Job Joys

I recently started working again after spending six months unemployed. The weeks and even months leading up to now have not always been easy and I have been frustrated with myself for worrying about money and income.

Despite not having a regular income, the past six months have actually undoubtedly been very prosperous for me.  I was fortunate enough to live in Barcelona where friends and family and my other half visited me. I lived in Tenerife for a month learning Spanish and made new friends.  I went to two music festivals and got to see some of my favourite music artists.

Louise.L.Hay says that there is an ‘inexhaustible supply in the universe’ and when you are ‘grateful for what you do have, you will find that it increases.’ This could not be more true for me. I was always grateful when my parents and my grandmother generously gave me money, which led to them giving me more money.  When my other half came over to Barcelona and paid for everything, I was so appreciative and knew that it was because he loved me and wanted to share his money with me as I would with him.

Now I have a job, and I am very happy with where I am. Because I am happy I am good at my work, and because I am good at my work I believe it will lead to even better opportunities.

I am grateful for my bosses who are so nice and are already showing me how they believe in me and want me to be a part of their business.

I am grateful for my co-workers who have all been so helpful and welcoming since I joined them.

I am grateful for the customers who are extremely generous in tipping and allow me to be more prosperous.

I am very happy that my piggy bank is filling up with money, and I am excited to enjoy that money with my friends and family like they have done with me.

Gaining Perspective

As a young person, I can’t deny that there must have countless occasions where I took out the unhappiness I felt about myself out on others.  We see this happening all around us, people are usually irritable or ‘snappy’ when they are feeling unhappy within themselves.  Most of us don’t even question this, we think about those people as grumpy and we tend to avoid them because of this, after all… Who wants to spend time around someone who is constantly creating a bad atmosphere?

Well recently I haven’t been able to avoid this situation.  I met a lady who is in my Spanish class and I have spent every morning with her, five days a week for four weeks.  Not only have I noticed this woman’s negative behaviours and had time to think about why she is acting in this way, but I have also had time to reflect and think about how I have reacted to these behaviours and how I have made judgements about her in my mind and subsequently taken a disliking to her.

In almost every lesson, Val has something to complain about. She becomes sullen if the teacher corrects her and she is rude to the other students if they interrupt her (despite it being a class discussion…) She dominates the classroom and often makes small remarks if she’s unhappy about something.  She is a retired woman in a classroom with three twenty-year olds who seem to me much more mature, which makes me question what it is that makes her this way?

I came to the conclusion she must be deeply unhappy with something in her life, why else would she feel the need to complain about the most unnecessary things? I know myself that when I am worrying about something big, or when I’m angry about something, I usualy take it out on something or somone completely irrelevent.  It makes no sense, but at the same time it makes all of the sense.

My initial response to Val was of dislike. I could not help but roll my eyes and feel annoyed when each time she kicked up a fuss about something.  It was when I realised how unhappy she must be that I stopped feeling irritated.  Instead I now feel pitty towards her.  This sixty year old woman is filled with bitterness, and she has never learnt how to cope with it or challenge it. That must be a tiring and unfulfilling life, I thought.

Which is why I am so grateful, and so glad that I am challenging all of my negative thoughts as soon as they pop in to my head.  I don’t want them to stay there and become engrained in my mind.  Happy thoughts breed happier thoughts, and I only wish more people would realise this so they too could be free from bitterness and negativity.

When someone is happy it is so plain to see.  When someone is unhappy it’s also plain to see in the way they talk about themselves and to others, their actions and their opinions all stem from unhappiness, which is a dangerous slippery and hazy slope guys.

I am twenty-two, I’m not claiming that I know everything, but what I do know is that age isn’t what makes you wise. What makes you wise is knowing how to live a happy life, and how to be the truest, happiest, best version of yourself.

Happy_Lows

Why An Obsessive Mind Is Not Always A Bad Thing

When channeled in a positive way, an obsessive mind can be very impressive.

But what is an obsessive mind? And how do you know if you have one?

Obsessive thinking stems from our irrational belief that we need to control all of the happenings in our life.  This constant worry of losing control manifests in to many aspects of our lives and is detrimental to our happiness and success.   These negative thoughts and worries can become so embedded in our minds that the person thinking them feels they have no way out.  Brain studies have shown that obsessive thinking is linked with a neurological disfunction that actually FORCES these thoughts into repetitive loops! So quite literally the persons mind is like a broken record playing the same negative belief over and over.

I have absolutely no idea about neurology and I’m not going to pretend I do. I have no idea if this disfunction can be cured from a scientists perspective, but what I do know is that there is a positive side to obsessive thinkers.

