What do you see in the photo above?
I walked past this scene the other day, and it brought me joy. The flowers looked so pretty lit up by the sun, and I love the old windows in my 1880s house. I rarely have fresh flowers, but these flowers were given to me following a speech I gave last week, and they’ve lasted amazingly long and have brightened my days.
My camera was sitting right there, so I snapped a photo.
When I looked at the photo, I realized there were a lot of not-so-pretty things in the picture. When you looked at this photo, did you notice the messy papers and piles? What about the chips and scratches on the table? Did you notice how dirty the windows are in the background? What about those snowflakes the kids made that have been up there for a couple months and should probably come down? Did you notice how close our neighbor’s house is right through those windows? (Luckily, we love our neighbors, but I do wish they’d thought to put just a few more feet between these houses.)
Looking at the good, the bad and the ugly in my photo got me thinking. I’m happy when I notice and celebrate and focus on the beauty and goodness that is always to be found in life. I’m happy when I choose not to dwell on the imperfections and hard stuff.
As I think back on this past weekend, I choose to focus on the coziness and tastiness and fun of making cookies with the kids while beautiful snow fell all afternoon on Saturday rather than focusing on the big spilled oatmeal mess the kids made as part of our cookie-making and the way the older boys whined about shoveling the driveway. I choose to focus on the excitement and accomplishment the kids and I felt as we stood back and admired their rooms after a thorough cleaning and rearranging rather than the frustrating moments when the kids got off-task during the process. I choose to focus on how sweet one of my older boys was as he played with some little kids we were baby-sitting the other day rather than the fact that he just brought home some disappointing grades. I choose to focus on how nice it was to watch a movie snuggled between my kids with a couple of them trading off giving me little neck massages (they know the way to my heart!) and my oldest offering great commentary on the movie rather than focusing on one child’s extreme grumpiness about our movie choice. I choose to focus on how my husband fixed a leak in the basement and did umpteen other really helpful and kind things for me and for the kids rather than focusing on a couple things he did or didn’t do this week that made me feel a little bit invisible.
Happiness is all about where I place my focus.
This isn’t exactly a brand new idea. And it’s not so easy to focus on the positive when the negative is bearing down upon you or your mind just isn’t feeling all that open to happy thoughts. But really, we can find beauty and happiness in just about any situation if we look hard enough.
Question: What are some happy things you’ve focused on this week in the midst of the hard stuff?
Challenge: Change your focus. Look for the good, and cherish what you find while ignoring the not-so-pretty stuff that may surround it.
This article is courtesy of Power of Moms, an online gathering place for deliberate mothers.