It’s been a long time…
It’s been a long time since I wrote for this blog. A lot has happened since then. Recently, I’ve been thinking about reviving my blog so that I can continue to offer my thoughts on living a stress-free life. I do not live a stress-free life—lots of things stress me out—but I try my hardest to do so. And maybe my thoughts can be of service to you somehow.
Here are some things that have occurred to me…
Grief. I’m not a licensed therapist, so take this as you will, but through my experience with grief, I have learned that the emotions need to come out. Whatever you feel, however you feel, the emotions should have an opportunity to come to the surface. Trying to avoid or suppress them may only prolong suffering.
Busyness. I’m starting to think the biggest reason people are so busy has nothing to do with outside sources. Sure, there are cases where circumstances are outside of our control, but aside from that, I think many of us are busy because we make ourselves busy. Whether we believe it or not, we have the power to say ‘no’. We have the power to decide what tasks we want to prioritize. If we want a simple life, we have to make that a priority and therefore say ‘no’ to other things. It’s not always simple, but it’s necessary if that’s the lifestyle we are striving for.
Specialty. What are we the best at? At our own lives. We know how we do things, whether right or not-so right, and we have opinions on how things should be done. Sure, we may not think that the neighbor should be teaching small children to ride tricycles in the middle of a busy residential road (even if she is clearly on the lookout for cars), but do we really need to voice our opinion? Probably not. Do we really need to be telling everyone that we learned how to ride a bicycle on a gravel driveway (which the neighbor does have)? Probably not. We lead busy lives already. We don’t need to get ourselves involved in what other people are doing.
That’s where ‘specialty’ comes in. Or rather ‘focus’. If we focus on our own lives and work toward improving our own lives the best we can, we will be doing our best to keep things easy. And that is so much simpler than the alternative.
Learn. Every day is a learning opportunity. Whether we like it or not, we have the ability to learn and grow. Sometimes lessons aren’t the easiest to swallow, and that’s okay. It just tells us where we need to put some of our effort. Hard things that come up for us signify topics that need to be addressed.
Life is hard. And some days are a lot harder than others. But I strongly believe that we were put here on Earth for a purpose, and we are still here on Earth for a purpose. And while we may not be able to make a global difference in the world, perhaps our focus should be within our circle of influence. How can we make a difference in one person’s life? And how can that snowball into more?
I hope this has been helpful. It’s taken me a long time to feel consistently well emotionally. There have been lots of ups and downs. I hadn’t lost hope, but I did have trouble finding my way. And I think as long as we’re trying, we are progressing. To those of you who need to hear it, hang in there, even when you question why.
All the best,
Jody Calkins
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