“Hello and Welcome to Episode 37 of ‘Tuesday Choose Day’, your inspirational weekly post.
My aim here is to inspire you to feel more positive and more confident within yourself so you can find your way to overcome anxiety and create the change you want to happen in your life.” I’m offering you here every Tuesday straight to your inbox empowering strategies to help you to take control, feel better and feel good!
Today’s Inspiration To Brighten Your Day…
On my walk into town this morning, I noticed the blossom falling from the trees and blowing in the breeze. Blossom is so beautiful on the trees don’t you think? And it can seem that the wait for it to appear in Spring, following the cold blustery winter months, is long. I stood still for a moment and just let myself absorb how beautiful it looked on the trees. I had after all waited months for that moment of appreciation to arrive. Then I caught myself feeling a tinge of sadness as I began to accept that within a few days it will likely be gone and the leaves will start to shoot bringing new green life to the trees, as the season gets ready to change again.
I got to thinking as I continued walking, how transitory most things are. The truth is nothing is forever, seasons change, people change, circumstances change. We know this don’t we, but do we live our lives really mindful of this simple fact? I think not.
I wonder if you have ever longed for recent past times at work, when colleagues hadn’t yet left, before the dynamic of your working day changed. I hear often from clients how they feel flat at work nowadays when it used to be fun, but then colleagues left, departments changed and things just aren’t the same anymore.
I know, along with me, you will have felt the frustration of a well stocked larder or a wonderfully clean house and how, within a few days, it is as if your efforts never happened!
Your children grow and fly the nest in the blink of an eye. For me, it seems literally no time since I held my beautiful baby girl Mollie in my arms for the very first time and now she sits next to me at 21, in a cafe as I write this, busy finalising her last hand-in on her degree course before she soon moves to work in London.
Spousal relationships can become stale with familiarity of many years together, as couples ‘sit back’ and relax into a false perception of security in a notion of endless tomorrows.
What I’m talking about here I guess is, complacency. It leads easily to your drifting through your days and your relationships, almost as if you could be sleepwalking through your life.
Anxiety dances with powerlessness when you forget to take stock…
So how can you help yourself not to fall into the complacency trap? Well, live in the moment – yes! But it’s more than that… it’s about cultivating an attitude which means you live each day as if it’s your first and last day at the same time!
Consider how you remember feeling in all different kinds of first experiences. When you visited somewhere or met someone who captured your heart and your attention. When did you last feel that rush of emotion, that ‘wow’? The newness of it all was stimulating for your mind, and your body responded with feel-good hormones, triggering excitement and energy. These feelings not only ground you into the present moment, they help you to feel connected in your world. You naturally feel the abundance in your life; you appreciate it and you want to hold onto it.
Now imagine it is your last day ever in a whole of bunch of experiences – the last day with your children or your partner or a dear friend? The last day of a fantastic holiday? The day of your life? How would you feel if it were your last day today? Chances are you’d want to make the most of every moment and not waste vital minutes lest hours, not engaging because you are perhaps stewing about something that did or didn’t happen, or worse just drifting vaguely through your relationships and your days.
Giving complacency the boot serves to sharpen your focus and create vital perspective. Remember… You don’t know what you’ve got, until it’s gone.
Sometimes people become very sad and very bitter when change happens, when all they really needed to do was ‘wake up’ in their life and realise the fragility of what they had and do everything within their control, to absolutely not let it get away. That said, many times, things change beyond our control and being mindful of that too helps to enjoy a good time when we have it.
Don’t wait until it’s gone and get eaten up by regret or sorrow or bitterness. Seize the day today and live today with a heart overflowing with gratitude for what is in your life NOW, as if it’s your first and last day at the same time.
Until next time
With love and light x
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Lisa Skeffington, Anxiety Expert – Anxiety Help Bournemouth