase designer clothes and accumulate more material items ask yourself do I need to have this to a happy life?
Often times the larger the home, the heftier the price tag of an item or even a promotion at work comes with extra responsibility and this takes time away from the beautiful pieces of life that light you up.
But there’s also another side to this that unfolds, the “set expectation” that didn’t go your way. The time you didn’t get the job you wanted, the date you wanted or even the praise you wanted.
Is this who I want to be?
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the moment. To let a misunderstood conversation, snarky comment or a simple disagreement get the best of you. To let one bad minute carry on longer than it should have and to take it into the rest of your day but these are the moments you must find the strength to let that shit go.
Take a deep breath, close your eyes and ask yourself “Is this who I want to be in this moment?” Envision yourself as your best self and then be that person. You don’t ever want to look back and find that you lost the moment you we’re in because you were living in the past.
Is it useful?
How many times have you allowed your thoughts to get the best of you? Worry comes in and before you know it you’ve found yourself worried about what will come, what won’t and how it will all unfold. And while it’s necessary to think about what will come it’s not always useful if that’s where you spend all of your time.
The next time you find yourself getting lost in gloomy haze of what if… stop yourself and ask yourself this one question “Is it useful?”
And when you find yourself lost in a pattern of negative thoughts and find that you can’t get out, challenge and reframe them. Rather than believing everything your mind tells you, find evidence to the contrary. Part of you knows that overthinking is causing this overwhelm. You also know that this pattern is creating negative energy and inevitably more will continue to follow but still you can’t stop it. You must stop it. You must reframe it. You must tell yourself that your thoughts are just thoughts, they are not real. Don’t shame yourself for them as it’s natural to think about what will come but continuously remind yourself that they are not real.
Let them come in and then let them go.
And if you’re looking for extra support I invite you to apply for one of my coaching programs. You can click the link right here to begin.