I have seen and have spoken with people who are showing up in their day-to-day lives, but their hearts just aren’t in it anymore. They fulfill their responsibilities, and they make sure all their work gets done, be it in the corporate arena, the field, the store or at home. Yes, this is in part, a good thing. “Adulting,” being mature, disciplined and responsible, is at the core of what it means to be an adult. It’s great when you can do what needs to be done even if you don’t feel like it. But there’s so much more to life than just showing up.
I don’t believe that everyday needs to be hard. I believe there is more to being an adult than just discipline. It’s about stewarding your personal needs well, planning with yourself in the schedule, and learning to read your own feelings. It’s about finding joy and possessing a passion in all that you do. You are not a pack mule carrying a heavy load, having to prod yourself to keep going each day. Unfortunately, after the past two years, this is where many people are finding themselves and there is breakdown of our mental health systems. All we’ve had to deal with has depleted many of us.
If this is how you’ve been showing up to your adult world, here are 3 tips to help restore your mental resiliency:
1. Make time each day for beauty. It doesn’t need to be anything big. Let yourself connect with something enjoyable for at least 30 seconds to 3 minutes for it to register in your system.
2. Joy is learned and cultivated. Happiness is circumstantial, it is dependent on something good happening. Joy is not. Joy is an inner cultivation. Our brains have a negative bent and the negative things that happen to us stick to it like Velcro. (Hence, why it’s hard to let go of those thoughts.) We need to be intentional to seek out things that are pleasurable and let them resonate within us for a certain period of time, to actually feel its benefit and learn joy.
3. Celebrate! Don’t wait until something big happens to celebrate. Learn how to notice and enjoy little things, and small wins, and be grateful for them.
There is much research to back this up in case you were thinking you have to pretend life is all rosy. The very fact that it is not all rosy makes it that much more important for us to cultivate beauty and get the joy back into our days. It’s hard to stop in the midst of the hard and refocus. We don’t want to do that. We want to stay in what we are currently feeling. We were actually made to be able to hold the hard and the beautiful at the same time. That’s what makes us resilient!
Try practicing just these 3 simple tips and over time you will notice your joy and passion coming back. Making time to practice this will cause you to breathe a little deeper and you will find your heart start coming back into all you do. Who knows, you might just develop a kick in your step too!
Please let me know how this goes after you try for a little while. It takes time to rewire your brain with something new. I would really love to hear from you.