Choosing the Good & Positive

Sometimes I find myself slipping into Negative Town without even knowing it and then I am so far in that it is hard to recover and I start convincing myself that everything is hard, or going to be hard or being mean to those closet to me, i.e. my husband. So ridiculous right?! Afterwards I am so embarrassed and know I am better than that.

For some reason though, sometimes it becomes easier to be negative or to look at things pessimistically. Does that even make sense? Isn't that silly? It should always be easier to be happy and choose the positive, should it not?

I have been super inspired by this lady's posts lately about bettering herself and being better at her most important roles: wife and mom. I think we can all stand to improve in these areas on the daily, myself most definitely included. It is easy to be selfish and feel sorry for myself sometimes about how little sleep I am getting, how I am tired from breast feeding, how my days can be long, how Ben is working long hours and we barely get to say two sentences before falling into bed exhausted.

But you know what?

I am also pretty damn lucky and have a lot to be thankful for. I should be choosing the positive way more often than not. I don't want to be a martyr and I don't want to feel sorry for myself. Or my husband to feel like he should feel sorry for me by the passive aggressive quips I like to immaturely throw into conversation from time to time. Grow up, Allyce, seriously.

So, as a start, I sent off a positive text to my husband this morning. He didn't get home until 10:30 from work last night after being in at 7am, driving home in construction, dealing with an annoying dog, I got up twice in the night nurse the baby and after laying her back down and crawled back under the covers myself hoping for just maybe 40 more minutes of shut eye and feeling slightly bitter as to how the last 12 hours had gone, I looked over at my phone sitting there and sent him a text thanking him for his hard work and telling him I loved him. He responded positively and I know he appreciated it.

Yes, it would have been easy to not send it, to stew this morning about how annoying our dog is, how tired I am, how we haven't had dinner as a family since Sunday night but as I have started learning from Shannon, who does that really help? It isn't Ben's fault he had to work late or that E woke up a couple of times or that our dog is annoying. I know that if he had the power, he would wave his hand in a second to make it all better. And that's why he deserved my appreciation this morning instead of a few negative comments to start the day like I have been known to do.

I'm not saying it's going to happen over night but I want to start making the effort especially since this won't be the only couple of weeks that we have some late work nights for Ben. Yes it is only a couple months out of the year and I know some have it way worse and in the big picture it is not that bad. At the time it always seems horrible and hard but this too shall pass and we will be in a better spot because of it all. So it's time I suck it up and start acting like a grown up!