Stay positive and love your life!

I've been thinking a lot about life and happiness and the things I want. There's a lot of negativity in my life and some days it feels like it might take over. Like I can't stop its flooding into my soul and thoughts. That's not how I want to live my life by any means. There's enough hate and stupid in the world with out me adding to it. So I've decided to start a positivity challenge with myself. So to start off a few 'rules'

1. Ponder the things you want to accomplish in life. What are you going to do to get there. But no getting down on yourself. 'You can do it!' (I'll write a blog post about life goals, and other goals soon, maybe tonight)

2. Read good books. My mind is happier when it gets a good workout with reading. I don't want reading to take over my life because I have a tendency to lose myself in books but I want to have a good balance with reading.

3. Listen to good music. Take 15 minutes a day to crank up some tunes. Have a dance party with the kids or go for a run with it. but music affects my soul and well being. I'll try to share some songs every day or at the very least when I come across a good one. 

4. Try not to beat myself up over little things. When something starts to eat at me figure out how to fix it or how to live with it. Sometimes I can't fix things, not everything is going to be perfect always. But letting that ruin my day or thoughts does me no good. 

5. Let the negative go. 

I may add or change things as I go but I'll try to share progress when I can:) 

For today I'll share a few of my go to songs when I'm feeling down and a story. 

So story first:

I'm amazingly lucky. Both of my children go to bed easily. It's something I'm always grateful for. I don't think I'd have the patience at the end of the day to deal with kids who won't go to sleep. But I rarely have to deal with that so it's hard to say.  I've never had to spend much time wondering about crying it out or any other sleep methods, my kids just sleep. 

  Tonight however my daughter was struggling to fall asleep and crying in her crib. So after a few minutes I went in and picked her up I rocked her a few minutes and just stared in to her eyes. Which were alert and full of wonder. I was feeling kind of tired and was concerned that maybe she just wouldn't go to sleep. She just seemed so awake. I laid her down in her crib and she immediately tried to get up and reach for me again. So I thought eh I'm just going to climb in her crib with her for a minute. I've never really done this, I've gotten in with her just kind of messing around but never to get her to sleep. 

  As I was laying there the negative thoughts started to creep in. I shouldn't be doing this. She's never going to want to sleep alone again. I'm going to ruin her awesome sleeping behavior, blah blah blah. But then I took a deep breath and told myself to stop. No more negative thoughts! I took in the moment. I watched her big beautiful brown eyes start to get heavy with sleep. I felt her chubby little hand resting on my cheek. Those little hands that have learned to do so much in the past 19 months, hold bottles, forks, spoons, sippy cups, color on walls, paper and everything else, throw balls and give the worlds best hugs. Those tiny amazing hands that hold mine when she's learning something new for support, or reach for things as she learns independence. It felt like her whole world placed upon my cheek, and I thought someday she won't need me. So tonight I'll enjoy it. Tonight I'll soak this in and memorize her hand print on my face, burn it in to my memory. 

  And with the positive twist in my mind set a little of that ball of stress in my chest released. My daughter eventually kissed me good night and fell asleep on her own and there was never really a need to worry. I need to remember to take in the little things. 

Songs: