If you are looking for proof that your life sucks you will find it. Equally, there is plenty of evidence that your life is incredible right in front of your eyes. Just like beauty seeing your existence as a boring chore or the best thing that ever happened is in the eye of the beholder.
Statistically, we inherit our optimistic and pessimistic nature from our mothers. There is more to it as you can find in a good book written by Martin Seligman. Boy, and how lucky am I! An eternal optimist my mum finds little nuggets of happiness in everything. I learned to find the silver lining in the dumpster fire situation and am forever grateful for that.
But with years of living experience I can tell you one thing for sure – staying optimistic is a conscious effort. The idea is simpler than a rock in a can. Daily recall one thing a day that made you happy and grateful. This concept is a pillar of positive psychology as I wrote in one of my blog posts many moons ago. Thankfully sometimes all we need is a little reminder of how miraculous things are to stop life from spiralling out of control.
And with that, I am starting new post series to share my personal daily nuggets in a tiny hope that it helps with brightening up your day. There will be short 3-5 minute reading time post. You can find them in the “1000 Daily Reminders” category. I feel pretty optimistic about it as I get source material for these posts on a regular basis. To give you an example – I almost lost my precious apple headphones.
I can’t imagine my existence without music and headphones are a gate to the endless buffet of awesome sounds. Some are memories from childhood, some are pacifiers for daily distractions mixed with new and exciting discoveries. Without headphones, I become a whistling and humming nuisance to the public.
This makes total sense in my mind – if there is no music I need to create it. Hence I found myself on the train heading home frantically going through my pockets and backpack looking for a familiar black rubber case. But they were gone. Thinking of the places where I could have left them and how much it will cost to buy a new pair I realised something important. Jenn who’s been competing with me in how many times the coffee shop downstairs spells my name for the order wrong was still in the office.
A quick text message confirmed that this day can be saved. Jenn being a legend found the treasured earpods and kept them safe until my next office trip. If you’ve never seen someone doing a victory dance in a train seat that would be your moment. This day however wouldn’t be called “Jay forgets his #$% everywhere” day if I did not leave my umbrella on the train too. Unfortunately, Jenn’s help is limited to one miracle a day and I will have to buy a new brolly as we call them in Australia.
Just to make sure we are on the same page as much as I was happy to get my headphones back this was not the only thing that mattered. What also mattered is that we have people in our daily lives that can respond and give us a little help when needed.