12 ways to live more positively

Postively negative

Does anyone else ever wrestle with feeling like an absolute ungrateful bitch?

Perhaps it’s the weather, but I’m the grumpiest most pessimistic person in the world at the moment. I’m hoping it’s the rain. I mean there’s rain and then there’s rain. I’ve never in all my life experienced rain like we have in Kenya at the moment. For two months, nearly every day the heavens have opened and the streets have turned to rivers and the gardens to mud. Nairobi is one colossal Glastonbury festival, minus the music. My house is full of mud, my kids are covered in mud you can’t even see what colour my car is. Moan, moan, moan.

Back to the bitchiness.

Whilst we are talking about the weather what right have I to moan? I’m safe and warm. What about all those people who aren’t? People who have lost their home and businesses. The people who I see walking to work everyday in this downpour, their shoes full of water as they don’t have gumboots… sheltering with newspaper as they don’t have umbrellas.

I have no right no moan at all, but the litany of complaints is endless:

I want a job and to be busy, but now I’m too busy

I want to be thin, but I want to eat

I wanted kids but I’m fed up with all the hard work

I wanted to move to Kenya but I’m homesick

I want, want, want… all my wanting and moaning makes me sick

You know what I want the most…. is not to want.

There are some people in the world who seem to be born content.

These people are happy in their lives, they recognise that some people have more and appreciate that some have less.

These people have lived in their houses for the last 10 years and have no desire to move. They don’t need to travel, they love their home and their country so much that they want to spent their holidays there too.

They are happy in their in their jobs and don’t angst over a promotion that will stress them out… or they are happy being stay at home mums/dads… they don’t need a job to make them feel validated.

I want to be these people… I want to wake up every morning and look at my life, which is mostly amazing and feel as fortunate as I am, rather than beat myself up
about what I’m not. Ie: earning money, calm, sober, thin, a better mother, writing a book.

The other day I read this quote:

“You may think the grass is greener on the other side, but if you take the time to water your own grass it would be just as green.”

So before you all decide you can’t stand the moaning and bitching and unsubscribe from this blog. This morning I decided I’m sick of being negative. Of being an ungrateful sod. And so I’m going to try to take this adage to heart..

I’m going to find things I like about now and find ways to practice gratitude. Here is a public commitment to myself to live life differently.