Hello sweet friend!

How about if I give you a peek into my real life?

I feel crummy.

My stomach hurts compliments of the antibiotics and pain medication I'm on for the pain in my mouth which is compliments of 2 new temporary crowns required as a result of my teenage ice chewing!

Ugh.

In addition, I'm not sleeping (see pain above) and there is a big family wedding this weekend and my entire family will be gathered...and you know...family. So my emotional state is a bit precarious.

I took a nice walk this morning (in the middle of a pollen storm) and even that didn't help.

But, my cousin just sent me a link to "Maniac" the lead song from Flashdance and told me to dance along to get all the emotions flowing by a change in my physical state.

Dance break------

I'm back, and guess what? I actually feel so much better! Except for my neck - I think I pulled something in my neck while dancing! haha (Joke)

Actually, I do feel a lot better. And this is what I wanted to talk with you about.

Sometimes, we just feel crummy. We don't want to feel crummy. But physically, there may be reasons your body/stomach is telling your brain things are not right.

So how do we stay positive when we feel so blue?

First, it's important to recognize that it's OK to feel blue. It's just we don't want to stay stuck in that way of feeling. So what can we do?

1. Take a moment to let yourself feel the feelings. Don't try to eat them away, or stuff them down. Just breathe and let your body process them. Normally, an actual feeling with pass in under a minute if you let yourself feel it.

2. Pull out your journal and write. Set a timer for 3 minutes and see what comes out. Sometimes what's really bothering you jumps out at you in those 3 minutes.

3. Identify what thoughts are causing problematic feelings and rewrite the thought. For example, this morning I wrote in my journal, and did a few thought downloads (where I go through the thought to feeling to action cycle) to help me identify what thoughts were contributing to my malaise. This was super helpful as I was able to reframe the thoughts so they would produce better feelings.

And yet, I was still out of sorts. And that's when the magic of my fourth solution comes in.

4. Move your body! The walk didn't do it for me, but that dancing sure did! All sorts of fun emotions surged to the forefront. (I was a senior in college when that movie/song came out and it was a favorite!) And after the dancing, when I sat back down to finish this letter to you, I was in a MUCH better emotional state to finish up.

So I don't know what you're facing right now. Irritating bosses. Scary test results. Challenges with your kids. Unfulfilled desires...

My guess is many of these situations could be improved with some or all of the above suggestions. These are some tools we can use to get through the hard parts of life. I hope you can use them too.

Have a great weekend!

Love you and cheering you on,

Christy :)

P.S. Still drawing and painting! Day 7 of my drawing challenge and day 85 of painting/making art this year.

Here are some watercolor Amalfi Lemons for you to enjoy: