Experimental

I have decided to really try to focus on things that make me happy throughout my day. That may sound sort of obvious to some but, I find that I do not always stop to think about what has made me happy within a day. With my robotic, school-work-study-sleep-eat routine, I feel I need to take the time to stop and reflect on whatever has made my day worth "it".

I fell asleep last night determined to get my new plan in motion but when I awoke, I quickly ran into many obsticles. The first one being the dreaded morning. I am most definitely not a morning person, especially after being up late studying. I stayed in bed as long as I could then slowly drug myself out and pouted my way through my morning routine. This was not a good way to kick off my new experiment! When I thought about it some later in the day (after my coffee of course) I realized that my day could probably become instantly better if I could wake up thinking about something positvely. If I could just simply reflect each morning on what makes me happy or what makes me feel good, I am sure my days could start out a lot smoother. I am sure this will not be easy but I am going to do my best to change this!

The next big issue I ran into today was my frequent negative thoughts. Have you ever noticed how one bad thought leads to another, which then leads to another, and then quickly they all spiral out of control leaving you feeling completely down and the only reason why is because your brain let you? Nothing terrible happend to me today, so why do I need to feel down!? If I could just keep my thoughts in check, I could avoid these random moments of unhappiness throughout my days. I realized this quickly today and decided action needed to be taken against my destructive self concsious, so, I took a tip out of my new favorite list (#12) and attempted to "squash" my negative thoughts and found myself surprised with how well it worked! Everytime I found myself thinking about something that brought my spirits down, or made me feel bad, I would quite literally tell myself (in my head of course) "squash!". It may seem like I took this advice a bit too literally but let me tell you it worked! Just telling myself that one word would somehow get me to instantly stop thinking about whatever it was that started to make me feel lousy. I am very pleased with the "squash" technique and hope that it can keep working for me!

By keeping my negative thoughts at bay I found it much easier to focus on anything that made me feel good and happy today. One of my first moments of happiness today happened in my volleyball class. I have come to realize that no matter how bad my days seem to be going, that class always makes me feel good, even if its just for that one hour. I enjoy the people in the class and I , of course, love the sport. When I signed up for the class is was mostly just to fill and hour slot I had between two other classes and now it is something I look forward to every week. It also puts me in a good mood for my history class that follows it, which has also become a class I can look forward to. I enjoy the company and I find the lectures fascinating. At the end of my long school day, I usually leave feeling pretty good and I attribute it completely to these two classes.

The next moment that made me smile was when I was driving back home from school. The weather was just terrible today and could have been easily depressing. When I left the wind was blowing like crazy and the rain was pouring down sideways, which i really really do not like (squash that thought of course). Randomly at a stop light my car battery dies and I have to pull over. I was dreading the phone call I was probably going to have to make to my Dad to come and help me in the terrible weather when I noticed that a truck that had been driving behind me had instantly pulled up to help! It is one of the nicest actions I have seen someone do in what seems like awhile. The fact that they instantly without much of any thought pulled up to help was just so incredibly kind. I think it was their good karma that got my battery working again, we didnt even have to pop the hood!

My last happy thought for today is of my bed. I have been so busy lately and today was my only day off from work this week so I let myself not feel guilty about spending a good amount of it in bed. I must say, it was incredibly comfortable and a nice way to spend a rainy day. I may not have gotten everything I planned on doing done today but, I can always do the rest tomorrow! I am now going to sleep in my comfortable bed and hopefully I can squah my negative thoughts when I think about having to get out of it tomorrow morning :) .