For those that live in an urban society, I can assemble a vague idea of your life, even if I don’t know you personally.
You get up early in the morning, groggily reaching for the alarm clock.
You hastily eat a decently-sized breakfast and rush out the door to work – either by bus, train, or your car.
You struggle with the difficulties of a workplace filled with toxic politics, employee conflict, crooked characters, and other unpredictable parameters that control your individual stress level.
Eight hours pass, save for an assigned break or two to eat lunch, and you begin the slow, quiet journey home.
Rinse and repeat for the next four – sometimes five days.
It’s not hard for me to see how you can build up a mental state of emotional instability and general negativity and gloominess. This then leads to my key point – the difference in conversations we hold with each other as children, and later as adults. For some it might seem obvious… for others, not so much. I’ll be focusing on the latter.
When the important responsibilities of life are not on your shoulders, your mind and spirit feel more positive because there is minimal worry and concern. Thus, imagination, creativity, and love thrive within conversations that are generally positive and exude happiness. There is also more variety of topics in said conversations due to a much wider range to choose from within the realm of positivity.
However, because as adults we are so caught up in the negative 9-5 work environment, our conversations become dull, trite, emotionally charged, and regressive. It’s always the same gloomy, negative chatter about the forecast of stormy weather next week, the toxicity of each other’s workplaces, horror news stories of divorce, abuse, discrimination, and crime, pointless celebrity gossip, and the like. It provides little to no value to our internal battles against mediocrity – if anything, it weakens the fight by robbing our spirit of hope and mental willpower.
A key step to change this is to appreciate the little victories and happy moments that occur along the way in life, as trivial as they may seem. You can boost this by taking time to observe the lives of others below you – those who are less fortunate with life’s basic necessities. A job, a nice warm house, fresh food and water, Internet connection, friends to talk with – all of these are a blessing, because others don’t have them at all. When we’re in a negative state, our sense of gratitude is lowered because we’re thinking about the problems and the difficulties with what we have, instead of the positives. This is also the starting point down the slippery slope of developing a victim mentality. Smile and contemplate on how good you still have it in life!
Another good step is to encourage acts of positivity between yourself and any good friends and/or family members you might have. Sharing positive experiences can help uplift each other. Don’t be afraid to tell not-so-happy stories, because when worded right, they can serve as learning lessons for others. Tell funny jokes based off of childhood experiences. Try playing video games together – if that’s your thing. Overall, keep things meaningful and realistic, too.
Also, try to fight the internal feeling of being ashamed of liking or enjoying things that can be considered childish. If they’re not a hindrance to your ability to speak and/or act in a mature way and do not rob you of the importance of self-discipline and responsibility, then enjoy them! Let such hobbies be a means of obtaining a state of happiness for you – whether it be playing basketball with some friends, watching a cartoon, drawing cute flowers, or even dancing in your living room to K-pop.
Once you start engaging in these types of thoughts, conversations, and activities, your mind and spirit will be on the road to achieving balance between being mature and realistic, whilst maintaining a healthy upkeep on light-heartedness, joy, and play.