Hello again! So I guess I took the summer off. Writing is an interesting thing to me. Sometimes there is nothing I can think that needs to be said, or at least nothing I think would be of interest to anyone. And other times, I can’t possibly end my day without writing everything that is bumbling up within me.

Tonight is one of those times. Looking into the window of my life right now might look like a contentious tornado has planted itself in the middle of everything and forgot to leave. Nevertheless, I think I am the most content in life than I have been in a very long time.

I began this year coming to a true epiphany about myself and what life is all about. All my life, I would become frustrated and overwhelmed at the reality that I could not do it all. I just couldn’t get it together. I tried to fix everything all at once and fail miserably. I tried to improve one thing and another would suffer. I might feel like a great parent one day, but be spiraling out of control in keeping my work life together. My house could be out of control, but my budget looked flawless. And the only thing I felt about myself was shame – for the parts I didn’t have it all together.

So many times my therapist gave me advice to just try to improve one thing for a while, then build and add another, and another. Tackle it “brick by brick” was a suggestion from my self help resources. I couldn’t even do that right.

So instead, I decided I would do something different. I would only concern myself with one thing, and let all the other things be what they were good or bad. I would have zero expectations about anything but that one thing. If I felt like switching to something new, then everything (including that one thing I was previously focused on) would fall into that “not my concern” bucket.

Feeling good or bad about myself was centered on that one thing. Some might say this is “celebrating the small victories.” I started with keeping my house clean. I did great, had a system, and stuck to it. For the several weeks I focused on cleaning, I felt GREAT about myself. I had other things that went well – in my career, in my friendships, parenting. But I didn’t put my basis of success on any of those things. Only on cleaning.

I took up boxing as the next “one thing” to exert effort in. And I felt really proud of myself there. I derived my joy from that, not cleaning, not budgeting, not parenting.

I focused on my career for a few months and received the best performance review of my life. Those days, whether my house was clean or my boxing was consistent, had no bearing on my self worth.

Last week, I had many stressful days at work. My house had returned to post-tornado status (my mom came to help do laundry thank God!). I hadn’t looked at my finances in weeks. And I missed every single boxing class. But my daughter had an incredible rap speech created to run for Student Council and we spent an hour one night solving a logic puzzle from her Gifted class. My son ran in his first Cross Country meet only two days after joining practice and succeeded in his two-hour acting class that week. Despite all the bad, I felt like I was a super parent. It is where my happiness sat and I often returned to it when anything bothered me.

I know I will never get it all together. And I know there is so much to be grateful for. But gratitude lists don’t help me much. What does is choosing to position my mindset in the space where I have it together, even if it is only for that hour, day, or week.

Tonight, I find my joy in a new relationship. It fuels me and gives me confidence in my life. It invaded my thoughts in the best way possible. It trumps all other worries or tasks or shortcomings.

I listened to a segment from Mel Robbins about how to practice visualization. You think about a goal, something you want to happen. You picture in your mind that thing happening. Not just that, but you know what you are wearing, what the weather is like, sounds of people around you, and the feel of what you are holding in your hands. You create a memory in your mind that never actually happened. In doing all this, you examine what emotions and thoughts you have. How you are overwhelmed with pride or joy or excitement, having accomplished this goal. In doing all this, your brain actually experiences it.

This is what I am doing, with the one thing going right. I am flooding all of my emotions, thoughts, and senses with that thing. But it is real, not imagined. There is not a place for emotions about anything else. So I can be content (or even better overjoyed) in the midst of seeming chaos. It isn’t manufactured positivity ignoring all the negativity. Because for that one thing, it is true.