Check-In #2: Technical Difficulties

The positivity train has crashed and burned. These last few days have been terrible in terms of attitude. I have had literal technical difficulties with every app and website I've used. I couldn't post anything to Instagram, my email marketing was proving impossible and even the Starbucks app was screwing with my points. JUST NOW, as I was typing this paragraph it all deleted, and I had to start over. I immediately go to my old stand-by--"Nothing ever goes right for me. Why does everything have to be so hard? Why does nothing work?!"

On top of that I've had some major body-image issues. Some of you may have followed along on my IG stories and saw that I was hating on myself HARD. I told you last time that this was something I was really going to need to work on, and boy was I right. I have gained 30-some pounds over the last several years and feel like a stranger in my own body. I had been lucky my whole life and was relatively the same size, thin and healthy. Not the case now. I have slightly high cholesterol and am (barely) pre-diabetic. I am at the point where I need to make some changes, and I have been. But of course it doesn't feel like any of it has been helping. I feel like I'm not doing enough. I obviously don't see results immediately, and that's disheartening.

My boyfriend reminded me that I have to be appreciative of what my body does for me. Love the vessel. When I think about it, how amazing is it that all of the blood pumping through my veins, my lungs breathing air and my brain firing signals are all working to keep me alive every day? All of these processes are working tirelessly to keep me moving and breathing and thinking. It's a miracle. That is what I need to remind myself each day and use to motivate myself to take care of my body with the nutrition that I ingest and the movement and exercise in which I participate.

I mentioned on Wednesday that I had to work the next day. I was hoping to be less anxious that night. But it doesn't just magically go away because I want to be more positive. I will say that it felt a little less intense, and maybe that was because frankly I was tired from the chaos and emotional upheaval of the day. I didn't have the energy to be as anxious. But yesterday actually at work I found myself needing to lean on Gustavo again to keep me in a positive mindset. I had a private group tour scheduled which can be stressful. They are generally very large and hard to corral. I anticipate all of the things that can go wrong and how difficult the day will be and thus, the negativity reigns. I am going to have to do some serious mindfulness work to change that mindset. My first tour was tiny and easy. The group tour was a class of high school students from Seattle that I really tried to connect to and have fun with. It was nice. And my last tour was chill, and they even tipped me. A little bonus for the day. All in all, nothing was bad about it. None of the bad things happened. I worried for nothing. This is exactly what I'm hoping to change with this experiment. I will say though that I am very aware of my attitude even if I don't have the mental strength in the moment to change it.

This morning I took a free half-hour class taught by Kristine Claghorn (a Stanford University educator) and Elise Joseph about self-worth. It was essentially a mindfulness exercise tapping into self-compassion. It really hit home, especially right now because they talked about how we can tend to get trapped in negative self-talk, judging ourselves harshly when we would never dream to do that to a loved one. It was a brief session, but I got very emotional and actually cried. I realized that a lot of my negativity might stem from low self-worth. And self-worth should never be tied to external factors--something which so many of us do.

I was turned on to Kristine by a former coworker who reached out to me this week encouraging my new adventure. I think I am going to try to schedule a 6-week one-on-one course with her as my coach. She says she "helps individuals who are feeling stuck, burnt out, and caught up in endless cycles of stress and self-criticism get unstuck." Does that not sound exactly like where I am in my life right now? This is coming at the best time. I want to take every opportunity to seek help in this positivity journey.

Wish me luck this weekend. I plan to fare better and better.