#1. Practice Kindness

What if we all wrote down our darkest, scariest vulnerabilities, and then had them printed on a t-shirt? What kind of world would we live in? What if we all knew exactly how to speak to one another, based on our strengths, weaknesses, sensitivities, or maybe awkward silence? What if, above all, we knew how to read our own thoughts and feelings, and how to communicate them? What if I told you I could do just that…..

Well,

I think I can.

The truth is, communication is about so much more than speaking our mind or hearing another person’s words; communication is about the stories we tell ourselves, and the meaning we make of other people’s words, as well as our own suggestions.

I’d like for you to take a minute and think about the many thoughts you have in a day….

Time to get up, make the kids’ lunch, get people off to work and school….what about the other thoughts?

Did I get up in time?

Should I have set my alarm earlier?

Did the kids dress warm enough?

Did I eat enough? Should I have eaten at all?

 Now…what about those other-other thoughts that aren’t even questions…the statements that somehow dictate our future moments…those sneaky suggestions that slide into our head and are open for interpretation.

I’m not thin; I’m unhappy; I’m fat, old, tired, sad, lazy, undisciplined……all of these words are used so freely, that sometimes we forget that we would never tolerate such unkind communication from our own children.

Why do we allow this conversation to our own heart?

I’ve listened to podcasts, read several books, journaled, dumped, tracked, and you know what, I’m still practicing how to be kind…..to myself.

I’m not sure where I ever got the idea that it was okay for me to live as if I’m not enough of any one thing, but I sure am enough of everything I need to be.

I don’t believe this every day, even though I should. I am still working on me, and wouldn’t it be nice if we all believed that we are enough. Unpack your emotional baggage and get ready to move your thoughts over to a world of positivity….not because we are a bunch of Care Bears, but because we have a choice. We have a choice to reject certain thoughts that are not true, or do not serve us. We have options…isn’t that grand!

I remind my children (and myself) that we have the option to feel any feeling, at any time. Certain situations really stink, but even then, we have the option to choose how we feel. We are not the victim of our emotions, and I want to thank Katrina Ubell for reminding me of that.

No, we are not victims, because we choose our path. We choose the lens in which we choose to perceive each and every situation. Why are we not happier? Why are we not kinder? Why do we sometimes feel so stuck in a situation that we feel paralyzed?

The answer, as hard as it is to hear, is likely that it’s our own thoughts that are freezing us here.

We Deserve Better.

Whomever the “we” is that is reading this, we,  you, they, us….better is a possibility, we just need to practice kindness. If we practice kind thoughts inward, we just may find that we are able to send those happy-positive -rainbow vibes outward.