One of my besties was visiting from California this past week.  She is one of the most positive people I know so when she said “I am doing a 30-day positivity challenge with my husband” I was taken a back?  Really? She proceeded to tell me that she has been bogged down with life, relationships and mainly people in general.  We got caught up talking about the disappointments, frustrations, and overall in-genuine entitled behavior of “people”.  At that moment I realized I was harboring this same negativity without even realizing it.  We shared similar stories for hours and then we made a pact to wipe the slate clean- forgive and move forward with a more positive mindset.

I did some further thinking about how unconscious I was and how detrimental to my health/spirit it became. (yes here I go – nerd alert) You see our brains are connected to every organ in our body through the nervous, endocrine and immune systems. The biochemistry happening above our neck — what we think and feel — has a direct path to everything below it. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that pessimism, negativity and similar traits are associated with higher levels of stress and inflammation, now understood to be a shared biochemical foundation of many chronic illnesses.

This same stress and inflammation create havoc on our metabolism, sleep cycles and overall general well-being. The bodies response to this creates a domino effect that can do anything from forgetting where we parked, added pounds on the scale, to insomnia and worse. We feel tired, restless and quick to temper.  Instead of expressing joy – we exist with a heavy heart.  Instead of taking time to be grateful we raid our pantry and try to feed our worry.  Negativity breeds more negativity and before we know it we are complaining about EVERYTHING.  We ache more than usual, there is more laundry than usual, drivers are crazier than usual, our kids are more wild than usual.

My challenge for everyone this week is to become mindful of your complaints.  Are you bothered easily?  Does everything annoy you just a little bit more?  If so- maybe its not the laundry, the drivers or the kids maybe its us.  Maybe we could benefit from checking in and refocusing on positivity, finding joy and living happy.  It’s all within in us- We are exactly what we think we are.  We feel exactly the way we tell ourselves to feel.  So lets be positive and lets be happy.  Xoxo ~