3 Things I did to cheer myself up today

I've felt a bit down for the last few days. If you want to know why, please read my previous post. But while I believe it is completely appropriate to grieve, a friend's loss is not a reason for me to give up on my efforts to live a happy life. My grief was taking forms that I didn't like, so today I did something about it. In three small ways. (And please hear me when I say that the trivial nature of these items that cheered me today is in no way meant to trivialize the very real grief she and her family feel and will continue to feel. I know these would not help her or anyone else so closely affected by a sudden loss. At the risk of stating the obvious, this post is purely about me.)

1. I took it just a tiny bit easy in my morning work out. 
I know this is counter-intuitive for a lot of exercisers. But let me explain. Tuesday morning, I got up and went to the gym. I was feeling down. When it came time to start running on the treadmill (as part of a treadmill class I regularly attend), I just couldn't. I just felt off physically and emotionally. I wanted very much to leave. In a room of treadmills where everyone is running and sprinting when directed, to stay and walk seemed embarrassing. After telling myself that none of them were paying attention to me, I decided I had to stay. And I framed it like this: success today was getting here and staying to the end. That is all.

This reframing only sorta worked. There was immediately a part of me that thought that I might never recover from this running setback. Most of running is mental, as the instructor of my treadmill class is fond of saying. So this big mental running setback seemed bigger than it was. I thought, "What if I can never run again?" Bad knees, bad mental state. This might be it.

(When I expressed that "what if?" to Jeremy, he said, "I think that's a bit extreme." He's good like that.)

So going into this morning's treadmill class, I was a little worried.

Some people say you have to work out extra hard to work out all your frustrations/demons/whatever. But today, when she told us to start out at our baseline running pace, I plotted mine lower than normal. Knowing we'd be building from there and that I could always increase it later if I wanted to, I just didn't want it to feel extremely hard today. I set myself up for a successful-feeling run.

Because sometimes the mental victory is more important than how hard I worked out. Don't get me wrong. I ran. I ran hard. I got a great workout and I sweat plenty. But I didn't want that setback from Tuesday to haunt me. And I'm pretty sure that after how good I felt today, it won't stick around.

2. I opened my Burt's Bees peppermint lip balm. 
Do any of you do this? You buy yourself something, put it away in plain sight, and then forget you have it? Here's the (riveting) story.

At Target one day, I was feeling splurgey, so I bought myself not one but two Burt's Bees lip balms. One mango and one peppermint. When I got them home, it felt too indulgent to open BOTH of them at the same time, especially since I had two other flavors in my purse. So I opened the mango, which I'd never tried before.

Well, that was a disappointment. It's fine as far as lip balms go, but it is not even REMOTELY evocative of mango. I should have known. But I felt I owed it something. So I put the unopened peppermint one, the kind I really love, on my bathroom counter with the opened mango one standing next to it, as if to teach myself to finish one before I opened the next. As if one was my creamed spinach and the other my dessert.

But then, you know what? I forgot I even had the peppermint one! And lately, when I've been digging in my purse for lipbalm and I realize I have to choose between Honey and Mint Cocoa, I've started being a bit bummed that I don't have any peppermint lip balm in there.

Am I the only one who stops seeing the things that are in plain sight? So yes, today I saw it again, opened it, and put it into my purse. Yes!

3. I changed the sheets on my bed and put the poppy quilt on it.
The poppy quilt! It is impossible to be sad when you are unfurling the poppy quilt onto your bed. Jeremy's grandmother made it and gave it to us as a wedding gift. It is beautiful. Her hand stitching is remarkable.

For a long time, when someone has told me to mentally go to my happy place, images of my bed with this quilt on it have quickly floated to the top of my pool of possible places.

Can't wait to climb into it tonight.