Words to inspire – Be grateful for life and be joyful

Be grateful for life and find reasons to be joyful.

I always like to end the words to inspire week with something about doing something for ourselves and being happy. I used to find that I needed constant reminders of that. We spend all week helping others in some way we then continue to put ourselves at the bottom of the heap. This often resulted in me being quite miserable.

One way that got me out of that state was remembering how grateful I am for life itself and acknowledging that I have the ability to bring joy to myself. This is not easy for some people in the world especially those in countries of war, so I am very grateful that there are so many opportunities for me so I need to utilise them and count my blessings.

Lots of fellow teaching and school support staff in the UK will be happy about today. It has been a short half term but for some reason it has seemed quite hard for lots of us. Today is a day to celebrate as we break up from school for a week. Some parents on the other hand might not share in the joy. I am in both camps and I’m just grateful for life so I will find reasons to be joyful irrespective of what’s going on.

We can help lift our own spirits by our own attitudes to life. Music is one thing that makes me happy and joyful and throughout this term I have been playing it or singing at every opportunity I could get. The children I work with love it too and it brings about a real calming effect on them so even if it’s not the norm that’s what I’m going to do until someone up high gives a good reason why that needs to stop. Often we assume we can’t do things that make us happy just because we haven’t seen anyone else do that. I used to be there with that state of mind, but now I’m going to try things until someone says no and gives me a good reason for the no.

Sometimes we allow others to block our joy consciously or subconsciously or we block our own joy. We have been stuck in the rut for so long we can’t even think of reasons why we should be joyful or how we could be joyful. Well there’s one big reason… we have life! We have clean air to breathe and water that flows out of our taps.

I’m so grateful for everything in my life, warts and all so because of that I can be joyful. Being joyful actually takes the sting out of the horrible things that may surround me. I have this ‘whatever innit’ attitude at the moment and I’m confident that whatever comes my way isn’t going to steal my joy forever. Most things are temporary. After the dark dark stormy night the sun still rises. There will come a day when all the pain will cease but until then I’m going to be joyful in anyway I can.

It’s actually quite infectious too just like negativity can be. When you find reasons to be joyful and spread the joy, others may laugh at you or laugh with you. Either way, they are laughing. I often get that and even if they laugh and shake their heads thinking ‘what a clown’ they are still laughing and I’ve managed to spread some joy.

Try it! Be grateful for life and find reasons to be joyful.

Peace and love

MrsJK