Day 29 - It's okay to be grumpy sometimes.

It's been one of those days -- lots of heavy, irritated sighs, and lots of muttering, "Really?!"

This is something I still struggle with. Not that I struggle with having the occasional bad day -- I mean, I do, and I'm always striving more and more to see the bright side, opportunities, positives and lessons. What I struggle with is being okay with myself when I'm not 100% optimistic.

I used to be a very negative person, I'll just put that out there. There was always something wrong with everything, and I was basically never happy with anything. In fact I was probably my happiest when I had something major and dramatic to gripe about. Once I started working with my first life coach and moving past that into something healthier, I learned to see the good in things... and, I've discovered, the pendulum swung so far to the other direction that I don't feel like it's okay to get grumpy every once in a while or to be disappointed in anything.

And some days, let's be honest, it's just hard to see a bright side about getting a sore throat, and it's hard not to mutter, "Really?!" when, for example, you go to blogger to write a post about being cranky and saying "Really?!" a lot, and get a 503 error when the page is trying to load. After the internet had died for a while earlier in the evening, anyway. (Insert heavy, irritated sigh, here.)

What really opened my eyes to where my pendulum seems to have swung was a conference I attended last July, where one of my favorite people on the planet is an instructor. She is the most loving, joyful, wise, giving person, with the greatest sense of self of anyone I have ever known. She is who she is, and who she is, is absolutely amazing. So when I heard her speak in class about being disappointed by one of the conference events being too rushed, unemotional, and anticlimactic, I really perked up. She, who teaches classes on how to be joyful, who has "joybringer and light bearer" on her business card (and accurately so), wasn't happy with something?

I actually approached her about it, and she told me (and you have to hear this in an English accent), "It is absolutely okay to be disappointed with an anticlimax." She even went so far in class to discuss some of the silly things she'll occasionally get upset about. Listening to her was a good first step in helping me realize that I don't have to beat myself up for not being absolutely happy with absolutely everything, absolutely all of the time.

But I'm still working on it.

And today is giving me lots of opportunity to be okay with the fact that sometimes, I'm just grumpy, and things are just annoying. It helps to remember that it's not permanent, and at the same time, giving myself the permission to just be cranky when I need to, also helps me move past it when it's no longer doing me any good.