Shift Your Perspective and Recommit to Your Heart
I stumbled into my shoes, pulling on my hat and coat before rushing two wagging dogs out the door.
I was still wearing my nightshirt.
I wasn’t wearing any socks.
I hadn’t even put on my glasses.
Outside the three of us stood yawning beneath the lightening early morning sky. I noticed the glow of the waning moon overhead and the quiet of approaching dawn.
Having a young dog in our household has been a challenge!
I’d been planning on writing something else this week, but my thoughts kept returning to lessons I’m relearning over and over as I shape my days around Clara’s needs.
This year has been a series of lessons on reshaping our lives to fit unusual circumstances.
It’s been a hard year for all of us. It continues to be hard. And as much as the fresh perspective and opportunity to start again that January 1st always brings, I know turning the calendar won’t change much.
Again and again through 2020 I’ve worked on shifting my focus to the beauty and joy that exists in each day. I’ve been working on remembering to embrace this shift of focus for the past nine years. It’s not easy. Especially when life gets challenging. I often fail. But then I’m reminded to try again.
This week as I’ve made room in my life for a wiggly, joyful ball of love (and all the challenges of a dog who needs near-constant supervision), I’m reminded of it again.
I could focus on the accidents she’s had and the messes she makes when treat crumbs fly from her mouth in every direction and the grumpy encounters when she’s bounced onto Jude’s pillow with her puppy enthusiasm.
Or, I could focus instead on the joy welling in my chest when she wags her whole body at the sight of me and the way she plops herself backward onto my lap (all 60 pounds of her) and the way Quin rubs his head against her face delighted to have made a new friend.
This shift in perspective doesn’t erase the challenges, but it gives them less weight. And it’s a good reminder that can spill into the rest of life, too.
As we near the end of 2020 it can be tempting to focus on all we’ve lost. All our failures. All the ways in which we’ve fallen short. All the disappointments. But I hope you won’t do that.
Instead, I invite you to look at and celebrate all your successes, even if they’re tiny. Give weight to the GOOD. Give weight to beauty and joy and love. If anything, look at failures as possibilities for the future.
There are only a few weeks of 2020 left, use them to re-commit to yourself. Your goals. Your dreams. Your heart.
Here are a few ideas:
Challenge yourself to write daily Joy and Gratitude Lists (get some beautiful printable lists here).
Begin your day with 15 minutes of journaling. Write without censor and don’t get caught up in grammar or other rules.
Take a class and learn a new skill. (Perhaps you’d like to join my Skillshare contest for a chance to win a year’s Premium Skillshare Membership learn more here).
Get outside! Take a walk and pay attention to your senses. See if you can discover something you’ve never noticed before.
Recommitting to yourself is something you can do at any moment. You don’t need the change of the calendar. You can shift your perspective while standing beneath the early morning sky still half-asleep in your nightshirt and winter coat.