Happy Motivation Monday!
Over the weekend, I read a chapter in Debbie Ford’s The Best Year of Your Life called “Claiming the Moment.” She proposes that it’s not enough to simply go through life being happy and enjoying life overall, and encourages readers to choose specific moments of bliss to remember carefully. For each of these moments that you “claim,” you’ll remember who was there, what made it so special, what you saw, heard, smelled, and felt, and any other specific details you can conjure up. Taking the time to specifically stake claim to that moment and solidify it in your mind is far more powerful than just remembering that “x year was great” or “my vacation to y was fun.”
It got me thinking about my own life. I love every moment of my new job and I feel that I do a much better job now of enjoying life overall, but I’m not great at remembering specific moments from my past. Unlike most Motivation Monday posts, I haven’t yet ascribed to one school of thought … I’m just posing something for you to think about. Even if I haven’t yet adopted the concept of claiming specific moments, I support anything that helps us reflect on our life and appreciate special moments. I believe that so much of our memory is shaped by our perception of the events that occurred, so if we take special precautions to remember our favorite moments through rose-colored glasses, we can’t go wrong!
So tell me in the comments … What do you think about “claiming the moment”? What’s your favorite happy memory?
Definitely agree – and it can be pretty easy. We were talking about vacations last night (while discussing the boys Disney trip last week) and all four of us cited different vacations, by recalling shared moments that all of us immediately remembered.
Like you say, owning it is pretty important, because it forces you to take a stand: rather than just saying ‘my wedding was wonderful’, which is true but there was also crap with each of our families in there, we have ‘touch-points’, like after all of it taking a carriage ride around Lake George village and the horse stopping at the end of a road, us overlooking the lake, it was quiet, peaceful and the whole thing got to really sink in for the two of us.
It is the contrast I also have with most of my runs just being ‘whatever’ but certain ones holding true memories.
He’s alive!
haha – yeah, still around, mainly stalking- just my commenting frequency has taken a nose-dive 🙂
And while your commenting has taken a nose-dive, my replying has as well. My blog reading was already in the deep end. But I love keeping up with you on social media and love seeing Ms. Carina regularly!
I absolutely love the idea of taking a carriage ride after your wedding! What a magical way to let it sink in! Like you said, a wedding is such an amazing time, but it’s so overwhelming and there’s so much going on that it must have been perfect to just step back and savor!
I love this. It really goes hand in hand with me trying to BE in the moment but CLAIMING that moment is so much more beneficial. Thank you for the reminder and I am always so happy/excited to see/read/stalk all the wonderful work you are doing. SO glad to see you so positive and loving life xo
A long overdue thanks for this kind comment! I’m always so happy to see what YOU are up to, too! xo