Facing a Monday morning can often be stressful, depressing, overwhelming, and any number of other draining, negative emotions.  The battle to stay postive, focused, and on track looms ahead and the weekend seems far away.

What I try to do is focus on the small things, take life and each day a moment at a time.   The small things I am noticing today:

Graditude that my sister is recovering from her head injury that happened on Friday.  She is still experiencing some amnesia, and seems to think it is 10 years ago but she will recover and the doctors say the amnesia is not permanent.  Little by little memories are coming back.

Morning snuggles with my daughter when I wake her up, packing her lunch with extra love, the kisses and hug goodbye as she leaves for the school bus and more kisses and hugs when we all get home together in the evening.

Grateful that what could have been a disaster was avoided yesterday.  I was stopped at a red light about 4 or 5 cars from the light, the light changed green and everyone slowly started to inch forward.  Just as I lifted my foot from the gas pedal, a man on a bike came out of no where on my left and darted in front of my car just as the car rolled ahead.  Before I was even conscious of what had happened, my brain (thank goodness!) must have picked up the movement out of the corner of my eye and I had slammed my foot back on the brake.  It was a split second incident that could have had a much different result.  Fortunately, the biker was safe and I just  shaken up a bit.  I was close to home, and the rest of the way slowly and extra carefully, and able to catch my mouth and stop my pounding heart with a few deep breaths.

I have a yummy new flavor of coffee creamor for my morning coffee, “cinnamon bun” - only 35 calories a serving.  A little more then my usual version (sugar free french vanilla), but I decided to treat myself this week with a small bottle of the new flavor.

That even though Friday was an overwhelming stressful day at work, compounded by a computer that was acting up and causing the workload to back up even more, I am going into work this week with a positive attitude for two reasons.  One, the work will get done eventually and tech help fixed my computer at the end of the day Friday.  Two,  stressing over work is a waste of energy, a lesson we all too often forget, but I was reminded of by the events of last Friday.

It’s a matter of perspective and takes a certain amount of determination to let go of worry, depression, stress - but it is so worth the effort.   Sure there are circumstances that are beyond our control and times that are going to be overwhelming, and I’ve experienced days, weeks and sometimes years in those times of situations.  But on an average day, when life really is just going along, it’s worth noticing the small things, opening your heart and mind to love, gratitude, joy, peace, happiness, and not letting the past or life’s obstacles steal the wonder of the moment and pleasure of enjoying the small things.

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