WORDS FOR AUGUST
Words for August:
As you prepare your heart for all possible outcomes, remember to prepare your heart for positive outcomes too. Prepare yourself for good memories, good lessons, and all the little places where sunlight will come shining through.
You are free to move slowly when you need to, even when it comes to allowing yourself to let joy in. Sometimes, joy might first flicker in the form of the warmth of sunlight shining in from the other side of the window pane. Sometimes, joy might look like paying attention to what kind of environments or spaces energize you and make you feel alive.
Perhaps being in a park, a library, or even just a quiet, cozy room brings you a sense of joy. Even if you aren't able to get to that space every day, you are allowed to reflect and imagine it, and you can dream of what could be.
A positive outcome can be defined as "A positive fact, situation, or experience is pleasant and helpful to you in some way. The positive in a situation is the good and pleasant aspects of it" (Collins Dictionary).
Oftentimes, it can be easy to attach "positive outcomes" to acquiring specific things or desiring that specific actions be made by other people. While positive outcomes can absolutely include that, what is also true is that we're allowed to add to the list of what a positive outcome might be. Sometimes, a positive outcome might be this:
"I was really hoping to be able to spend an hour just doing nothing this week, and here I am! I'm doing it!"
"I really enjoy being outdoors, and this is something I can look forward to over the next few weeks without adding additional expectations to it."
"These past few months have been rather busy for me. Any moment that I get to spend just resting or doing something that's not work-related is something that I will celebrate, no matter how small."
Allow yourself to expand the definition of what a "positive outcome" could be. Even while you wait for bigger outcomes to come into your life, you're allowed to add some sticky notes here and there that remind you of the small joys you can seek to encounter along the way. Allow yourself to add more things to your to-do list that are low-pressure and don't require tons of planning and strategy for the results. Allow yourself to engage in things that take the pressure off, even in the smallest ways.
As you prepare your heart for all possible outcomes, remember to prepare your heart for positive outcomes too. Prepare for the good lessons you might gather here and the joy you might encounter, even if it's small.
More in this week's series called "Learning to Travel Through Life", only with a subscription in the Storyteller App.
More tomorrow…
Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols
@thestorytellerco
@morganharpernichols
