today is gentle

“Not everything in life will be comfortable, but then again, comfort is subjective.” – Hannah McPherson

Today, you could say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

My dream was truly wonderful, but the moment I woke up the house was chaos.

Now, as someone who likes it when life is gentle, today was the opposite. However, I took the opportunity to practice gratitude. I took a deep breath, said “okay, this is the moment, but this doesn’t have to last the day.”

My new mantra today will be “Today is gentle.”

Why? Because when your nervous system is under attack, there is no stopping the discomfort and displaced feeling until you’ve convinced yourself that you will be okay.

I’m already bracing for “the worst day ever” in my mind, so by introducing this mantra, I am telling my body to stop bracing for pain and start embracing the possibility of miracles.

By miracles, I mean an easy day at work, I mean problem resolution without strenuous effort, I mean things turning in the right direction after a little disruption.

In doing this, my entire demeanor will change from being on guard and in panic state to something softer and more open. I will be attracting these good things with my own mentality.

Instead of worrying over every outcome, I will be accepting and loving towards myself and others so that positivity can shine through, even if things are hard.

We create our own comfort.

Today could go either way, but I have a feeling it will go much better if I change my own mind about how it turns out ahead of time.

If you ever have a hard morning, don’t let it sully the endless possibilities of the rest of the day. There is beauty in it all, even in the discomfort. It is our job to find the beauty and bring it into our perspective, in order to keep from being swallowed by all the harshness of life.

As someone who values feeling safe, snuggled, and cozy; life rarely offers this opportunity without a little effort on our part. Don’t be afraid of the effort it takes to regulate yourself, because on the other side, there is comfort waiting.

The song attached is about always reaching for the next great thing. It came on as I wrote this post.

I wrote it about our need to find our next happy moment, our next success, our next plateau. In waves, there are troughs and crests, we always want to be at the crest, but when in the troughs, we forget that we are bound to rise again.

It is important to remember that it is all part of the process, and the pain will pass.

“There is always a new horizon, there is always another for finding.” – Hannah McPherson

The song also talks about how we find that next horizon on the other side of a hard choice, but sometimes the hard choice is the guiding light of loving yourself enough to get through discomfort.

It mentions that there is no way to heal your mind, because the thing is you’ll always need healing. Healing is a task you come back to over and over for different things, or the same thing, but you’ll always want it and need it. The key is to grow through it. The key is to keep showing up.

This song stood out to me because it was originally written about my writing journey and where I’m at in my career, keeping up with my household, growing up in all sense of the word and where I thought my life would be.

Here’s the thing: it will always require work and that work may not always be comfortable, but if I stay true to myself and take care of my needs, working out those goals is totally reachable. Once they’re complete, I’ll have new goals. So, the process will start again.

Which leads me to the cover image: subjective comfort. What is comfortable to you, may not be comfortable to someone else. You have to find your own vision for comfort. Whatever it looks like to you, it is up to you to attain it. The world is not set up to freely give comfort, though we are sometimes rarely gifted with a kind gesture, it still comes at the cost of the giver.

You are always the first option for being the giver of your own comfort. When no one else is offering it, offer it to yourself.