Heading Downhill with my Hands Up

Today I woke up ready to write! I thought it was because I got a great night’s sleep and my dreams were pretty good as well. However, once I looked in the mirror, I’m not really sure how well I slept last night. Beauty sleep is a real thing people!

Anyways, what I have been thinking a lot about recently is self-improvement. A lot of times I find myself thinking about what I can do to make myself better and expand myself whether that’s physically, mentally, or emotionally. I want to find unique activities that I can do in my spare time that I enjoy and challenge me. I’m a terrible artist, but I wanted to try and start to draw. Let’s just say I am still working on the same piece I started 4 weeks ago. Maybe I’ll finish it on the airplane home next month. Who knows, I still enjoyed it. Sometimes I’ll check out a new book and start to read, but often times I don’t finish it (that’s if I even start it). It’s like I have all these ideas that I start, but I am not really following through with any of them. I started this blog and wrote nearly every day, but now I am really only writing once a week.

I think perhaps, I set unrealistic expectations for myself. I’m not really sure it’s realistic to think I am going to be able to write every day and when I was writing every day I wasn’t sleeping that much so maybe I should re-evaluate my expectations.

This brings me to my next point. The other day on my day off I just wanted to relax and watch some TV. We don’t pay for cable so we just get the basic free channels so my options were limited because I didn’t want to watch Netflix at the time. Of course, good ole Dr. Phil was on so I decided I would watch it for a little bit. I’ll spare your precious time and not waste it on the episode itself, but what did stick with me is what Dr. Phil had to say. In summary it was that you can’t spend your time waiting to feel something from someone when they might be incapable of giving you what you desire. For example, you can’t feel love from someone incapable of loving you. They might be incapable of loving you because they can’t love themselves. You may be seeking friendship with someone that is incapable of trust. If they can’t trust you, your friendship is not going to grow.

I thought of this concept in my life and it was a breath of fresh air. It gave me closure and understanding. I find myself seeking things with people that just aren’t capable of giving me what I am looking for. It sounds bad because I am saying it bluntly, but I am not faulting anyone for this. There’s nobody to blame in this situation. You have to take it at face value and move on.

Taking emotions and feelings out of this concept to make it a little easier, let’s focus on the mechanisms of the concept. Think of it in terms of a regular, plastic water bottle. If it’s not an insulated water bottle, I can hope all I want for that water bottle to keep my water cold, but at the end of the day my water is still going to be room temperature. I can add ice to the water bottle, I can wrap stuff around the water bottle to make the water stay colder for longer, but no matter what I do to change it, that water bottle is still going to be a plastic water bottle.

Thank you Dr. Phil.

Self-improvement is quite the journey and I am really enjoying it. I feel like some days I can actually identify the changes that are going on in my brain as they are making new connections and helping my train of thought in a more positive way. Understanding different perspectives and changing your perception to make the situation a little lighter can also go a long way.

For instance today as I biked to work, I was thinking about the ups and downs of life. Why, you might ask? Simply because my bike ride is like a mountain, no matter if I am headed to work or heading home from work, I always have to pedal harder at the beginning because there are more hills and then once I reach the tunnel it flattens out, and the end of my bike ride is an easy breeze heading downhill. I get so excited once I reach the tunnel because I know that I’ve overcome the hardest part of my bike ride. I thought, yah know it’s kinda funny because in life we are always talking about the joys of heading in the right direction and making it to the top, but that we hate when our life is ‘going downhill.’ However, in real life, we love the bike ride down the hill. It’s so fun, easy, exciting, and it makes you appreciate the work you put in to get to the top. So why do we view ‘going downhill’ negatively? It made me think about the quote ‘the grass is always greener on the other side.’ Well mate, if the grass is always greener on the other side you’re gonna have to get your butt up and over that mountain to get to that greener grass.

All I am saying is the next time you find your life heading ‘downhill’ and you don’t have much hope, I challenge you to put your hands in the air, put a smile on that face, and just think that perhaps you’re heading to that greener grass people speak of.