Give it all you got!
My life is hard, no joke. So, I need reinforcements. Like the Little Engine Who Could, “I think I can, I think I can,” actually does help you get through stuff.
When I’m worn down to nothing, I channel this video. Bleating and all. I crack myself up and give myself energy from a place I often forget I can tap now and again when I’m at the bottom of everything.
Give it all you got!
Turn it up!
We have a bulldog and he’s a big snarfly mess. He makes a lot more work for me than my black lab ever did. Even with all the extra work, he’s still a great pooch. We’re very lucky he’s friendly, happy and healthy.
This song is such a great song. When every day is hard, you need all the encouragement you can get. It’s hard not to bop around to this song. Especially in conjunction with bulldoggy goodness.
Turn it up!
a good distraction
“People are always so distracted.” Yeah? Well, when you’re exhausted and it feels like you have hot lava rocks emanating from your biceps, a little distraction is a very good thing. You find something funny, something you agree with, something you don’t agree with and for whatever brief moment of time you let yourself get lost in that, there may come a time where it becomes a sort of meditation. You’re so focused on the outside, you allow yourself to forget about the inside for a while. To me, meditation is critical to maintaining my peace of mind, whether it’s transcending while sitting, stretching, listening to music or just getting lost in something – don’t discount the mental vitamins in a good distraction.
That said, you can’t distract yourself all the time, distraction is a sometimes food. And, be careful what you give your time to. Use distraction as a nurturing time, to laugh, have some Tearios for breakfast (a good cry), to connect to someone, play word games to sharpen your mind and activate processes. Don’t fill your head with aggressive or negative things because you’ll pay for that in ways you may not realize.
If you’re here, reading this, you already know it’s easy to be miserable. Be it for a moment or an extended period of time, misery can move in and become your best friend. Just you and misery riding the wahmbulance to your pity party for one. It’s heavy, it’s lonely and it’s hard. It’s also a choice. Yes, you’re hurting but if you’re choosing misery you’re just making yourself hurt more, be it physically or emotionally. Find the happy. In nibbles, mouthfuls, bucketfuls, take every happiness vitamin you can find. You can’t overdose on happy.
Here are some of my favorite distractions:
www.imgur.com
Imgur is a photo website. People submit their photos and other people vote on them, this site shows you the most popular ones. I skip a lot of them but also laugh quite a bit.
www.facebook.com
Facebook how I love thee, let me count the ways. I have felt isolated almost my entire life. I’ve had narcolepsy since I was 11 years old. By the time I was 20 I was sleeping 18 hours a day. Doesn’t leave much time for socializing and I was very stunted in that department for many years. Facebook lets me connect to the world at large. I can have conversations with people I would never get afforded the opportunity to see in person because I’m home-bound a lot of the time. A lot of people complain about Facebook but, it’s not the Facebook – it’s the friends list. Cull your list to positive, uplifting people and Facebook becomes a haven for good connections. Not to mention the support groups (which I’ll do a separate post about). Everything I learned about my now-diet I learned in bits and pieces from my Alternate Therapies group on Facebook. Can’t say enough good things about it.
www.instagram.com
I love instagram. I see faces in things, pareidolia. They make me laugh and help keep me going. Most of them I’m the only person who will see them – they either don’t photograph well or disappear too quickly to capture. I see those as little gifts, meant just for me. Tiny perception candies of goodness, helping me see the fun and happy in virtually everything. The ones I do manage to capture, can be found on my Instagram. I love looking at other accounts that also find faces. I love Zach King, who creates these amazing videos where he disappears into the floor, etc. and OverheardLA because living in (near) Lalaland is a humor all unto itself.
What makes you happy?
I can’t figure out how to add comments to this and, to be honest, I’m too tired to keep trying ;).
So, if you’d like to share what makes you happy, click below and comment on the blog post about it.