Jenna Gullickson

As I write this blog, I have to acknowledge something: my life is pretty rose-colored.

I have a loving family, amazing friends, wonderful health, and so many more things to be grateful for—and lately I’ve been hearing about people who are not having as amazing life experiences.

And sometimes I feel like it’s soooo annoying when your life is going poorly to hear someone who’s life is easy preaching about happy happy happy!

I always tell myself I won’t get into a life that doesn’t uplift me—that I have the power to make choices that will lead me to an amazing life—and while I believe in myself to do this, I know that it isn’t always so easy, and so sometimes I thinkwhat will I do if that happens to me?

I know this is cheesy, and something we are always told, but it’s something that truly helps me no matter what mood I’m in—but it’s essential that you make a habit out of it.

Grattitude

Sometimes I can get so consumed in my problems—but then I take a step back and remember that some people are paralyzed, some people are starving to death, some are vomiting from chemo, while others are watching their loved ones die. Nothing makes me feel like my problems are so small than acknowledging the blessings that I take for granted—but that are truly miracles.

When I get a far away parking spot, I shift my thoughts from “this sucks” to “wow I’m so lucky I can walk!”

Let me give you a better example of what truly makes me realize how good life is: I LOVE nightmares. Like sometimes I’ll have a dream that my mom dies or has cancer—so when I wake up I find myself EXTRA grateful that my mom is alive.

Take a minute (but only a minute) to dwell on all of the terrible things that could be happening—and that aren’t! Now quick—don’t dwell too long, shift to the beauty in your life! When you start looking you begin to see more and more and the feeling of gratitude is one of the best feelings there is.

As a college student one year from graduation, my brain is beginning to fill up with fantasies of what I’m going to do when I graduate. I’ve decided to create an amazing life when I graduate rather than bumming about how my awesome college experience is about to end—so naturally I’ve been dreaming up all of the wonderful things I’m going to do and all the cool places I’m going to do them.

But sometimes when I come down from this happy dream-state, it’s hard to go back to living my current life—in Minnesota, not doing too many exciting things.

So while it’s important to dream big—what happens when you get discouraged because right now your life is just so-so?

The thing is—this can actually be turned into a great gift!

Because an average day can be so much better if you are in a good mood. Why else do people love things like coffee—or less beneficial things such as alcohol or drugs?

People love mood-enhancers. I’ll be the first to admit that if I didn’t think caffeine was right around the corner I doubt I’d get out of bed! But by focusing on what you want out of life and believing in yourself that you CAN accomplish it, you experience a natural high that comes from the joy of believing in yourself and your ability to make an amazing experience out of this life.

Now take that high, and enjoy thatfeeling. Let it spill out into your day, energize you to do all the tasks that lie ahead of you, brighten life’s colors, enhance life’s beautiful sounds, and make your life more amazing.

Have you ever looked back on a day that you were totally happy—even if nothing really special happened—and regretted it?

Didn’t think so.

Don’t you love when you’re going through something, and life hands you the absolute most perfect thing to address your issues?

That just happened to me.

I’ve been home from college for 2 weeks now and I’ve been really struggling. I absolutely love my life at college, but being home has been boring and also a little depressing.

So naturally I couldn’t help but tell myself that I can view these things as problems, or OPPORTUNITIES.

And opportunities sounded like more fun.

So then I watched this video on TED Talks—it’s Steve Jobs speaking at the Stanford class of 2005 graduation—and man is that guy wise.

He makes a few very solid and important points, but the one that struck me most was about how “sometimes life’s gonna hit you in the head with a brick—don’t lose faith.” And how “You cannot connect the dots looking forwards, you can only connect them looking backwards,” and “believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Basically—if life sucks, you need to see that in the end you’ll look back and realize the greatest of miracles can come from the worst of circumstances.

So why not ease the pain by recognizing that now—and being thankful! Sure it sucks now, but the rewards will be wonderful one day!

Here’s a link to the video—I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be inspired! :)

Because I love whales, life, and puns :)

Yesterday I was having a lovely chat over coffee with my aunt, and we were talking about drawing the line between following your intuition and listening to logic when it comes to other people’s feelings (something I’m still not decided on!) and I said something that I want to explore more. I said “You really only have one person you are supposed to take care of.”

And my aunt said “Yeah, I agree that you should take care of yourself first—but that doesn’t give a person a right to be an asshole.”

I disagree.

And that makes me sound like an asshole. But listen up.

I think that in life, the only person you HAVE to take care of is you.

However.

The choices you make and things you do add up to equal who you are. If you decide to be an asshole, to put yourself first and treat people like crap, life is not going to be kind to you.

