Source: somequietthoughts.blogspot.com
So often in our busy lives, it gets easy to lose focus and perspective on what’s really important. I know this has been especially true for me lately. Between first having the flu and then later coming down with a severe sinus/upper respiratory infection, I’ve been sick for almost half of this new year. It’s been very discouraging and will really start to wear on one after a while.
Due to being sick, I’ve had to miss out on some fun things recently. Most notably, all of my birthday festivities last week. My birthday ended up being a day spent working on a down server for several hours followed by just spending the rest of it alone at home watching TV and doing nothing in particular. So, it was pretty much just an ordinary day. No fun. No festivities. No anything. By the time the end of the day rolled around, I’d started throwing myself a full-blown pity party.
The universe really has a magical way of reminding me from time to time that life really isn’t so bad. In fact, my life is actually pretty darn good when I take the time to really put things in perspective. That’s exactly what happened during the midst of my pity party Sunday night. Over the course of a couple of hours, I was reminded that I really needed to stop feeling sorry for myself.
I spoke with a friend of mine who was going through a really rough time and confessed she had been thinking of taking her own life. Not long after that, I heard the news that country singer Mindy McCready had taken her own life. About 10 minutes after that, I learned a former coworker had learned he had terminal pancreatic cancer and had opted to take his own life.
While hearing all this news was certainly sad, it really gave me pause over the next couple of days to really stop feeling sorry for myself and put things back into proper perspective. The only complaint I really had in my life was that my birthday didn’t feel like a “special” day. Yeah, when I write it that way in this post, it makes it sound just about as badly as I felt when I realized it a few days ago. There is so much hurt and suffering in the world and I was feeling sorry for myself for just having an uneventful birthday.
Once I moved past that initial reaction, I then started to think about how I look at life in general. Hearing of so much loss in such a short period of time, it made me focus again on just how very precious life is. I turned 49 years old on Sunday, so the odds are better than not that I’m in the second half of my life already. I have let my excess weight hold me back in so many ways my entire adult life, and I just don’t want to spend the second half repeating that cycle. I need to shift my perspective to truly making the most of each and every day I have on this earth. The tag line on my personal blog says “one woman learning to live her best life” and it’s really time for me to put that into practice and not just give it lip service! It’s all about perspective!
Where has your focus been lately? Are you making the most of each day? Do you need a shift in perspective? Let us know your thoughts by sharing with us in the comments below, then go out and make something magical of the rest of your day!
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