This month’s Q+A questions are super similar and bring up something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the monotony of the grind and the beige-ness that adult life can bring.
In my course for couples, Engaged, I talk about how people say that marriage kills your sex life and how I think that statement is false. It’s not marriage that kills your sex life…it’s adulting. It’s the grind. The ho-hum of the normal routine. Get up, go to work, come home. Get up, go to work, come home. Get up, go to work, come home. We’re in survival mode during the week. We’re not turned on in life and if we’re not turned on in life, not feeling alive and excited and excitable, how can we possibly be turned on in bed?
Today we’ll talk about how we can add a little more joy and excitement to our every day. Listen to this episode to hear more about the monotony of the grind adult life can bring.
Links:
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- Jimmy Fallon Hashtags Playlist
- How I Built This (podcast)
- Love Always, Jo Episode 34: How to Enjoy Mornings
Quotes:
- If your life feels beige, ask yourself,“what would a technicolor life look like?”
- Life isn’t a destination, it’s a journey; there’s always going to be more things you want to feel, do, have, etc. in life
- Life isn’t a set it and forget it journey, you can pick and choose new paths when you want to
- Stop playing the comparison game with yourself; enjoy where you’re at in life right now
- New things can only go in open hands
How do you stay positive and energetic within mundane weeks??
(Question from @chaneydoyle)
Don’t put pressure on yourself to be happy, peppy, the best version of yourself every single day. Taking that pressure off will give you a lot of your energy back. Just like saying “I have my cranky pants on today” brings a smile to your face and releases some energy around it. Acknowledging the feeling helps release the power it has over you.
Remember that it will pick up. Work comes in seasons and waves and sometimes there’s a lot going on and sometimes there’s a lull. That’s totally normal but the work culture of our society hasn’t caught up with that and mandates that we are at our desks for a certain number of hours, regardless of how much work we have going on.
During the mundane times when you feel like you don’t have much to do, give yourself permission to enjoy the quiet and the slow. You can also give yourself little projects to do—clean your desk, do research for another project, think about something you have going on in your personal life, doodle or journal, allow space for new ideas to come and don’t put pressure on yourself to be do, do, doing all the time. That white space is a really good thing and can fuel you for the next wave.
The more I think about this, the more I think this comes down to movement and shaking the energy up. It’s like a law of physics: a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion until it’s met with an external force. It’s inertia. So, if the day/week is beige and your energy and body are going along with it, they’ll stay that way until you do something different.
So, how can you move your body, how can you move your energy?
- Five minutes of fun. You could play a quick game, do a dance party, watch a Jimmy Fallon clip on youtube (check out the playlist here)
- Add some color to your lunch. Bring a real plate and bowl from home and take your lunch out of the carrying container and onto the plate.
- Take your lunch and do something with it. Sit outside and read a book. Run an errand. Call a friend.
- Play happy music. Listen to podcasts. Play music or podcasts that are light and make you feel the way you want to be feeling. Listening to music in the background can help quiet your inner critic and lets you feel more positive and energetic about the work you’re doing. One that I’ve been listening to and loving lately is the How I Built This podcast.
- Find ways to move every hour or so. Take a lap around the office, go up and down the stairs a few times. Take a nice long walk at lunch and listen to a podcast or call a friend. Find an empty office and put a song on in your headphones and DANCE.
What might add more joy to your day? What might add more color and energy to your day?
What do you have going on before and after work? Go back to the Episode 34 about how to enjoy mornings — if your mornings bring you joy, that can help carry you throughout your day.
How to find the joy in your job and where you are in life?
(Question submitted by @tammymorin)
The first thing that comes to my mind is to focus on what’s good in this season.
At the end of the day, or the beginning of the day, ask “what made me smile today? What did I enjoy today?” Think about what’s good today, this week, this month, what’s going well?
We have a tendency to focus on the future and the gap between where we are and where we want to be. That brings a mindset of scarcity and a lack mentality and energy and doesn’t attract the things you want to be attracting.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to have it all figured out and to be exactly where we want to be/end up in life right. now. But even when you get to the place you think you want to be, there will likely be a next step. That’s the cool thing about life. We think life is like the people mover at the airport. We just have to find the right one and we’ll cruise to the end. But, life isn’t like that. It’s not that linear. And honestly, this is a good thing. Because if you pass Dunkin’ Donuts on the people mover, you can’t get off. If you’re not on the people mover you’re free to move as you please, as slow or as fast as you want, and you have the freedom to stop where you want along the way.
It’s also hard when you find yourself comparing your life and where you are on the checklist of life to where your best friends, coworkers, people from high school who you follow on Facebook are, where society thinks you should be, where your parents were when they were your age, and where a younger version of you thought you’d be.
Try not to do this to yourself. It doesn’t help anything. You are where you are. And while you have your eye on the next step in the journey, and are moving toward that, try to be where your feet are now.
The most pleasant way to get where you want to go is to focus on all that’s good now, be grateful for where you are and what you enjoy in this season so that you can move toward the next thing from a place of abundance and joy, and not scarcity and “not-good-enough.” When we’re in scarcity and not good enough, there’s this gripping fear feeling, like a closed hand. When we’re in abundance and joy, there’s an open, light hopeful feeling, like an open hand, open arms, open heart. And new things can only go in open hands.
Questions for you:
- What is good about this season of your life?
- What makes you smile on a daily basis?
- What are you grateful for in your life right now?
- What can you do to stop comparing, stop judging, stop hating the things in your life and start loving and appreciating yourself and the things in your life?
If you want to discuss how you can find a little more joy in YOUR day-to-day life, book a free discovery call with me at joannaplattcoaching.acuityscheduling.com
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