Does your life feel easy or hard? Overall, do you feel happy or unhappy?
Do you want to feel more ease and alignment with yourself and your life?
These are general questions, but the simplistic tone is important. Feeling good about who we are and the lives we’re in, is much easier than most of us make it out to be.
Before I excitedly go on about how easy it all is, I do understand what it’s like to feel unsettled and stuck. I get what it’s like to be overcome with self-doubt. I’ve allowed the actions of others to affect how I feel more times than I can count. I totally get how it feels to wallow in defeat and to wonder why it all feels so hard.
I could go on, but I won’t because it’s not helpful. What is helpful, is sharing what I’ve learned about falling in love with life exactly as it is.
Loving the lives we are in is all about our perception. It’s about how we choose to wake up to our lives each moment of the day.
How we feel is our choice. How we choose to feel and perceive life is our superpower – actually, it’s our only power in life.
I feel happiest when I’m in alignment with my inner truth. When I’m anything but content, I know I’m not in alignment and I need to shift – that’s how easy it is.
You might be thinking – hold on lady, you don’t know what it’s like to go through this hard thing or that awful thing, and you may be right. But, what I do feel with certainty is that everyone experiences storms in life and everyone travels through life in their own unique way. We are unique because of our perception and our individual story. We are unique because of the stories we spin, the thoughts we think, the feelings we feel and how and when we choose to feel them.
When we’ve travelled down hard paths, sometimes we develop well practiced thought patterns and beliefs that keep us out of alignment. When we spend more time being stuck than we do enjoying life, we might need a bit more practice to gain momentum in a new direction.
I totally get it and that’s why this is my favorite topic to write about. It can be helpful to have extra tools and strategies that remind us to get back in the driver’s seat of our lives. These reminders can help us love our lives right now in this moment.
Here are the practices and reminders I use every day to stay in alignment and love the life I’m blessed to be in. If they resonate, give them a try.
Be Unapologetically You
In order to stay in alignment with our truth, we must stop caring about what other people think of us. We will never truly know what other people think about – we may have a story about what we believe they think, but it’s just a story.
It’s challenging enough to sort through our thoughts and beliefs, without adding in thoughts about what other people may or may not be thinking about – sheesh! No wonder some of us find it challenging to stay on our path. It’s hard to feel good in our lives when we give our power away to worries that may not even be true.
Instead of worrying about whether or not you are liked, loved and adored by others – give that gift to yourself by protecting your perception of life. Stop making your happiness contingent upon other people and your external world. If love and acceptance is a feeling you long for, then give yourself permission to feel it whenever you want to just because you can – you don’t need a reason.
Feel Your Way into Alignment
This part is important, come back to it often. Our feelings are our guide. How we feel right now in this moment is our indication for whether or not we are aligned with our inner truth. Hint: if we feel good, we are aligned. If we don’t, we aren’t. Check-in with yourself often. Trust in your feelings alone to guide you. If you feel good – yay! Keep going and keep following your inner nudges. If you don’t, all good, go to the next step.
Know Your Sources
What brings you a sense of joy? I’m sure there are lots of things. Make a point of creating a huge list of what your sources of happiness and joy include. Have as many tools and resources to draw on as you possibly can. You’ll need them when you fall off your path and don’t feel good. Your sources of joy will bring you back into alignment.
Your list is unique to you, there is no right or wrong way to feel joy. How could I possibly know what brings you joy? I don’t. I know what makes me happy, there are lots of things. I love: nature, the ocean, trees, birds, a cold glass of fresh water, running, laughing with a good friend, laughing at myself, writing words, witty banter with my husband, checking on my boys one last time before I go to sleep and marveling at how blessed my life is. The list goes on. I have pictures and reminders incorporated into my external environment. I have trusted people I can reach out to. I have favorite songs and playlists I listen to. I know I can dance if I want to feel energized and stretch if I want to release tension. I have a picture of my boys on my phone – the one I’m sharing here. Every time I turn my phone on, I see this picture and my heart is instantly flooded with love and joy. These two faces are everything.
Knowing your sources of joy is powerful and empowering.
How We Start and End Our Day Matters
Each day is our opportunity to create a masterpiece. So many of us fall into the trap of forgetting that life is the gift. Each day is new. We can reset at any moment and create new momentum and joy in our lives.
The story and adventure of our day exist between two bookends: the start of our day and the end of our day. Instead of jumping headfirst into the day, see what changes if you spend a few moments in gratitude for another day. Set an intention for how you most want to feel today. You can go back to that intention anytime you get knocked off your path throughout the day.
At the end of the day, before you drift off to sleep, spend a few moments in gratitude for the adventure of another day. Pat yourself on your back for being an amazing adventurer – if you’re here, you are an amazing adventurer. That’s how easy it is.
You get to shape your perspective. Use it to see how amazing you are as you are. Love the life you’re in – that’s why we are here.
❤ Emily
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Originally published at emilymadill.com