Today I’m sharing THREE POSITIVE TRIGGER WORDS (or phrases) I place around my home and office.
I find it too easy to forget the important things. There is a huge range of activities and things that are good for me – they make me feel good and they make me feel much better when I’m really feeling the anxiety creeping in. How do I remember to do them?
I’ve done a lot of reading about positive mental health and how to make myself feel better. I have some positive trigger words that I have placed on post its and on pieces of paper taped up around my home and office. These bits of paper remind me not to get lost in the busy-ness of the business. They remind me not to lose track of the simple pleasures in life. These prompts remind me to take time. Also, they remind me to treat myself. There to act as prompts for me, to remind me to be better to myself and for myself.
The three words / phrases I use to trigger positive thinking and action are:
PLEASURE.
When I decided to make a big effort to make myself feel better, I found that I was feeling selfish sometimes. Not because I was actually being selfish, but because for once I was putting myself first instead of others. I would do things that brought me great pleasure and then my anxiety brain would say “no, but you haven’t taken care of…” which would then erase the pleasurable moment for me. So I decided that I should work on this. There was no sense in making myself feel guilty, just because I was doing something that made me feel good. It’s not like what I was doing was hurting anyone else. It could be something as small as taking 10 minutes out to read a chapter in a book I was reading, or taking 15 minutes to go for a stroll along the beach. I promised to remind myself that it was important to do something every day that brought me pleasure. Every time I look at the word PLEASURE that I have hung up I know that I mustn’t forget to make time for it. Treat it just like you would a meeting. Put it in the diary. Don’t break the date.
BE PRESENT.
This is a big one of getting lost in the busy-ness of the business. Working on my own, at home, I’ve found in the past I can let a LOT of time go by without noticing. I can eat a meal without tasting it. I can go through days on autopilot. It wasn’t until a friend of mine gave me a lovely gift of daily mindfulness activities that I started working on being more present. When it came to meal times, I decided I would sit and eat my meals without any distraction. Taking time to taste the food that I’d spent so long preparing. I would look around me when I walked my regular journeys. I would take note of the small things that were around me that my absent mind had missed. That lovely tiny little pink flower, or the way that sunshine was coming through my office window casting a beautiful rainbow on my wall through a prism I received as a birthday gift from a dear friend. One of the biggest things of the Three Good Things journal I keep is to do this very thing. To notice the three good things in any day. Three small things. Things that some people may not even notice at all. I take time to notice these and record them. It’s the little things after all, right?
DO THE WORK.
This is a big one. This is always on my mind. Nothing about my business has been down to luck. I spent a long time being quite absent and just getting on with things that I thought were taking me in the right direction. I spent hours scrolling through social media wasting time I didn’t have. It’s not like these things were giving me anything. OK, not QUITE true. They were giving me a whole lot of guilt. That’s what they were giving me. And what did I want that for? If I wasn’t going to do the work then who was? It’s not like I have a team of people who are there to pick up my slack. If I want my business to succeed I need to work HARD. That’s also when I’m feeling best. When I’m getting things done, crossing off lists and finishing the day on a productive high. I have to be here, every day, working like any other job. I have to show up and do the work so I have a business. If there is something that you really want then just do the work. Show up and treat it like you would the job that pays you. In a little over a month I’ll be celebrating 5 years since I left my day job to go full time with my business. It’s a dream and all those days that I’ve turned up to do the work are finally paying off. This is my reminder for when I find myself getting lost and scatterbrained. This is my reminder for my future success. All I have to do, is do the work. Simple.
Another one that almost made this list was YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. I have a small piece of bright pink tissue paper with this phrase stamped on and it is sealed inside a mini plastic bag and hangs on my mirror. It was given to me years ago when I was a student and I keep it on my mirror as a daily reminder. Why? Because it’s nice to hear and it makes me feel good. It’s easy to obsess over things I’m not happy about with my face or my body but I’m working on obsessing over the things I LIKE.
What are three positive trigger words for you? Do you keep reminders or prompts around for yourself?
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