Week number two! Are you ready?
Last week I challenged you to start making a series of small changes that may enrich your life and make you happier. I hope you are enjoying this exploration of you and rekindling the love for your home. Keep up with the flowers for as many weeks as you can! Record your new favorite flowers in a blank book, journal or composition book. Make a whole book about your journey of discovery about yourself! You are worth it, your life will be enriched and more beautiful.
Before we add this weeks challenge, add a new list to your journal of self discovery. Answer this; what are your favorite colors, how do they make you feel? What colors do you like to be around, outside, or in your home. What colors of clothes do you love to wear? What types of fabric and fibers do you love most? Make a list in your journal. We are building a list of the things you love. It is far easier to identify the things you dislike, and it is imperative we think about the things we love so we can fill our lives up with those very things. So often, we come home from a store with a new rug that “will do”, or hang curtains that will match our old sofa we are tired of. We pick the colors that are in style this year at the closest store, instead of choosing what makes us actually feel happy, comfortable and pampered.
Did you know that several times a year entire retail industries change up what is in style to keep you buying? We keep buying, and yet our homes rarely reflect our true spirit. I have known people that keep their shades drawn hiding the very sunlight that makes us feel good, alert, joyful and less claustrophobic. I personally love sunshiny rooms with pale creamy yellow paint on the walls, cream colored trim, and open windows bringing in the fresh clean sunlight that makes our rooms look bigger and more open! Dark, cramped, cluttered rooms make us feel tired, and scattered. There is actually science to back that up. Throw open your curtains, let the sunlight in, and if it embarrasses you to let those drapes be open, figure out what in the room you don’t want your neighbors to see, and fix it! Just keep writing things down that make you happy.
Now, here we go!
This week I have one small challenge to add! Serving others.
Don’t Panic!!
This can be small things. Buy someone a cup of coffee. Pay for someones meal. Donate to a food bank, charity, shelter, clothing bank, buy a blanket and give it to a homeless person. Knit hats for children that don’t have them, rock babies at the hospital, volunteer, or adopt an elderly person at a nursing home that is lonely. Mentor someone!! Find something you can do, and do it. It doesn’t have to be every day or week, but start thinking, be creative! If you have more money than time, find a ministry, charity or shelter you can support regularly! it doesn’t have to be a long term commitment, start small and try helping others more. If you get overwhelmed, set a small goal, like once a month or week for 3 months to see how it goes. Or once a day for 5 days. Set your own goal.
It can be as big or small as you want or need.
This is a double blessing! First, you help someone. Serving others is one of the greatest legacies we leave behind in this life. THEN, you are blessed. There is actually evidence that helping others makes you feel better, count your own blessings, and helps us to forget our own troubles. We feel less helpless, more empowered to make a difference in this world!
If you already do some of those things, then that is amazing! Do it a little more often, or try and figure out a list of more/different ways you could help others. Add something different/extra for this week? Mow the neighbors yard. Take food to someone going through a tough time. Fund a ministry/charity. Find new ways to help others, and exercise those options from time to time.
There are so many broken, hurting people. Someone you buy coffee for could be losing a loved one, may have just lost a child, or was newly diagnosed with cancer. Perhaps they have been struggling to cope with their job, marriage or life. A simple act of kindness can really change a persons day! It certainly can make them feel less alone. I am a Christian and I always feel God will use me to help another or meet their need.
One day it may be you that needs it. Perhaps it has already been you at some point. Let’s just focus on helping others while we find ourselves, rebuild our life path or totally overhaul and enrich our every day. It is okay to focus on ourselves for a time, to heal, rebuild, overcome, grow, etc, if we also are not neglecting others. We can help others more fully when we ourselves have healed and overcome that which we can lead another through.
That is it for this week! I hope you continue last weeks challenge, and try out this week’s. Small, incremental changes in your life can create huge results! Along the way you can discover so much about yourself!
Don’t forget, do what you can, without letting it become stressful. This is a journey, not a race.
God Bless!
