Episode 257 : When OK is enough

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Episode Transcript

What’s going good?

The other day I found myself being an annoying mom. I asked my daughter a question that even made my eyes roll. She was having a difficult day and what I asked her had the key to change it. I realized after speaking with her that maybe I should follow my own advice.

Let’s talk about how to keep track of what’s going ok in our lives.

The conversation we were having was about something not going right for her. She applied for an opportunity to be a part of a program at school and she wasn’t accepted. Not being chosen is hard for everyone so we talked it through and I listened to how it was making her feel. Expressing uncomfortable emotions is good to be able to do especially as a young adult. But as she was processing she started to list out everything that had gone wrong for her. 

EVERYTHING

Some of them were small things, like spilling her tea a few days back and others were a little bigger. But as she continued to list out everything that had gone wrong for her she started seeing her week as a total failure. Allowing the loss we originally started talking about to be the icing on the crap cake she was dealt. As she spiraled into this negativity I decided tot ry to throw down a ladder to give her a way back out. 

I asked her,  what has been ok for the past week? And what has been really good?

Because if you can list spilling your tea once as something that has gone bad in your week you can list all the times you didn’t spill your drink at least in the “things going ok” list. She didn’t get into the program she applied for but two weeks ago she did get into a program over the summer that allows her to travel. 

It took a little talking through and I know that it really annoyed her for me to ask her that question. Thankfully she loves me enough to almost always humor me for a little bit at least. 

As we started to look back at all the things that went right, or well for her I stopped her and said “you know, maybe you should write out a list of things that go well for you when they happen so you can look it when something feels like a big loss” and her response was, “yeah that might be a good idea because it’s easy to remember the things that don’t go right but not so easy to remember the things that do”

And that is a young adult understanding what all of us should be aware of… we instinctually and habitually latch onto the things that go wrong and hardly ever make a mental note of when things go well. 

If let’s say we need to take a busy highway to and from work each day and one day someone cut you off, you have every right to come home and say, I almost got into an accident. I was really freaked out and then go on to complain about how dangerous it is to drive. Venting and letting that out can be very helpful in processing what happened. 

However, if you make that drive 5 days a week and the other 4 days when you had an unremarkable commute home you don’t notice how you got home safely and the drive was ok, you aren’t giving yourself the chance to offset the near miss of the other day. 

Ever notice how if you always make dinner at home and one time you burn the garlic bread in the oven how you can talk about how bad a cook you are all week even though you make perfectly edible meals the other six days?

We always notice the negative things that happen in our lives but very rarely the good. 

The ok and good days and moments are our baseline, We expect them to always be there. So when something bad happens we really notice it because it isn’t what normally happens. However, how can you keep yourself from sliding into the negative self-talk that leads you to begin to believe that bad things always happen to you when they don’t. 

This is the big difference. This isn’t about people telling you that at least it isn’t worse, or telling you that you should ignore when things don’t go right. This isn’t that.

Of course when you don’t get picked, or your loved one’s diagnosis gets worse, or you get cutoff on the highway you should feel whatever emotion it gives you. 

And no, life isn’t fair. You and I both know that. 

However, we can know that life isn’t fair and still enjoy the parts that go well. I find that it’s really easy for many of us to have one thing go wrong and have that be how we see our entire world or at least let it ruin our day. Because there’s a big gap in between really bad things happening and mishaps but we oftentimes lump them all together. 

For example I could drop and egg on the counter and before catching it the egg white falls in between the cabinet and the stove and let’s just say it’s the one egg I had left and I needed it to bake the cookies I was in the middle of making. Later in the week, let’s imagine I hit my pinky toe on the corner of the bed. Then found out the hard way at 4 am that my husband didn’t put the toilet seat down. Then 3 days later I get a flat tire on the way home from work. It’s easy to lump all those things into one really shitty month. I had the worst month ever. Everything, always goes wrong for me. 

We all do this from time to time. Even the strongest caregiver can have times when they really feel sorry for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

However, when you start to always feel like everything is going wrong for you then it might be time to consider making a list of things that go ok or actually really good. 

First, it helps to understand that words like, Awesome, Amazing and Incredible are not normal descriptors for most days of our lives yet it is oftentimes the standard we put every day up to. Your day wasn’t awesome yesterday? Well then I guess it was a bad day. Right? We living in the extremes when in reality the middle of horrible and Incredible is where we spend most of our lives. We underestimate the power of things just being ok. Our lives can’t be awesome all the time. But oftentimes success and happiness is based on awesomeness. I think we need to be real and lower our standards to making ok days a success, awesome days are occasional surprises and then things going bad are blips we need to address and feel and sit with but then continue to notice when things go back to being ok. 

Ok can be really good and we sometimes only notice it after we come out of a difficult period. If someone breaks their leg life can be really crappy for a bit and then when they can walk without crutches and go back to being ok they really notice how good it feels for things to be just ok.  

We pay so much more attention to the things that go wrong for us and sometimes hold onto that for so long it becomes what ruins our day or longer. Let’s say you go to the grocery store in the morning and the cashier had a real bad attitude.You walk to your car upset about it. On the drive home you go over what you should have said to them but didn’t. You get home and tell your loved one what happened and then a friend later in the day. All day this one 30 second moment continues to ruin your mood. 

Now in spite of the fact that you let another person’s bad mood ruin your day that isn’t really the problem. Although it does give a lot of power over your day to someone you don’t even know. The problem really is that every other time you go to that grocery store and have a good customer service experience you don’t notice it at all. 

Latching onto the negative is normal. We all do it. But if we spend our lives only noticing the negatives we don’t give ourselves the opportunities to offset it with the positive or just ok things that happen the rest of our time living. So in time we begin to believe that everything bad happens to us. And that can really start to wear you down. It can affect the choices you make for yourself and the opportunities you allow yourself to be open to. 

It’s normal to have shit happen, get pissed off about it and feel sorry for ourselves. However, not noticing the things that are going ok or really well robs us of the ability to actually enjoy our lives. And we need all the chances we can get to be able to do that. 

Thanks for listening.