Out here living your best life!

Happy New Year!

I am so happy to see another year and have another opportunity to live my best life by being intentional, practicing self love, and taking better care of my health, which includes, my mental health.

Its ironic that I stated that I have another opportunity to “live my best life.”

Let me start there. 

Everyone is out here living their best life, huh?  Trust me, as cliche as it sounds, I love the concept , heck, I’m jamming to Lil Duval’s Smile, now.

Lets talk about our best life.  Are we really out here living our best life? Do we really even know what that means?  Most probably don’t and truthfully, to each his/her own, because it’s their life, free from judgement, right?

Lets look at the lyrics of Smile, by Lil Duval featuring Snoop Dog and Ball Greezy. I’m going to have one question for each “bar,” how important is this to your mental health?

“I’m living my best life, Ain’t going back and forth with you (explicit).”  When I first heard this song, I was wowed!  I thought “isn’t this the truth.”  I refuse to go back and forth with people about things that won’t even matter, one year or even better,  ten days from now.  I use to allow these conversations to go on forever trying to prove my point. Or what I call, thinning and proving something, that in the big scheme of things, doesn’t even matter. But it affected me so much it raised my blood pressure. Now, how important is this to your mental health? We know that healthy debate is good for the soul and relationship development. However, when the healthy debate goes wrong, no one is listening, and yea, basically we’re just going back and forth with each other. Temper flares, heart rates increase, harsh words are exchanged, and nothing is accomplished. Leaving the conversation feeling drained and worn out, makes me just want to go home and isolate myself.  I’m questioning my communication skills and the argument plays in my head over and over again. So yes, in order for me to live my best life, I had to learn to let some stuff go.  I can’t control everything and that’s okay.  I rather maintain my sanity than win a conversation about nothingness with increased anxiety.

Now, “if you breathing, you achieving.”  Hmmm, in a sense, I can dig that.  I was blessed to see another day.  A lot of folks didn’t wake up this morning, so i’m doing one better than a lot of people in this situation .   I have much to be grateful for, right?  But is it really achieving?   Now, how important is this to your mental health? Some people who suffer from depression, wake up daily fighting to get themselves motivated enough to take  a shower and open the windows to let in sunlight. They don’t see breathing as an achievement.  They look at breathing as one more thing that they are struggling to get right in their lives.  Achievement is equated to positive movements in life and being depressed, can contributes to lack of motivation to do things that most people enjoy or do the necessary things we need to do, like breathe.  So yes, its sounds good to say “If you breathing, you achieving,”  but on the other hand, when you are suffering from depression, breathing is more complicated and undesirable, to some.

I’m going to wrap it up here with “you got a lot to be smiling for, so what the (explicit) you be wylin for?'”  If you can translate that sentence, you are doing better than most of us already but hey, I interpret it as saying, you have a lot of good things going on in your life, so why are you tripping off the minor stuff.  I may be off with my interpretation but it is called According to LaShonda.  Every day we are told to be grateful for what we have because there are a  lot of people that are less fortunate than we are but its doesn’t make our issues, less important.  Now, how important is this to your mental health?  Society tries to dictate how a person should feel, think, or behave based off the responsibilities, responses, or actions of others.  We all have the same 24 hours right? We all put on our pants the same way ( one leg at a time), right?  So why can’t we just appreciate and work with the cards that we were dealt?  The answer is simple, because we don’t have to! Yes, we share the same 24 hours but every second is different.  And there is more than one way to put on your pants, especially if you have no legs to stand on, literally and figuratively.   Basically, the point I’m trying to make is this, people are entitled to feel and think as they choose.  Negating their feelings by comparing it to others, who lives appear to be less fortunate, doesn’t take away the value of what a person is feeling at a particular point in their life.

If I am to live my best life,  I must learn how to live without the opinions and constraints of this world.  I must learn to set boundaries and execute the plans for my life.  I must learn to not let the opinions of others drive me to my next decision, good or bad.  I must grab the horns of life and ride it like no one is watching.  I must command the peace I need in my life, and live my life authentically, according to ME!

What are some of your thoughts about living your best life?  Is it a realistic outlook? What are you doing to ensure that you can live the best life possible?

I’ve provided a link to an article published by Chopra Center on 10 tips on how to live your best life. Check it out.  https://chopra.com/articles/how-to-live-your-best-life

-According to LaShonda