Yesterday, I was in my office working and listening to music. My daughter Erica came in as she so often does to check on me, chat, or ask me for stuff. She started playing with this eyeshadow that was on my desk, which I actually thought was lip gloss because it came in what looks like a lip gloss tube. Erica is 14, pretty much a genius with makeup, and loves to try to put it on me while I’m working. She’ll say, Mom just take off your glasses for a minute, and let me put a little on your eyes. She took the eyeshadow and started putting it on her own eyes jokingly batting them at me. I looked at her and said, You are so pretty, and she said to me, Well where do you think I get it from? You know that gave me a dose of joy. We just spent time singing, talking and laughing while I was sending out emails and completing small tasks. It was nice.
Eventually, one of my clients called me about an upcoming event and after several minutes of being on the phone with him, I noticed that her whole demeanor changed. By the time I hung up with the client, there was an air of frustration in the room. Erica was obviously upset because I got pulled away from her, and I felt irritated because of her attitude, and well… she did come in my office while I was working. It just went left real fast. She went to her room, and that cheerful flow that I was in seemed to be gone.
How many times does this happen throughout your day? That is, everything is going good and then both your inner and outer atmospheres just shift. Sometimes it’s the slightest changes that we must make throughout the day that impact our positive energy for an extended period of time. Those shifts are often delivered in the form of calls, emails, texts, social media posts, and interactions with others. They can come in the form of a question that is posed to us, a request, or something as simple as a look from another person. For those of us who work hard not to spiral into negative emotions or interpretations we put effort into objectively checking ourselves because we know that if we don’t the outcome will be detrimental to our feelings and behavior. For me those feelings are normally exemplified by me shaking my hips extra hard while I’m walking and cussing under my breath. It can also very well be accompanied by increased irritability toward others, specifically my family.
How many of us are truly poised to navigate shifts without letting them impact our joy? We can’t ignore negative feelings and we also don’t want to enter new situations without addressing them. Let’s not minimize our good experiences and feelings or be so quick to part from them. What we truly want is alignment between our mind and heart, the state we desire to be in, and for me that’s joy. What is the state that your heart desires to be in each day? What types of instances shift that state? Being aware of both can help us recover from negative feelings when the atmospheres shift.
Love, Dr Joy