You just need to channel your energy to another place

Finding your passion might be the cure you need and the answer that an obsessive mind is not necessarily a bad thing.  I know from experience that ‘finding your passion’ sometimes brings more negativity than positivity. We start telling ourselves we aren’t good at anything, we are uninteresting, too old to start a new sport, we don’t have enough money, we’ll just fail anyway…. The list of lies we tell ourselves is endless.

Even if it is hard, the first thing I suggest you do is sit down and think back to when you were a kid. What did you  really enjoy doing? Make a list of all the things you think you used to enjoy.

Think about what that little, tiny voice inside of you always wanted to do but was too scared to ever voice it, learn to dance? learn a new language? whatever it was, write that down too.

Make a list as long or as short as you want, just make sure you put something down. Now look at your list and make a promise to yourself to try each one of them out. If it’s painting, go to a painting class or buy a paint set. If it’s cycling, organise a bike ride with friends! Whatever they are, just try them out and even if you hate it you can cross it off the list and you don’t have to try it again.

Chances are, you’re going to enjoy one of them. One of them is going to make you’re heart beat and you’ll feel alive again.

Which brings me back to obsessive thinking… Channeling our energy, a lot of it (but not all of it!) in to a new hobby can be the cure you need to stop the negative thoughts.

It’s been a week since I started Spanish lessons. It’s very intense and after a full week of using my bean, Yo Soy Cansado! But I also feel energised and I haven’t had a single bad thought all week.

Weird eh?

Nah not really. This is just what living feels like.

Happy_Lows

Shopping Tips

A thought that keeps entering my mind when I’m shopping is how we shoppers are becoming harder and harder to please.

Shopping precincts are filled with people every day, spending money on things they hope will make them happy, things they think they need, things they feel pressured in to buying.  I know this because I have been one of those shoppers on countless occasions. When I felt bad about my appearance I would blame my clothes, I would compare myself to other women and would envy their ‘style’. Before I even stopped to challenge these thoughts, I would have already spent money I didn’t have on a new outfit that I thought made me look ‘pretty’.

Thing is, you might feel pretty for that day, but chances are that unhappiness you tried to fix by buying clothes is going to crop up again.  That new dress you bought won’t satisfy you for long, soon you’ll be back in the shop buying more stuff that you can’t afford and don’t need.

A couple of months ago I remember one of these episodes happening to me. What sucks is, if you’re not aware of why it’s happening, you have a very slim chance of making yourself feel better without the clothes.  This is because the media (Oh the big bad media!) keeps telling us (discretely and overtly) that we need all of this stuff. I was in Zara, looking exactly the same as I do tonight; but all I could think about when looking in those changing room mirrors was how horrible I looked and how all my clothes were shabby and old and that I needed a new things.

Tonight I went shopping again. Tonight however I was very, very aware of how each shop, each advert and each mannequin was in a sense deceiving me. I was able to stop and think that I didn’t actually want or need any of that stuff that initially attracted me so much.  I looked at the advert of the super skinny 6 foot something model and thought, fuck that, not fuck her per se (every type of body is beautiful) but fuck the narrow headed industry that thinks that one size fits all, and that what makes women happy are diamonds, highlights, gel nails and HD Brows. I passed a cosmetic store and remembered that I was running out of mascara, then I remembered I was also running out of make up remover. I THEN thought, why not kill one bird with two stones and not buy either! Saving me money and time. I’m perfectly okay with not wearing makeup and my newly freckled forehead and rosy cheeks looks better than any blusher or foundation anyway.

If you keep this awareness whilst shopping, I can guarantee you’ll feel better about yourself, you’ll be smiling instead of frowning and chances are you’ll spend a lot less money!

I actually did go shopping for a purpose. I am going to Tenerife tomorrow, and my all black school wardrobe would be quite uncomfortable in 30 degree heat, so I needed a light summer dress! Instead of getting swept away by the adverts and the window displays and the whole rigmarole, I just bought a single dress for €25 and I love it.

I actually really liked this shop. It’s called Natura and it had so many good values. I have never actually come across a store that had such a positive feel about it. Their biggest marketing strategy I guess is water. Loads of their tops had water slogans and they sold funky looking water bottles. But the whole point of this marketing strategy is that a huge campaign of theirs is to supply water to third world countries. I tried to have a look at their website for some of their other campaigns but I can’t read Spanish so didn’t get very far!

One quote on the homepage that I think is brilliant however is:

I desperately hope that people realise the lifestyle we have could destroy someone else’s in the world

A few doors down stood Primark, and I admit it did cross my mind to go there and buy a cheap summer dress. I am so glad I didn’t. Clothes provinence isn’t something we think about enough, all we care about most of the time is how we look in it and how much it cost.

