A Year of Yes

I am unhappy.  Not just a little blue or a little down....I am deeply unhappy and so dissatisfied with so much of my life.  As I write this, I feel a twinge of worry about being judged for saying this out loud.  These days, it isn't popular to admit you're anything other than upbeat, positive or optimistic.  There is a societal pressure these days to be zen and positive and happy. All. The. Time.  You're supposed to count your blessings and appreciate what you have and be grateful and forgiving and....blah, blah, blah.

But I am none of those things right now and I get a bit tired of pretending that I understand I should be. What I am is dissatisfied. Something is missing from my life.  I'm not talking about a decent paycheck (which is definitely missing) or a significant other to love (also totally M.I.A.), but something deeper.  I am missing whatever gives you meaning and purpose.  I am missing inspiration.  I am missing the thing that sparks all of the above things.  I am missing myself and I can't keep doing what I'm doing anymore.  Being this deeply dissatisfied is killing me.  At a soul level.  It's eating away at me and leaving me less than what I can be.

Because I'm overthinking introvert who spends a huge amount of time inside my own head, I have, of course, spent a huge amount of time pondering what I need to do to change all of this.  I've thought back over who I've been in the various chapters of my life....viewed all of my various incarnations and tried to figure out what I miss the most about who I used to be.  Which chapter of my life was I happiest in and why?

It would be simple to say that certain situations in my life left me happier than I am now. But I'm not sure that would be true.  It's something more.  Something bigger.

Here's the thing.  As we get older, we get more cautious.  We've seen cause and effect and experienced consequences for words and actions, so we choose more carefully, take fewer risks and stick with what's safe.  Fear begins to dictate choices.  Fear of the unknown, fear of something new, fear of fear, itself. And we allow things with the potential of making us happy slip by.  What we do is say no.

I have a tendency to say no a lot....that is always my go to response.  Sometimes my "no's" are out of laziness....sometimes they are out of fear...sometimes it's because (and this will sound so bad) I don't want to be emotionally inconvenienced.  Occasionally, my no's are based on legit reasons - lack of money, conflict in time, etc.   But I can't say that these legit reasons are the norm for me saying no.

In the last few weeks, Shonda Rhimes, the insanely successful writer and actress best known for Grey's Anatomy and Scandal (just two of her shows), released a book documenting a year of saying yes to the things that scared her.  And this has intrigued me.  Saying yes instead of saying no has intrigued me.  She says it was life transforming.  That taking risks and saying yes to the things that scared her changed her life. Her already hugely successful, fulfilling life.  And now I want to do that.  I want to take risks, say yes, and see if I can't dig myself out of the rut of unhappiness and dissatisfaction I find myself in now.

I've actually done several things this year that scared me.  I gave a live TV interview last month (ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING) and yesterday, I gave a history lecture to a group of people (again, I'm an introvert, so this was scary for me to do).  I also kayaked with dolphins this year.  Okay, the kayaking wasn't remotely scary, but seriously...I kayaked with dolphins.  DOLPHINS!!! And yes, it was as awesome as you think. My point is, after I tackled what terrified me, I felt....accomplished.  I felt stronger.  And a little more centered.  So....a year of yes.

I figure the year of yes should start on the traditional first day of the year, so starting on New Year's day, a year of yes.  My goal is to blog about my experiences.

My warning....I may need to be reminded that I committed to saying yes.  If you feel I need to be reminded, do it kindly.  With nice words.  No mocking. Something like, "hey, so do you remember when you said you'd say yes...?"  And try to make sure that I understand if I say no, I'll be missing out on the biggest, most fun thing ever.  Make me fear regret.  With nice words.  No mocking.

A year of yes.

*Disclaimer:  I will not say yes to anything illegal, anything that can maim or kill me, anything that harms others, or green beans.

The Positivity Addiction

In June, Disney released a new Pixar movie called Inside Out about a little girl and her competing emotions.  The message of the movie is that negative emotions like sadness and anger have as much of an important place in our lives as happiness and joy and that forcing ourselves to be incessantly optimistic or pretending we're never unhappy isn't healthy or right.  Because of this message, one film critic is calling Inside Out "quietly revolutionary" and I couldn't agree more.

In the last several decades, our society has slowly shifted from maturely accepting that life involves experiencing a full range of emotions (including pain, difficulty, frustration and anger) to hyper-pressuring people into pretending everything is always okay, even when it isn't. There is now a huge amount of stress placed on ALWAYS being optimistic and positive and grateful and happy even when we aren't. And, to be perfectly honest, this Stepford approach to life has been creeping me out for quite a while now.

It's not that I don't enjoy being happy and having fun. I like being happy and laughing and having a good time as much as the next person. But I'm a realist who lives in a real world.  I have a firm understanding that life isn't always happy or easy or good and consequently it's okay to have negative emotions in response to difficult events and situations.  It's okay to be sad.  It's okay to be frustrated or angry.  And even though it's really unpleasant, it's okay to feel lost sometimes.  In fact, each person reading this will feel all of these emotions are some point in life.

What's not okay is tritely throwing out platitudes to people like "fake it until you make it" or "you just have to decide to be happy."  It's not okay to pathologically insist that others stay perpetually upbeat and optimistic. It's not okay to require others to pretend to be what they aren't just so that the rest of us are more emotionally comfortable....because that is what we're doing. Although there are definitely people in life we want to be happy strictly because we love them and want what's best for them, let's be honest; many times, we're convincing people to fake their feelings so that the rest of us won't feel emotionally inconvenienced. After all, it's uncomfortable to be around emotionally messy things in life.  There's some irony to this phenomenon, too. Pressuring others to fake feelings so that we're more comfortable is a selfish thing to do....and selfishness is a negative emotion.

A lot of people will read this and think I'm advocating only negativity or wallowing in unhappiness.  I'm really not.  There is absolutely a time and place for optimism and positivity and fun. And yes, you should pursue what makes you happy because ultimately, that pursuit will lead you to experience more good than bad. But it's okay if you have times when you don't feel happy. It's okay to have a rotten day.  It's normal to go through rotten times. It's okay to feel less than optimistic and positive as a result.

I'm not sure why we've shifted to such an addiction to positivity.  I don't know if it's because advances in technology are allowing us to become more and more anonymous and therefore, less connected to one another or maybe somewhere along the way, we've just gotten emotionally lazy.  Maybe we've simply stopped teaching people that negative emotions are normal and can be healthy learning tools.

What I do know, though, is that living a realistic and compassionate life requires the acknowledgement that we will feel something less than good at different points in our life....and so will the people around us. Maybe we could cut each other some slack, accept that life is a giant, messy ball of both good and bad and find a way to wean ourselves from needing to only hear good, easy, optimism.