Let the Sun Shine!

On the top of my read­ing stack is The 7 Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple. I’ve read through the first two habits now. Steve Covey’s advice is to treat the book as some­thing I will read over and over again, study­ing, grow­ing, and per­fect­ing.  As long as the book is all that it’s hyped to be, I can accept that.  Per­sonal growth is never end­ing.  He also sug­gests that I read as if I was plan­ning to share what I learned within 48 hours, so I’d planned to blog a bit about things that struck me as inter­est­ing along the way, shar­ing with you all and hav­ing a way for me to look back and remem­ber my thoughts later on.

Life this month has been soggy. The rain kept com­ing and com­ing. Every­one around me was in a funk. Online, there has been a vir­tual bitch­fest, which I’ve gladly par­tic­i­pated in at times.  Blow­ing off steam helps, and heck if I wasn’t get­ting deprived of some pre­cious vit­a­min D! My brother, who lives far away in Vir­ginia, even com­plained about the rain. I felt all hazy and blue — very unmo­ti­vated in gen­eral.  But I did read some, which helped.  I ran across this passage:

…Some­times the most proac­tive thing we can do is to be happy, just to gen­uinely smile.  Hap­pi­ness, like unhap­pi­ness, is a proac­tive choice.  There are things, like the weather, that our Cir­cle of Influ­ence will never include.  But as proac­tive peo­ple, we can carry our own phys­i­cal or social weather with us.  We can be happy and accept those things at present we can’t con­trol, while we focus our efforts on the things that we can.

I read this and thought, I know, I know!  Get rid of your bad atti­tude.  Gosh, do you have to nag, Stephen? Then I checked myself, and adjusted my atti­tude.  But really, how many times do I need to learn this les­son for it to stick?  It’s such a sim­ple, basic mes­sage, but it is so hard to apply some­times!  Life has taught it to me repeat­edly. No mat­ter how hor­ri­ble it is, if every­thing is going wrong in life, I can pas­sively allow the mood to take over, or I can decide to get on with it.  Some­times the rain still irri­tates me, and the preachy book I’m read­ing about moti­vat­ing myself to take con­trol of my own life rubs me the wrong way.  I can indulge those feel­ings, or I can face them and exam­ine myself and decide what I’m going to do about it.

How do you deal with moods you can’t shake?  My usual M.O. for break­ing out of a per­sis­tent funk involves music.  I crank out whiny, pissy, melan­choly, or angry music — what­ever matches my mood.  Usu­ally that works, and I’ll be out of my funk in no time.  Pair­ing the music with a nice endor­phin high (exer­cise or sex) works bril­liantly. One warn­ing, though — I’ve learned when I’m too depressed to lis­ten to some things because I just break down into sobs of despair.  Those things I save for when I’m already start­ing out in a good mood and can appre­ci­ate a sweet sad­ness.  Willie Nel­son in par­tic­u­lar will break my heart a thou­sand times over if I’m feel­ing lonesome.

Some­times just talk­ing to other peo­ple about how I feel rot­ten will do the trick.  Lis­ten­ing to cheesy jokes works.  It really is often as sim­ple as decid­ing that it’s not worth wor­ry­ing or mop­ing about if I can’t change it, or get­ting up and doing some­thing if I can.  Because if I don’t want to feel a cer­tain way, why should I wait on cir­cum­stances to change?  I’ve got con­trol of the emo­tions right here.  It takes an enor­mous amount of willpower some­times not to wal­low in my own mis­ery, but it’s really doing me no good.  Exert­ing that power feels so awe­some, once I’ve decided “enough!”

Today, the sun came out, and I opened up the win­dows and enjoyed the change of scenery.  But ulti­mately, I want to carry my own sun­shine around with me wher­ever I go.