Someone once told me that people have morals, but only when they have the money to afford them. Personally I think that’s a lie. We live within our means and it’s up to us if we want to fit morals in.

P.S Check out how cute their bags are!

Silentium – Fyodor Tyutchev

Be silent, hide away and let
your thoughts and longings rise and set
in the deep places of your heart.
Let dreams move silently as stars,
in wonder more than you can tell.
Let them fulfil you – and be still.

What heart can ever speak its mind?
How can some other understand
the hidden pole that turns your life?
A thought, once spoken, is a lie.
Don’t cloud the water in your well;
drink from this wellspring – and be still.

Live in yourself. There is a whole
deep world of being in your soul,
burdened with mystery and thought.
The noise outside will snuff it out.
Day’s clear light can break the spell.
Hear your own singing – and be still

I am me, and I am enough

I was sixteen. I was at that age where you’re really seen as a teenager. Many people still say they feel sixteen even in their thirties and forties and eighties even, personally, I couldn’t feel further away from that age.

I was notorious for changing my hair. I’d have it short and blonde for three months of the year, then it would suddenly be long and dark, and then when I was bored of that I’d do something really different with it, like dye it red and buy curly extensions. This may seem like a trivial little detail of my teenage years, but reflecting back, I can see it was quite a big indicator to how I felt about myself growing up.

I never experienced any big trauma, no violence, I didn’t lose anyone close to me. For years I was so confused as to how I became anorexic, why I started to lose interest in life, what reason did I have to feel depressed? At just sixteen? I did the treatment, I ‘recovered’, I went to Uni, and I forced myself in to believing that the thoughts and guilt surrounding food was just something i’d have to live with. That was until this year.

You could call it a mini relapse, I lost weight that’s for sure, I intended to lose weight. I counted calories and restricted myself, and I was happy to see the number go down again. My weight didn’t go down to near as low as it had been previously, but the cold fact staring right at me was that I never truly recovered, and I never really tried.

See, being underweight, being a cause for concern, well that made me feel special. It gave me a sense of identity, a label I guess. Looking back at my teenage years, I was always worried about not fitting in. I was never a part of any clique if you will, I was the one listening to fall out boy in the morning and then ashanti in the evening. I didn’t fit in to any category, I wasn’t especially good at anything, I had nothing I was really passionate about. The hair changes make sense now, I was always trying to change my identity.

The same goes with social networking sites. I find that I am always changing my profile picture. This is not because I’m vain, or because I love how I look, it’s quite the opposite if anything. I’m always unhappy with how I come across, I’m always worried about what label people are going to put on me, and this is the biggest thing I need to change in my life.

We are not in Hogwarts, we can’t just wear a hat that will pick out all of our traits and decide which house we belong to. Neither can we force ourselves to search for our passions and interests. I’m not claiming to be anything anymore, I’m not trying to fit in to any style or clique or group. For the first time, I can happily say ‘I am me, and I am enough.’

Thank You 2014

2014. What a funny year you were. Maybe many things happened that I was expecting, I turned twenty-one, I graduated, Simon and I actually went on our road trip. But many things also happened that I just didn’t see coming. Simon and I relapsed and was on autopilot for a while, my friendship group changed completely. A lot of shitty things happened, but I am thankful still for those shitty moments, even very recent ones, as recent as last nights even.

Because with every shitty thing that’s happened, I have learnt something valuable. I have grown as a person over this last year, more so than any other year. I feel like I know myself so much better because of what I have felt. When you are right at the bottom, it’s like you have a little pep talk with yourself, you know it’s a life-changing moment when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and yet there’s a small voice in your head saying ‘we’ll try again tomorrow’

We cannot hold on to guilt and self-hate. Yes, we feel these these all of the time, we constantly feel like we aren’t hitting the mark, but these negative thoughts are plaguing our present, and they are stopping us from feeling true happiness.  Of course, we WILL always make mistakes in life, that’s human nature! Bad things WILL come our way, we WILL have to deal with bad situations. Those are our daily struggles and problems, but we cannot change that. What we CAN change, is how we react to those problems. If we let them seep their way in to our thoughts, they will take over the reins of our minds, and it will become very difficult to return to a state of happiness.

Instead of giving in to these bad thoughts, we need to separate ourselves from whatever the problem is.

I am not claiming to be anything. I am not a psychologist, I am not a philosopher. But I am Lowri, and that is enough. The changes I have seen in myself over the past year is amazing, like I said, there were of course bad days, but they have brought me to where I am now, and I am so happy with where I am now. Hopefully, the more I read, and the more positive I become, I will understand all of this a bit better.

Until then I am just dancing in my own happy vibes.