When I visualize this blog's future, I imagine a favorite, worn-soft blanket pulled up to my chin against a chilly winter's night or a loyal friend who picks up right where we left off, regardless of time elapsed.
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My hope is that the blog can become a security net; an archive of action steps for happiness. Action steps for days when you just can't shake the blues; tasks for igniting the senses when you've gotten complacent. While visiting these pages, I hope we remember to appreciate our lovers on more than just birthday, anniversary, and the 14th of February. In reading the tips collected here I hope someone is inspired to give herself a present, just because it's Tuesday.
Action Step #1: Reframe the Situation
One of the simplest techniques for overcoming negative emotions is to try to find a way to reframe the situation into something positive. Oh right, I hear you saying. Bear with me.
We are evolutionarily inclined to weigh negative thoughts more heavily than positive thoughts (this is why smear campaigns are so effective). If you've ever exaggerated the story of some grievance to a friend so they would commiserate with you about the injustice of it all, you can identify with this tendency. Many times the problem that we have allowed to consume our thoughts and grow so enormous is truly insignificant when filtered through that "bigger picture" lens.
Some days, when we're wallowing lavishly in the depths of self-pity, we need to attach this lens to our eyeballs. View the problem in the context of say, women living in Afghanistan. Find a way to say, "Well at least...(insert silver lining here)," no matter how much of a stretch it seems to be at first. A friend complains she works too much; I immediately think that she's getting rich, especially because she hasn't the time to spend money. Happiness is like strength--we have more of it when we train our muscles, in this case, our brains. By consciously choosing to focus on a positive fact, we retrain our brain to scan for happy thoughts also, instead of concentrating exclusively on the bad news. Read more about our brain's negativity bias.
Real Life Application
Boyfriend and I planned a biking vacation for the last month and a half, to take place in Santa Barbara. We've been squirreling money away, and I found some impressive discounts on food and lodging. Then (horror!) my work schedule comes out and for next two-weeks, I have only one shift. Ever with his chin up Boyfriend throws himself into even more work to make up the difference, but like all the best-laid plans throughout history, business is bad for the few weeks leading up to our vacation. Our vacation fund must now pay rent and bills. I am devastated. I mean utterly-moping-endlessly-sighing-universe-cursing devastated.
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Then the fun really starts. Now, because I'm already feeling sorry for myself, I start to add all kinds of additional insults to the pile. My brain, awash in negative thinking, is racing around like a child at an Easter egg hunt, grabbing more nastiness and throwing it on the fire.
Boyfriend and I don't do anything special together anymore.
In fact he's been going out with friends a lot lately and spending even less time with me.
I'm lonely!
And on and on it goes, snowballing into the kind of day I wish I could crawl into bed and forget. And all of it happens not because I enjoy dwelling on the negative, but because some part of my DNA believes I'm better prepared to deal with the world if I'm always thinking in worst-case scenarios.
Break the Pattern
Okay, now let's take each one of those vented frustrations and see if we can play Spin Doctor:
1) We deserve a vacation.
I mean, of course we do. Everybody--and quite specifically workaholic Americans--deserves a vacation. Many more of them, in fact. I vote we take a page out of the European book and take six weeks or more, as opposed to the standard two weeks in the States. But the word deserve feels a little wrong, doesn't it? It tastes disturbingly like entitlement, and there's too much of that in modern life for my liking. Not everybody can afford to take nice vacations the way we can. Some people might never take vacations in their lifetimes. Some people don't even have jobs, so they're far more worried about paying rent than sipping Mai Tais on an exotic beach. Viewed this way, it feels awfully hard to complain about not getting to indulge myself, as if it's something I'm owed.
2) I'm being punished at work.
I work two jobs, which regularly resent each other and me for my lack of availability and divided focus. Meanwhile, I lose sleep over not being everything to both employers. For a year and a half now, I have agonized over not being free five days a week to bartend, when the job is merely a means to an end, and I would go crazy-berzerko-postal if I was there that much anyway. But now I'm hurt and angry that new employees are getting more and better shifts after all my efforts to be cooperative.
Here's the spin: I know that my employer is not terribly concerned with my situation. As a result, I need to stop wasting precious energy concerning myself with their situation. I will book as much work as I can elsewhere and give them whatever availability is left. When I stop relying on this job, whatever shifts I get then will be "bonus" instead of "bread and butter." The lesson is that I need to find another way to survive.
3) Our vacation funds have to pay our rent.
No two ways around it, this is sad. If you've ever in your life worked hard to save up for something important, you can empathize with our bleeding hearts. But...still. We might not have had the money to bail us out during this inexplicable downturn in the service industry.
We have money for bills. And it's better to lose our funds to that, than to go into debt.
4) I feel distant from my lover (and the barrage of other nobody likes me, everybody hates me's) to which I subjected myself in self-flagellation.
First of all, I've been writing 90% more than ever before. As a result, I am alone a lot, working from home. This leads to feelings of isolation. Solution: Go meet Amy for coffee.
Secondly, loneliness is causing me to view my relationship with Boyfriend as my everything. His perfectly normal desire to spend some downtime out with friends feels like an articulated choice to not spend time with me. (And I'm always invited to join, but I won't tell you that because I want you to understand my misery)! Solution: Spend some quality time together.
Chances are good, some of my concern and senseless worry is owing to the fact we've gotten complacent. We diligently tread the hamster wheel of our lives and it has probably been a
while since we've really looked each other in the eyes or had a conversation without simultaneously sending an email or watching The Office. I am a firm believer that the survival of a relationship relies upon practice, changing the routine, and hard work. So I went to my trusty list of Ways to Have an Awesome Relationship, and picked something.
Have an Adventure
Now working with the reframed thought, Staying in town this weekend and not spending money feels responsible and right, I decided we had to have an adventure. We have a beach six blocks away, a love of bike excursions, and an unprecedented entire weekend off together. But how to not spend money? We had accumulated several Groupons on our bulletin board--long forgotten--overlapping and crowding each other as if unperturbed by their lack of use. This discovery equalled free dinner (twice).
So we're going on a staycation. A vacation at home. An adventure. A challenge to make it affordable. An exercise in creatively engaging my favorite person in some quality face time.
I'll meet you back here to let you know how it goes...
A World of Possibility
There's something comforting about the idea that we can take tangible steps to overcome melancholy and anxiety; that happiness is not entirely based on something larger and seemingly uncontrollable--brain chemistry, how much money we make, whether we love our jobs. It may not always be easy to reframe the situation, but practicing helps. The point is, joy is attainable.
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