Positive thinking takes practice

So I should of had this post done like 3 weeks ago... oops! (And the pictures aren't here that I wanted to include... maybe I will add them later!)

One of my bestie blog friends Brooklyn from This Little Blonde, sent out a challenge and a cute bracelet to inspire some of her twitter followers to snap out of negative thinking. It was hard. I am a happy girl and I love my life but I have some negative thoughts floating around.

This was an interesting challenge because she asked us to speak only positive things and take notes often of things we were saying. I'm a communications major - and everything you do is speaking volumes to others. So for me this was about everything from body language to thoughts to words.

My First thoughts when presented this challenge:

I was scared. I didn't know if I could complete the challenge. I kept thinking, if only I had more time to prepare for this challenge. I could fix this and this and this in my life and then I could do this. I was afraid I would be a total failure because of the daily challenges that I put in my mind.

Observations:

I would get frustrated in my mind about little things that didn't matter. 

For example one day I went through Kneaders drive through for my mid day smoothie. I waited in line for 20 minutes, then they got the wrong order. I was so frustrated and drove away thinking my day is ruined, this isn't fair. 

I started to notice that I had this picture in my mind of how I expected anything and everything to go. Everything in my mind was fairy-tales and castles but when things didn't go as planned or someone through off my beat, I got frustrated and annoyed and then for the next several minutes everything was negative. - Sounds horrible right? I know. I'm just THANKFUL that I started to realize this cycle that was taking over my mind. I had never evaluated it in that way before. This experience shed light into what I think about and gave me hope to change.

Lessons learned:
Remember how I said "If only I could fix things in my life first, then I could complete the challenge"? Well HELLO, wake up call to me... the secret to happiness and positive thinking comes from thinking positively about your problems. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A PROBLEM! Knowing that life is full of problems and challenges really used to get me down. It actually used to make me depressed. But now I look at it like I am the warrior. I am the hero of my own battles and the only way to get through them while still being happy is having an optimistic outside. There is good in EVERYTHING...even if it is hard to see, it is there! Challenges in life are the stepping stones that take me to self improvement and a more strong and courageous daughter of God.

Life was never meant to be perfect. We dream about perfection...probably a lot more than is really healthy for us. But I believe we dream of perfection because we don't know what it is. We will never know what it is on this earth life. If things were perfect, we probably wouldn't even notice and if we did notice, we would probably get really bored of it and find life so pointless we wouldn't be motivated to do anything at all.

Tips to think positively:

1. You are exactly where God wants you to be right now. Weather it is what you had planned for your life or not, it is part of his plan. You are where you are to either learn and grow or to help someone else. I truly truly believe this. You are where you are at this point in your life with a PURPOSE!

2. Live TODAY! Happiness isn't something that comes when you figure out life and get everything in balance. It's about choosing to be happy because today you are alive which means you have not completed your purpose here on earth! Today is the day to be happy. If you keep waiting for happiness, it will never come.

3. Sometimes we get unhappy dwelling on things that are completely out of our control. Stop worrying about the things you can't change! But do take control of the things you CAN control.