Making it through is great, but you deserve better

If you have opened social media over the last few days you might have come across a video saying: "I am challenging myself this January – I am going to make it through every single day!"

Funny for some, there is some truth to this: “just making it through.” A difficult month for many, simply making it through can be just enough.

However, whilst we nearly "made it through" January and that is totally great, there remains a risk of applying this view to the rest of the year. Making it through is great, but we deserve to do a lot better than that. Circumstances will require us to live our lives a certain way: we have responsibilities and big changes don’t happen overnight.

What can change is the way HOW we are making it through the days and months ahead. It is so repetitive as it is true, going back to what we are grateful for is the most powerful tool, but there is a tiny bit of a skill to practise gratitude so you can reap the most benefits. Having a mental list of things to be grateful for is always handy, but – hear me out here – try to feel it in your body. Look around you and look at the most mundane things with a new perspective. The things that are available to us every day, like a daily hot shower, people didn’t have only 100 years ago. Being warm, getting hot food, knowing what the weather is going to be like at the press of a button. Those are all small miracles and we are so much richer in our lives for seeing them as such. Having heard this before doesn’t make it less true.

Here is the catch, feeling gratitude in your body might not work at the first instant, it might take a long time. The body holds tension from things that happened and have not been dealt with and this is a good way to understand that something is not quite right.

So before searching for gratitude, if there is tension, one of the best ways to start your day can be a small affirmation: “I am ok. I can do today. I am enough and I have more than I need.” Give yourself time to breathe and try to give yourself a clean slate for the day, letting go of yesterday’s stresses or worries as good as you can, the point is to not pile more pressure on. Signalling the body and brain that we are calm sets us up well for the day ahead and breaks cycles of negativity that float up in our brains.

Now we can try again and look at the world around us with wonder and we can start making our own magic – if we feel like it, that is. One of the most simple magic tricks is to quickly connecting with a loved one in a very warm and caring way, a happy “good morning”, sending a small positive signal out to the world will lead to so much positivity coming back your way.

Another magic trick is to show gratitude for your body in its current state. Being alive, having a body that is somewhat functioning is something to be grateful for. If you show a lot of gratitude to your body, you are more likely to keep yourself fit and healthy and this will be rewarded with better mental health. The next one is to squeeze as much joy out of the day that you can. Happiness is a big task, but joy can be found in the smallest thing: dancing or singing along to a great song, a nice smelling shower gel, anything freshly baked, new stationery, even a clean fresh sheet of printer paper. We can have big responsibilities and so much joy at the same time. As joy is contagious, the more we have, the better for everyone.

Still, the days of the year might blend into each other a bit, even though more joyful and there is a thing about remembering those little things. Writing them down adds up to more joy that we will have, reading about all the tiny things in our days that made them special, that delicious new food we tried, the pink sky in the evening, a plant that has shown new blossoms.

Maximising those tiny moments of joy and the daily acts of loving care, for us and others, might just add up to a life well lived and so much more than just getting through.