Appreciating My Loved One

Since starting this journey, I find I am focusing a lot on what I want to change about myself. Letting others know how much I appreciate them is important to me and I feel I do a good job of this with most people. Lately, I have not let my husband know how much I appreciate who he is and his many contributions to our family, relationship and our life.

The activity is to let someone know how much you appreciate them. It can be done with words, giving them your attention, or active listening for instance.

Life is a Gift

I used to be one of those people that tended to look at the glass half empty. Through the years, I've come to appreciate my beautiful life and all that I have and I'm now a much more positive person. Life is a gift and I want to treasure all the gifts it has given me.

Look at my glass half full today.

Don't Stew When Hurt

I don't understand vindictiveness. When people are so hurt by some perceived action or lack of action from others, that they do something to get even or they hurt another as they feel they have been hurt. I am at the point in my life when I want to be told if I wrong someone else. Don't let it stew as I am quite approachable. When someone says or does something hurtful, call them on it. For example: I am hurt when... I'm not sure I understand why you feel this way. I'm sorry, how can we move forward with this.

Conflict Resolution 101

I will use I statements today. When teaching children about conflict resolution, we model for them that using I statements such as, I feel hurt when I can't play hopscotch with you, is less threatening than saying you won't let me play hopscotch.

Let Go of Gossiping

I had a college roommate that complained I wouldn't ever talk about people. When I went back our sophomore year I tried to gossip, but it felt wrong to me. I'm human and as such I've gossiped even when I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. Being part of a group that is talking about someone else may seem fun, but it is at someone else's expense.

I am going to be intentional about not gossiping.

Rewind

As mentioned before, there is a lot of anxiety over potential layoffs at my place of work. The roller coaster ride of emotions is stressful. One minute I feel like my friends and I will survive the downsizing and in the next, something is said that makes me think I'll be let go. I've had enough of looking at aspects of my life from a negative perspective. For the next few days, I'd like to work on releasing negativity from my live as much as I can control.

Think about the things I feel bad or guilty about. Today explore one of those. Is there something I can do to make it right? Replay the situation, but this time replace the negativity, the thing I feel bad about, with how I wish I had responded originally. I always play the game of replaying something I said or did with what I wished I had said or done. Next, if this involves some wrong I caused to a person, I could even contact this person, apologize, hope they accept the apology, and whether they accept it or not, I'll move on and release the guilt.

Update: Since I started this journey about 8 weeks ago, I've become more aware of aspects of myself and my life that need some work. Making amends for relationships that need more attention is now a major priority in my life.

Finding The Good

When everything feels like it is going wrong and I'm feeling down, stop and ask myself, “What's one positive thing that happened today?” Finding the good will, hopefully, change my attitude and therefore, turn my day around.