Little Actions = Excitement for Life
You have the power to improve yourself by asking this question...
I woke up yesterday and realized I was not excited to get up. I was the opposite of excited. It’s not like I’ve been getting up excited my whole life and then one day realized I wasn’t. That feeling ebbs and flows. I think that it was my dream that made me realize how unenthusiastic I was.
Your excitement for life is based on your expectations of good things happening. If you have limiting beliefs, thinking life today is going to be the same or get worse than yesterday, then you’re not going to be excited and over enough time that leads to depression. Winter is awful for this. I just stayed home over the long weekend because the windchill was close to negative 30-40 degrees F most of the time. If you do the same thing over and over, and think you’ll have more of the same, of course, you’ll be bored. If it was spring, I could plan to go to the park for a walk to cheer myself up, but it’s the dead of winter and I’m terribly busy at work for the time being.
I analyzed this feeling and my thoughts around it, as you can tell. Mindfulness is a great tool. I saw the problem, and I knew the solution. But I’m still surprised it worked so quickly.
Prayer
I prayed to God-Source, or whatever you want to call it. You can call it your subconscious if you’re not a believer in a higher power. I prayed to know what to do to get the excitement back. Inside of your mind is something…. something that can answer your questions. If you ask, “What is one thing I could do to improve my life today?” You’ll get an answer back if you sit and wait. It’s so simple, yet, so many people never ask themselves the question. And then, even if they know, they don’t always go into action.
My Dream & Answer
I was passionate in my dream that morning - passionate about trying to share some courses with someone else. I was trying to write down the name of the Udemy course and teacher because I thought that the person (in my dream) would benefit from watching/listening to the online course. My passion from the dream was exposed to my unenthusiastic outlook on life when I woke up and the drastic difference made me aware of how different the mindsets were.
After praying to get back my excitement, a thought came to me. Dream characters often simply represent pieces of you. In my dream, you could interpret it to say a part of me was trying to give the course name to another part of myself. I am sure most people would not consider this because I already knew about the online course. But, I think this was very relevant.
When I was studying life coaching and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy I bought a course on Udemy from Kain Ramsay. From all the courses I’ve used on that site, he’s got the best, most thorough ones. So, when Udemy had all their courses on sale, I purchased a bunch of his that looked interesting. This means I have purchased whole courses that I haven’t touched. So I decided to start one up yesterday morning while I got ready for work. I just listened while I moved around getting ready.
Listening to the course helps me in multiple ways.
It helps me to be mindful and ask questions about my focus. We can often get so focused on the wrong direction of things that we’re miswanting, that we “waste” time and energy going the “wrong” way. I don’t believe it’s truly wasted, but we could have a much easier time if we just asked ourselves what we truly want and tried to achieve that instead of running after perceived wants (that wouldn’t satisfy).
It helps me to help others. There are things that I know but forgot that he touches on. It helps to keep me more in a helpful state (where I can emotionally lift up people) than in a fellow-wallower state (where we just agree about negative things).
It reminds me that I want to create a course like this myself someday. There’s a part of me that feels like I can’t do it, but I know I can because of the videos I’ve created before. It’s not a matter of talent. I usually have limiting beliefs more about time and energy levels. But I’ll have more of that in spring/summer. This reminder can help me to be optimistic about the future in a way I wasn’t when I woke up that morning.
Waking Up On The Right Foot
I didn’t exactly wake up on the right foot with being so bored of my life. But that was quickly turned around through mindfulness + action. Kain Ramsay does have a mindfulness course and it’s not about breathwork or meditation. It’s about being aware of the thoughts and perspectives you have. When you’re aware you have the ability to ask if what you’re thinking is true or not.
Without practicing mindfulness I would have woken up being unenthusiastic or perhaps plain old depressed about life and where my life was going and just kept thinking about having to go to work and the drudgery of working and then going home in the cold to do more housework and go to bed and start it all over the next day.
That negative focus would cause my brain to look at more evidence that things would be the same each day. But because I saw my state of mind, and asked for a new perspective, I figured out actions to take to get there. So my mind was open to seeing ways in which I could get excited again.
I had those getting-excited experiences while making breakfast and listening to the course, and then at work, and then at home. After getting home, I didn’t go back into the same old routine, I decided to “draw.” I use digital art, so I used my mouse rather than a pen. But I’m working on a minimalist line art drawing with a Buddha quote. I would like to get something printed and frame and hang it up.
The picture below is where I left it last night. I may make some changes. But I did order some vintage-looking paper to print it on.
These things may not be very exciting to you. But these were the ways I could get some excitement about life back.
If you ask yourself, “What’s one thing I could do to bring some excitement or optimism back into my life?” you will be able to figure out something that would help you personally.
We all have the ability to think of small or large things that could make our lives better. Usually, people focus on the large things that they think would make their life better and because those large things won’t help nearly as much as they think (miswanting), we get focused on the wrong things.
It’s the little things you do each day that add up that can change your life drastically over time. Take some time today to ask yourself this question and then take action.