Have you been putting off doing the things that make you happy until the circumstances are ideal? Have you ever comforted yourself with the justification that the struggle and hard work now will pay off at a later date? What if the ideal circumstance never presented itself? What if you didn’t have as much time as you had planned to reap the rewards that you worked so hard for? Life is a gift and your life was meant to be lived!
Life is an amazing thing. It presents us with so many possibilities and opportunities that we often believe and take for granted that we hold the power to direct our lives. Your response and interpretation to events and circumstances will determine how you feel about yourself and your life.
Life can seem confusing and complicated when faced with an unexpected challenge. Sometimes we get so caught up with what went wrong, or what needs to be fixed, that we lose sight of what’s really important. True, you cannot control what happens around you, but you can decide how you direct the response that comes from within you. How you choose to direct your time, energy and attention serve as the foundation to create how you feel about your life. The way that you direct these valuable resources will determine how fully you embrace life.
When things don’t go as planned it is only natural to feel lost and to lament about how things were supposed to be. We can find ourselves regretting the past and mourning the loss of what we think our future should have been. When we get stuck in this kind of thinking we tend to focus on what we don’t have or what we lack. But energy we spend mourning the past prevents us from feeling and appreciating everything that we already are, and everything that we already have, right now. We do ourselves a disservice when we believe that we are less than adequate because something did or did not happen. Every moment that you are wishing for something else is a moment taken away from the time that you do have to make things happen.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t strive to be better or to have better things. In fact, it’s that wanting and desire that makes life exciting. What I am saying is that we should not wait to start doing the things that bring us joy until we feel like we deserve them. Feeling good doesn’t have to be earned. You just have to allow yourself permission to let yourself feel good. The reason for working hard toward something is because we know that it will make us feel better. What if we never get the opportunity to reap the rewards of our hard work? What if you get to the end of your life and realize that you never really lived because you were working so hard to make the conditions ideal? Don’t wait for the conditions to be ideal before you give yourself permission to start feeling good and to do the things that bring you joy.
“Serenity is achieved when your happiness and wellbeing are no longer at the mercy of external conditions.” (Dr. Julie)
Copyright Dr. Julie Doobay 2023
