Portmarnock Beach
What a fantastic day it is here in Dublin today! The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful autumn day. Makes me feel great.
When the sun is shining, like it is now, it’s so much easier to feel cheerful and positive. Has anything changed? Has the recession gone away? Have the people in charge suddenly started taking responsibility for themselves and the importance of the jobs they hold? No. It’s just that the good weather puts me in better humour.
How often do you say that the weather makes you feel good, or bad (if it rains)? How many times do you say someone, or something, made you feel a certain way? In relation to the weather, I do it all the time. At this time of year, when the days get shorter, I feel more melancholy and have to remind myself to change my mood, since I can’t change the time of year or the weather.
We even extend our power give-away to people:- “He made me really angry”. “She made me do it”. We give other people the chance to affect our mood. What a waste! What a loss for us.
One of the greatest powers we have is our ability to change our mood or our state. We can decide to remain upbeat when we meet a group of friends who do the whole moan-a-minute routine. We can choose to be positive about our health rather than assume, at the first sniffle, that we’ve got swine flu’. We can even choose not to respond angrily to someone who does something we don’t like.
We might like to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are acting like that because of some sadness or upset in their lives. We could see it as feedback rather than criticism. We could even use it as a tool to encourage ourselves not to be like that.
But it is always a choice. We often rush into a comment, or a response that afterwards we might realise was less-than-useful. A pause for a quick assessment of the situation can often help us to put that little bit of distance between ourselves and the situation, give ourselves a moment’s breathing space. Time to choose a better option. Or - as I read in one of the personal development books I have - “think a better-feeling thought“.
So get out there and practise thinking a better-feeling thought. Your choice. Your response. You choose the outcome.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
[...] it. I would put it in under my “Feelgood Tasks” because I think it relates to a whole change of behaviour, which will bring long term benefits to your self and others. Let me know what you [...]