Yesterday was a pretty rough day, but I did have some laughs in the evening, getting together with friends to play games.
I think this is probably a good time to talk about the rough days and the not so funny days.
We all have them. The trick is to make sure that they are few and far between, ideally. If you are having a rough day every day, then you either need to change your situation or your state of mind.
Changing your situation is simple, if not always easy.
If you are in a bad relationship – leave. If you are in a bad job (in this economy I won’t recommend leaving off the cuff unless you are really being taken advantage of) find a new job and leave. Whatever the situation is, get out in the safest way possible and find a new, better situation to get into. There are lots of community organizations there to help, use them.
Changing your mindset is not always simple or easy.
The first challenge is to realize that it is your mindset and nothing else that is affecting you. For the longest time, when I saw any mail for my business I’d get a dreadful feeling and not want to see what it was. This was mostly because my business was not doing so well and I (instinctively) thought this would be bad news. That is a mindset, and not a good one.
I had to first realize “hey, why am I always assuming that mail is bad news” before I could even start to change it. Once I had identified this mindset, then I could start to cultivate a new mindset, one where I would look forward to mail and the like and always assume it would be good news.
Because here’s the thing. When it comes to mindsets, you will always get what you expect to get. If you expect bad news, you’ll get it. If you expect good news, you’ll get it. In fact the news is just news. Facts are just facts. It is us (with out mindsets) who project things onto them.
So if you want to be laughing more in your life, then take a look at where in your life you are in a situation that isn’t so funny and how you can change that. Or take a look at how you are looking at things and if you want to, you can change that. Now that I think about it, these are two of the main things I help people to do as a coach.
So to lighten up the end of this post, here is a bad joke.
A lawyer walks into a bar … exam.
I know, I know. I’m still working on my stand-up comedian career. I’ll get there some day.