We are so quick to be automatic – in our actions, in our habits, our responses to people. When someone asks, “How are you?” we generally give the, “Doing well/I’m good/Fine, how are you?” This is something I have tried to change in my life. I try out new phrases: I can’t complain, everything is fantastic, life is good, etc. and then I make sure to let the other person know that I really care when I ask how they’re doing, too. One of my favorite responses to give, though, is, “Too blessed to be stressed.” I’ve noticed that I get a nice chuckle out of most people when I use that one.
When I was teaching full time a couple of years ago and enrolled full-time in grad school, I did my fair share of waiting tables. The owners of the restaurant I worked at, Salem Street Pub, gave all of the servers a little Christmas gift each year – and P.S. If you’ve never been there, check it out for some delicious burgers, local beer, and a perfect laid-back vibe. One year, I got a painted wine glass with a blonde lady on it that read, “Too blessed to be stressed.” It was kind of meant to be a silly and funny gift, but I have thought about that wine glass so often because it became a phrase that I started to use whenever things didn’t go my way.
One morning last week, I was running late for school, frantically trying to make my breakfast smoothie, a cup of coffee, get my lunch together, get my dogs together, get my life together…I reached up too quickly and knocked down the ‘too blessed to be stressed’ wine glass; it crashed into a million pieces. I breathed in, and then I breathed out, because yoga has taught me to find the gap between stimulus and response, and in that few short seconds I just told myself to let it go. It’s just a wine glass, Jules. Freaking out, shouting, cussing, letting myself get in a bad mood – none of that would serve me or help me get to school on time. But how often do we do just that, over the tiniest moments? So I shooed my dogs away from the broken glass, looked at them, and literally said out loud, “It’s okay guys. We are too blessed to be stressed about a broken wine glass on a Tuesday.”
And isn’t that the truth? We create so much stress for ourselves in life – I have been there and I do it, too, believe me. But sometimes we have to realize that there is beauty in even the ugliest situations, there is a reason for everything, and that the glass is always half full if you choose to see it that way.
I encourage you, me, all of us, to enjoy our moments. Realize that you have a b e a u t i f u l life, simply because you are alive. Every day, try to find something that you can appreciate, even if all you can appreciate that day is the air in your lungs or the heart beating in your chest or the working brain in your head. We are all moving through this life, living in a society full of negativity, superficiality, and greed. But it’s also a dazzling world of love, complexity, and optimism if you choose to see it. We spend so much time stressing about the future and the past that we act out of habit and repetition and we forget to be right here, right now. By being content and appreciating our moments, we teach ourselves to be less greedy, less negative, less superficial. We slowly minimize our stress and realize that most of the things we worry about aren’t even worth our time, because the scenarios we create in our head never end up as we see them, anyway.
We are too blessed to be stressed. Believe that. Some things are worth our attention, but so many aren’t. Let go of what doesn’t serve you and focus on the joys in your life – it might be harder to choose joy, but it is far superior to living in self-created stress and negativity.
If anyone finds a cute graphic tee to add to my embarrassing collection of quoted clothing, let me know 😉
