I Choose to be Happy

"When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.”  
- Marci Shimoff

Yesterday was a long day.  I was scheduled to go into work at 11 but due to scheduled interviews and other pressing issues, I had to go in at 8 am instead. That made for another 11 hour day.  I had my pedometer on and clocked in at 9344 steps. Not the recommended 10,000 but close and I did it with an ache spreading across my back like a squeezing vice.  The acupuncture is helping a little, but we are at about 3 days of relief before it amps back up.  By 3 pm, I caught myself being very, very cranky.  Fortunately only a couple of people had to deal with me because I was REALLY snarky for a bit.  I came home, walked the pups, made myself a BLT (hold the L) on 12 grain and baked some fries then sat with my heating pad until time for bed.  

Today is the first day of training for my temporary staff for the semester.  What that means is that I conducting the "classroom" session with them for about 4 hours.  With my lower back still hurting a lot, being on my feet  for 4.5 hours will be a challenge.  I get to repeat this 4 times this week.  Two days of classroom/ sales floor work and two days of video training for the 7-8 people we have already hired, topped with two more interviews and potential training for those folks too.  Oh- and there's my regular work too.  We are at a stage where school starts in 3 weeks.  That means that there's no time to take it easy, no time to indulge the pain, no rest for the wicked.  I can feel my irritation rising just thinking about my schedule between now and Labor Day.  

It would be so easy to give in to the pain and fatigue and allow myself to become both snappish and oversensitive.  If I did that I would end up trying to reign myself in all day in front of the staff and customers and then coming home and stewing until it had an effect on my sleep.  I have been there, done that more than I care to admit.  I could see the trend beginning yesterday. Toward the end of the day it was almost as if I was standing outside myself and couldn't stop the words even though I wanted to give myself a shake.   This time, because I was able to truly see how grouchy I was becoming, I choose to nip it in the bud.  

This time I will try to project happiness.  As Marci Shimoff said in the quote above I don't need to manipulate the world around me to try and make myself happy- I merely need to live from a place of happiness to be happy.  Yes, the pain ebbs and flows like the surf in a storm.  Yes, I have personal issues that need to be resolved so that I can move in one direction or another.  Yes, I am both physically and mentally exhausted.  The thing is- none of those things are going to change any time soon.  I can let them drag me down or I can choose to set them aside for the time being and just allow myself to be happy in the moment.  To that end, here is the 3-part plan:  

1-  Every time I feel my stress level rising I will literally stop, take a moment in my office and breathe through it until I am back to level.  

2-  I will make sure that I stretch out every morning to get my muscles and joints ready for the long day ahead.  I have downloaded a yoga app that looks to be a good way to get the kinks out in the morning.  I will also stretch again on my breaks using the simple stretches that my Chiropractor gave me to keep the tightness at bay as much as possible.  

3- I will make time to practice gratitude in the moment.  Even the most difficult situation has a silver lining somewhere.  When I find myself  in the midst of one, if I can't find that thing to be grateful about right then; I can jot myself a note for when we are slow and just let it go.  I can then take that time to review the situation and identify that one little nugget that I can be thankful for rather than let the problem sit in my brain and fester all day.  

That's it, simple and to the point.  It's all about changing my attitude when I recognize that I am becoming overwhelmed by the negative and  releasing it for the positive.  

On a side note- I am honored to have this blog chosen as one of the Top 20 Rheumatoid Arthritis blogs of 2015 by Healthline.com.  I cannot tell you what it means to me!  Thanks to the folks of Healthline because that is something that I can think about when the going gets rough!