This year I have started to focus on finding things that give me joy! To be clear, I am a happy person (the majority of the time). Everyone has hard days, hard seasons, difficult thoughts, and self doubt! I am not immune to this. I have days where loving myself and showing my love to those around me takes effort. But we need to put in the effort, especially the effort into loving ourselves.
There are so many posts about "being a good friend", "improving your relationships", "being a good parent", but there are not as many posts on forgiving ourselves, showing love to ourselves and finding comfort in who we are.
God made each of us with unique qualities and minds. Our emotions, thoughts, and what we value most is not a one size fits all, even though most times we try to make it that way.
Self help and self realization is a thing we all strive for/look for; the "Ah-ha" moment that will make everything click. I may not look for it in the self-help section of the bookstore, but while scrolling through social media, I tend to stop longer on the posts that will help me improve a relationship, help me get work done faster and more efficiently, organize my kids' things, etc. I hope, as I'm reading, that something will fall into place and I will remember it the next time the occasion arises. On the other side of it tho, I tend to think "oh if only this particular person reads this", if only my kids responded this way, if only I could conform my relationships to this....but that's not healthy.
I can't change everyone around me to make myself happy. I can't place people in a set box to allow myself to be more put together. So instead of looking at how I can "fix" everything around me, I started ordering flowers everytime I ordered groceries.
Interesting response, I know! Here's the reasoning: I absolutely love flowers. Fresh flowers make me happy. I always want flowers for an occasion and for the longest time I always wanted and looked for my husband to buy them for me. I didn't always tell him to do it, and then in typical fashion I would be upset when he didn't get them for me. His love language is not to shower me with gifts and flowers. He is a quality time guy, but I was trying to force him to give me flowers. Now I'm all for compromise, and doing things to make your spouse and significant other happy, but that's not what I was wanting him to do. I was wanting him to do exactly what I wanted and to be "spontaneous with flowers" by me getting irritated when he didn't. I'm not proud of what I was doing, but it's the honest truth. So instead, this year I decided.... I will show love to myself and I will buy myself flowers. This is not a slight to my husband because, I still absolutely adore when he brings me flowers and shows his love in his language. This decision now allows me to see the specialness of what he does for me, without negative thoughts that used to plague me.
When the flowers come with the grocieries I'm happy to have an arrangement the shopper picked out. I cut them and put them in the vase that I have ready and waiting. My husband knows this is what I do and joins in on the fun; opening the door for the groceries and handing me the flowers saying "I got flowers for you" resulting in us both laughing.
We have created joy in this small act, changing the response to something that seems so insignificant but used to take up residence in my mind and heart in a negative way.
So buy the flowers, change the act, do the things for yourself and show yourself love! Instead of trying to change someone else's actions or response, focus on what you can do to change your own. Focus on the small acts that can bring YOU joy!