Think about it: You never ever ever HAVE to do anything.

“I have to go to work.” No you don’t, you are choosing to because you don’t want to get fired. Or disappoint someone.

“I have to love my family.” No you don’t. You choose to love your family (for a plethora of reasons, possibly among them) because they love you, because they bring you joy, because they’ve done so much for you, etc.

You get the jist.

But my point in all of this is that because you don’t really have to do anything, that means that everything you’ve done in life, you chose to do!

That might sound like giving yourself too much credit, but heck, why not? Sometimes, going to work SUCKS! Sometimes forgiving someone SUCKS!

But in the end you chose to do it anyway, even though you didn’t have to.

When you say “You don’t have a right to treat people like an asshole” I think you have a right because as a human being you have free will. And the fact that people most of the time generally choose not to be assholes is beautiful.

The fact that my aunt said “you don’t have a right” means that in her head being an asshole isn’t even an option—I’m not trying to criticize what she said, but rather point out that in her saying it she is demonstrating what a loving and kind person she really is!

So keep in mind—being loving and kind—that’s not something wehave todo, just something we often choose to do.

So anytime someone says something cynical about how people are so selfish these days, I have to disagree. I think we are a lot more loving than we think we are.

And that’s pretty amazing.

I’m in love with the potential of miracles. For me, the safest place is out on a limb. —Shirley MacLaine

I absolutely love this quote. How can we ever expect to grow when we choose to stay safely inside our comfort zone?

I’ve found a lot of growth as a person in looking at something scary and saying to myself “by doing this I will grow so much as a person”

And sometimes you can be pleasantly rewarded in addition to that!

I think if you start by doing little things that scare you (i.e. making a somewhat nerve-racking phone call) we can start to build that confidence muscle until one day we’re doing really big things, like asking for a raise, or deciding to spend a year abroad.

Look back on your life: are there any times you did something that terrified you and you regretted it?

Not for me!

But let me tell you, there are plenty of things Ididn’tdo out of fear—and that’s where the regrets lie.

Go get uncomfortable!

So as my junior year began to wrap up a few weeks ago, I started getting really sad. I had made so many great friends and life was pretty sweet—I didn’t want these good times to end! Pretty soon I’ll be a senior, and once I graduate, thus comes the end of my perfectly mapped-out life. Then what?

This was scary! People are always telling you how you should enjoy college because they are the best years of your life. Great, so my life is about to get bad?

Then I decided: NO! That’s up to me! I can tell myself “one more good year and then it’s same shit different day”…OR…I can tell myself “My life gets better as it goes along”

Which would you choose?

The only person who can decide how your life is going to go is you. You have the power—use it!

I saw this on Pinterest one time and fell in love with that quote. Every time I think of it I smile. It’s so pure, so innocent. It’s like when you think you have life all figured out and a little kid says something to you like “We have a black person at our daycare—but I think that black people are just like white people and everyone else and we should all be nice to each other.” (Which happened to me) and you are completely blown away at the wisdom of a four year old. It’s like we think enlightenment—like figuring out this thing we call life—is something so complex and so difficult but in reality it’s so simple.

Which brings me to my next point. I went to Barnes and Noble today because let’s face it I could spend years there. I digress. My point is that I found this book by Deepak Chopra and I saw one idea that really resonated with me—I won’t be able to directly quote it but it said something like this:

“People think the secret to life is money, career, relationships and all that—but in the end people might have all of these and still not be happy. What you truly seek is already within you.”

What you truly seek is already within you. How powerful is that? Happiness is a personal journey…discovery…and the end result lies within you. You may not be able to control everything in your life, to get every little thing you want—but the thing is, you want it because you think it will make you happy.

And you can just BE happy if you want. Each and every one of us has that within us.

“What you truly seek is already within you”

Chew on that for a while.

I started out this post talking about how we always get caught up in life and forget to relax and have fun, but I hate when “motivational” people are always telling us we do this and that and are negative—thanks for believing in us!

I once heard something so inspiring that made me never want to judge anyone ever again.

“The truth is that everyone does the best they can with what they have. For everyone, including you, is just living out what they have learned in this life.”
—Louise Hay

Wow.

So yeah, sometimes people do downright shitty things—but it is out of their own shit that this stuff comes out, it’s not about you!

So what is about you? Your own shit.

And that goes back to my quote from a few days ago “Your life will change when you do, not before” and that’s something I try to remind myself every day. Don’t like something about your life? What is it telling you about YOU? And when we can begin to look inside ourselves to find our opportunities for change, we allow a beautiful path to unfold before us.