Rain Clouds

Rain Clouds

The clouds rolled in this morning - literally and figuratively.

After a stretch of beautiful spring weather, the rain clouds have finally caught up with us.

As I woke up to a cloudy day, I felt my mood go cloudy too.  Why does that happen? Why are we all susceptible to bad attitudes and crappy days once in awhile?  Or are we actually all susceptible to that? How much of it can we control?

Have you ever seen the person who is irritatingly happy ALL THE TIME? (Trust me, I do not fall into this category).  What’s their secret?

The older I get, the more I truly believe that the power of our minds plays an incredibly huge role in how our days turn out.  Those days turn to weeks, and then to months, and then into a fulfilling life - if we are able to harness the power of our minds in relation to our attitudes.

There is so much talk about gratitude and mindfulness and it can sometimes feel a little contrived and cliche - but what I have come to learn is that what we think about, and what we tell ourselves plays a big role in who we are and who we become.

So today as I felt my mood spiraling downward, I decided to try something new.  I sat down, took 10 minutes, and wrote a list of all the things that I was thankful for today.  The list was not complicated stuff - it included things like: waking up, having a functional body, enjoying a cup of coffee, spending time with my husband, etc.

As I sat and thought on everything that was good in my life, I could feel my mindset start to shift.  Now that’s not to say we don’t all go through hard days and times in our lives. Trust me, I’ve had my own set of that too.  But I still say, we can be authors and creators in this world, and our attitude/state of mind is one place to start with that.

This morning I chose to be conscious of what I thought about and how my self-talk sounded.  And wow! I can say that it was a much better day than I originally anticipated! From now on, I have promised myself that I will be conscious of my thoughts and what I say to myself.  Our words have a lot of power, so let’s use them wisely.

The moral of the story is that there is something to be thankful for, even when the rain clouds roll in!