This is optimal living daily episode 1412. Sometimes life sucks and you choose joy anyway. By Christo O'Reilly, Davy DeGhee of a life in progress.ca, and I'm just a molecular personal narrator reading blogs to you, mostly sometimes books, anything that will help you live your life in a more meaningful way. I do want to mention that today's author, it just found out, was in a bad car accident.
She's okay, well enough to continue writing, but it sounds like it was a pretty close call. She's definitely bruised and dealing with some injuries, so wishing Christo all the best, you can do the same for her at lifeinprogress.ca. This pose might be even more relevant than originally planned based on the title. But yeah, thankful that she's okay.
Car accidents are super scary. For now, let's get right to it as we optimize your life. Sometimes life sucks and you choose joy anyway. By Christo O'Reilly, Davy DeGhee of a life in progress.ca.
This is real life, yet another sewer backup, another friend in trouble, more financial stressors, a child going through a difficult time, something's up in your body and it hurts, dealing with disingenuous people. Look, sometimes life sucks and you choose joy anyway. Should we wait until life is calm and perfectly predictable to live with joy? Do we permit life circumstances to control our every thought and emotion?
Why do other people get to push our buttons and control our moods and behavior? We can decide that whether life is easy breezy or downright horrible to choose joy and wear it like a garment. We can decide to shift our thoughts and remind ourselves that though life feels rocky right now and we are walking through some unknowns that sometimes life sucks and you choose joy anyway. When we choose joy, we are more easily able to identify the gifts of today.
We have good, albeit simple food to feed our family. We cannot make life perfect for our friend, but we can love them and offer words of encouragement and maybe some homemade soup. We have walked through financial stressors before and will come out of this season too, hard to end mind intact. This challenging circumstance for our child permits us to come alongside and demonstrate our love and support for him or her in tangible ways.
We have access to healthcare and fresh air and legs that permit us to get out for a walk or to dance with our child in the kitchen. And when we walk through hard times, we come up against the very necessary and amazing opportunity to practice resilience to call on the skills we build around self-care and self-compassion, to be reminded of the powerful truth that we get to decide who we are and how we choose to be in the world. I'm not trying to downplay all your pain or the reality of your situation, nor mine, but I recognize that mindset matters. Moving out from a victim mentality matters, practicing resilience matters.
I've lived in your lifetime of chronic fear and anxiety and I've lived with deeply rooted joy and unshakeable rootedness that anchors me in the storm. Oh, it is not easy. My husband hears the stress in my voice and those creases between my eyes seem a little deeper today, my jaw hurts because I was clenching all night. I must remember my splint tonight.
My right arm and joints have flared up and hurt as they do when I'm shifting into a stress state, but I stubbornly, intentionally, choose joy. And so can you. Sometimes it is easy to tell ourselves to calm down that all is well, but our body has other ideas. No matter how much we will ourselves to chill out, our bossy brain takes over and starts yelling loudly.
All manner of fearful and anxious thoughts and our traitorous body follows like a hapless little puppy. And we can keep practicing in big or small ways. We can choose over and over and over who and how we want to be in the world. And we can choose not to quit when life feels hard.
So what are some habits we can practice? Some practical tips to help us choose joy in these challenging seasons? Number one, do the work. When I was going through a really difficult time years back, my psychologist recommended Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is.
I completely disagreed with some of her philosophy, yet found parts of it extremely helpful in shifting my thoughts to hope from despair. Number two, pause and just breathe. Don't skip over this. If you're stressed out, chances are you are forgetting to breathe or perhaps breathing too quickly.
Pull out your favorite essential oil instead of time or on your phone to remind you to physically pause a few times a day, ground your body, and take some slow, calming deep breaths. Number three, reach out for comfort, more social support. A text or phone call. A long hug from your partner.
There's danger during times like these that you and your partner pull away from each other rather than pull together. Or other healthy touch. Number four, go to bed. I feel like I say this over and over and over.
There's so many people hustling out of necessity, working multiple jobs, just doing their best to survive and sacrificing sleep for this. But there are equal number of people thinking that staying up till 2am to work or watch TV is the answer. But sleep deprivation impacts your ability to think clearly and make wise decisions to respond in a healthy way to stress. Number five, practice gratitude.
Force your brain to see the good. If you're feeling incredibly anxious and jittery, mine curs you to use a journal like my seasonal mindfulness journals or app to physically write down the things you are grateful for rather than just thinking them. Writing takes more work and causes a bigger hard stop which can help pull you out of your head into your body. A good thing.
Number six, enjoy mindful activities like coloring or knitting. Listen to music that energizes or read a book that inspires. Spending time watching TV feels easy, mind-numbing, and curling up with a good movie can be lovely once in a while. And the office got me through a hard season of life recently.
But TV watching is not always one of the best ways to unwind. Number seven, gentle movement like walking can help us lower stress or anxiety. We may feel we don't have time for this in really busy seasons, but walking, yoga, stretching, or even dancing with a local two-step group can boost endorphins and lower stress and anxiety. I'm sorry for the stress you were walking through.
I wish you were not afraid or alone or in pain. I can also say it would feel far lovelier if my life were absent of struggle in this moment. But this is real life. And we can do this.
And I believe there are amazing gifts that await us on the other side of the valley if we have eyes to see. We can choose to face head on the reality of our current situation, and even when life sucks, when we feel heartbroken or afraid or extremely raw and depleted, we can choose joy anyway. You just listen to the post titled, Sometimes Life Socks and You Choose Joy Anyway, by Christo Riley-Davideghee of a Life in Progress.ca. Pick things to Christo super relevant right now for her own life, even though this was written previously.
Hopefully it's helpful for you too, and show her some support and well wishes at a Life in Progress.ca since the recent serious car accident. Leave it there for today. Thank you for being here. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.