I had a "Duh!" moment the other day. Not as much fun as an "A-ha!" moment, but valuable all the same. "A-ha!" moments are those moments when everything clicks into place and you gain a new understanding or insight. "Duh!" moments, on the other hand, are those moments in which you recognize something quite obvious that you should have been aware of, usually are aware of, but that you somehow lost sight of somewhere along the way.
My "Duh!" moment came after a couple of days of feeling cranky. At first I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so irritable. All I knew was that I was. Sometimes simply becoming aware of it shifts it, but this time I was aware of it and I wanted VERY much not to be feeling so irritable but that wasn't helping. It felt at the time almost as though it were beyond my control. I didn't want to be feeling cranky, but I was, dammit, and the more aware of it I became, the more cranky I got because I wasn't shifting out of it easily. (It's a vicious cycle that way.)
Mid-way through the second day my frustration with myself and my mood was so intense that I wanted to either scream or cry. "What the hell is my problem?" was the question that kept running through my mind. I live an extraordinary life that I share with an amazing man, doing work that I love. Most days I experience a depth of happiness, contentment and satisfaction that for most of my life I'd never even dreamed was possible. Reminding myself of this truth, however, was not helping. So, what the hell was my problem?
I hadn't been feeling very well for several days, but it wasn't so bad that I needed to lie in bed all day, I just wasn't quite up to par. No big deal, except that I have a bad habit of expecting myself to function well regardless. That's where it began...with my frustration with my inability to ignore how I was feeling and to function as if I weren't sick less than well. (You see....I have a hard time even writing the word "sick." I don't want to admit that I am sick, let alone cut myself some slack.)
It was my resistance to not feeling well that originally created my frustration and irritability. Resisting what is, regardless of whether or not what is meets your preferences, always causes unnecessary grief. I wasn't feeling well, and no amount of pushing myself or trying to talk myself out of the fact that I wasn't feeling well, was going to change it. I needed to let it run its course and had I accepted that at the outset I could have been gentler with myself and allowed myself to work when I could and rest when I needed to.
To make matters worse, the frustration and irritability was infectious. It carried over to everything else. My "Duh!" moment came when I realized that I was mentally complaining about everything...little things....things that don't normally faze me in the least. Duh! No wonder I was cranky. I had inadvertently shifted my focus from one of appreciation for the moment and what is, to one that was focused solely on my life's inability to meet my personal preferences for how I thought it "should" be. In the process I created an even greater gap between my preferences and what was. Hmmm....funny how that works. : )
The next time you're having an "off" day, feeling cranky or irritable, take a good look at the thoughts that've been running through your head. Complaints, whether or not you ever speak them to anyone, serve no purpose but to make you miserable, and miserable to be around. Try accepting, and surrendering to what is, rather than resisting and bitching about it and I'll bet your mood will turn around very quickly.
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