Accept or Convert to Increase Your Happiness

There are things every day that make you feel stressed or unhappy. 

It could be a long to-do-list, a difficult spouse/boss/colleague/child, a traffic jam, a tight deadline, an annoying project, etc. Whatever it is, your inner Judge and Saboteurs keep your hands on the hot stove of negative emotions, making you feel stressed or unhappy about the world around you.

Negative emotions are normal but sometimes they suck.

For today, I’d like to invite you to practice activating your inner Sage response by choosing one of two options when these occasions arise. 

Either ACCEPT it and make peace with it, or CONVERT it into a gift or opportunity. 

For example, my husband and I dropped off our kids at camp last week and were looking forward to some serious R&R at the beach.

All excited, we checked into our Airbnb and were deflated to find them painting the exterior of the condo complex.

There are few things that annoy me more than construction and unwelcome noise.

Upon arrival they also started covering up our screened in porch with plastic covering so we couldn’t see anything from our apartment! 

We took some DEEP breaths.

We had a CHOICE to make. We could either let our inner Judge and Saboteurs rage with annoyance, anger and frustration about something we couldn’t really control. Or we could activate our inner Sage to ACCEPT or CONVERT our stressful situation into a gift or opportunity.  

We did both! We ACCEPTED the plastic covering because we consulted with the painters and knew that the plastic would last only 24 hours. And we CONVERTED the lingering ladders and painters the rest of the week into an opportunity to explore areas of the island further away from our AirBnB, which led to us discovering some secluded beaches! 

And when they were making noise outside our windows while we were napping, we used the opportunity to strengthen our mental fitness muscles and do meditation and breathwork to help us overcome our annoyance and be more chillaxed. We turned them into our mental fitness trainers! 

We weren’t perfect but I'm making a lot of progress in this area. The former me would have easily had an adult temper tantrum over something like this. I have mild misophonia and my Saboteurs like to have a field day with these kinds of encounters. 

But using the approach of accept or convert, we were able to experience more feelings of peace when we accepted it, and curiosity, exploration and creativity when we were figuring out how to convert it into a gift or opportunity. These are all positive, happy feelings.

So choose to be happy today regardless of what you encounter. Put things in either the convert or accept bucket. 

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🦋 If you'd like to learn more about mental fitness and how it can increase your overall happiness reach out to me. 

#mentalfitness