For today’s Mental Sunshine, I want to ask you a question:
What are you relying on, to make you happy?
If you are feeling good today because the sun is shining… what will you do when it rains?
You’re happy because your family are around you – but what if they moved away?
If you’re ok because you’re healthy… what will you do when you get a cold?
If having enough money makes you happy… what happens when it goes?
Perhaps you’re content because you have a good job, but what about when you retire, or maybe are made redundant?
The one thing we all know about this life we’re living is that nothing can be taken for granted – nothing is guaranteed.
If your happiness and Mental Sunshine are based on external circumstances – the weather, your physical health, a job, people – it’s not yours.
These things will come and go from your life, without a moment’s notice.
You only need to look out of the window to see this – last week it was sunny; we all thought, oh great, spring is here! Summer is on the way! Hoorah!
We dusted off our summer clothes; perhaps you even wore a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops a couple of times…
And now this week… perhaps not so much.
The trick is to cultivate an inner Mental Sunshine that is not dependent on anything else.
To be able to smile, whether the sun is shining or there’s a rain storm with a weather warning!
The only thing in this life that we have control over is ourselves.
That’s what these emails are all about
Finding ways to improve our internal Mental Sunshine, so that we’re not dependent on the sunshine in the sky!
So how do you do that?
How do you remove that reliance on other things to feel good?
That, my friend, can be a life’s work.
But it can also be very simple.
It’s a mindset shift – a different way of seeing and doing things.
The tips I share in these emails every week are all with the aim of helping you to cultivate your own Mental Sunshine, rather than rely on it coming from anywhere else.
Which ones have you tried?
And more importantly, which ones have worked for you?
As we head into the long Easter holiday weekend, perhaps you can set aside some time to contemplate…