Changing Your Mindset

Hello loves!

I can't believe it's already the end of October! This year feels like it's flying by. Christmas decor is out in most stores and Halloween stuff is on sale (which is weird since it's still a week away). And of course, people are already starting to think about 2025.

I get the appeal of a New Year. It's a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate, etc. A lot of people have this mentality when it comes to a new day, week, or month--myself included--and it's not necessarily a bad thing. On hard days, it's nice to wake up the next morning and know yesterday's troubles won't always impact the present.

But I think there's also a lot of pressure on these 'reset days' too. When the first "bad" thing happens, it's easy for people to immediately write off the day as 'another bad one.' For the same reason, a lot of people give up on their resolutions in the New Year after their first slip-up.

There seems to be a mindset that every day, week, month, or year falls into one extreme: Completely Perfect or Completely Wasted.

Which is wild, because life doesn't work like that. Within 24 hours of one day, not every single minute will be "good" or "perfect," just like how they won't all be "bad" or "wasted seconds." I can think of some good moments from my very worst day, just like I can think of some thunderclouds on my best day ever.

When we force our days or months or whatever into one category, we're negating all the other moments that don't fit into whatever box we assigned it. And that can start to give us a very skewed and dangerous outlook on our lives.

I read somewhere that the "luckiest" people aren't actually lucky; they just live like they are. It seems like things always work out for them because, as far as they're concerned, things do. Within every bad day or string of failures, they find those shining moments of wins, life lessons, or happiness, and keep moving forward. They focus on the good of their past to help them overcome the hardships of the present. But they don't hide their failures. They remember the times it got difficult and seemed hopeless as a way to stay humble and to know they can overcome hard things.

Compare that to people who throw whole months or years into the box of "bad luck," "bad years," or "wasted time." They always have bad days because they believe they always have bad days.

Remember Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh? The donkey who would look at a bright sky and expect rain or would watch an adventure lead to disaster with a monotoned "I knew it." I always felt bad for him because no matter what the other characters did to cheer him up or what adventures they went on, Eeyore only saw the bad. In the original book, I think there's only one story where he's actually happy at the end and it's honestly such a relief to see.

Looking at Eeyore's life and his friends, it's easy for us as readers to scratch our heads and wonder why he's so sad. He's got so many good things, doesn't he? Maybe they didn't find the North Pole in that one trip, but he got to spend the day exploring in nature and being with his friends. And the rainstorm that turned into a flood might have been scary, but at the end of the story, all the animals got to spend time together. Why focus on the rainstorm when you're safe with all your loved ones around?

Yeah, it's easy to point fingers at a fictional stuffed animal and ask why he's sad while completely ignoring the times we act the same way in our own lives.

I'm guilty of this. Truthfully, this whole post is because I had a series of not-great things happen in the span of a few days. Disappointments, betrayals, existential dread---the usual mid-20s experience. All of it came crashing down on one terrible week and I had had it.

I spiraled. Hard. It was a lot happening back-to-back and I was at a loss. So I had a little mini-meltdown because sometimes you just need a good cry when you're overwhelmed by how much of life you can't control. And if that's all I had done, it would have been fine.

But it wasn't. No, for the next few days, I let my mind turn bitter. By only dwelling on the bad of the past, I only processed the bad of the present. And let me just say, staying negative can be addicting. It's not a surprise all the news is sweat-inducing and the most "trendy" things on social media are ragebait---the worse something is, the more attention you can capture.

There's some flaw in the human mind that makes us want to stay angry and depressed. It's why so many people are secretly glad when things fail. Confirmation bias is satisfying. When you spend your time only remembering bad and expecting nothing to work out, things will stay bad. And sure, you can be "right" about how nothing goes your way, but omg you will be miserable.

That's what made me have a mindset shift.

I woke up one day and decided enough was enough. Being tired and hopeless and expecting everything to be terrible wasn't changing anything. All it did was make me feel awful (& probably a pain to be around.)

So, I decided that for just one day, I would only see good. I would trust that everything would work out, pray and let go of my stressors, and focus on the silver linings of life. I would acknowledge my disappointment when things went wrong and allow myself the time I needed to process my feelings, but I wouldn't stay in them. And if there was a situation I couldn't find something positive in or found it hard to move on from, I would tell myself it's the burnt toast theory at work.

And oh wow, did it make a difference.

Obviously, I'm not perfect. I'm still a human that'll mess up and not remember to have this more optimistic mindset all the time. But the times I do choose to practice mindfulness and focus on hope and the good parts of my day are the times I feel more at peace in my life.

When I look for the good, I find good.

In a world that seems to be drowning in bad, it's important to find the bright spots of good. Those moments, no matter how small, will give us hope to keep trying and will allow us to make a positive difference. So find the good.

Love y'all!

"That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day." --2 Corinthians 4:16