The Beautiful Things
Burn out can happen for numerous reasons such as your daily activities not lining up with your values, from feeling stuck, from feeling like you’re doing too much, or not doing enough of the stuff that makes you genuinely happy. While doing less may be beneficial for some of us, for others that isn’t necessarily the answer or even an option. There may be children counting on you, bills that need to be paid, pets that need to be cared for, things we want to do to get us to where we want to be.
Take an honest look at your life or hire a coach and see where you can make things easier on yourself. If there isn’t much that can be changed at this time: 1. Remember you can do hard things and 2. Make sure you’re noticing and appreciating the beautiful things in life.
It’s amazing how not much factually may change in our circumstances but everything changes when we shift what we focus on.
Look for the beautiful things. Notice the beautiful things. Dwell on the beautiful things. Even in the most difficult situations you can look around and find one thing to be grateful for. It can be a warm memory, it can be looking forward to the first snow, it can be that your kid finally fell asleep, or that the holidays are coming up, or the scenery outside the window on your commute. We often let these moments pass us by without much thought, choosing instead to divert our attention to the aspects of life that are hard or uncertain. It’s not our fault, human brains are wired to look for danger and to focus on the negative. But we can rewire it, we can retrain it. We can focus on the beautiful things.
Add more beautiful things into your life. Send a text to a friend, just to let them know you’re thinking about them, call your sister when you’re folding the laundry, play your kids favorite game with them and focus on how happy they get. Everyday look for the beautiful things. Before you go to bed at night write out the beautiful things you encounter and the beautiful feeling they create in you. After consistently doing this practice, your brain will start to automatically look for and focus on the beautiful things.
We already know life can be hard, I’m not discrediting or disregarding your hardships, but if you want to change the narrative of your life then focus on the beautiful things. Talk about the beautiful things. Share the beautiful things with friends and family. Call your friend to tell them the amazing thing that happened at work. Journal about what is going well for you, about how beautiful the rain looked hitting against your window while you were curled up on your couch.
What we focus on creates our experience. Make your experience, your life, nothing sort of what life is, beautiful. Don’t miss it.