5 Sentences You Need Hear in 2024

Dr. Erin Attaway • January 13, 2024

Time is your most precious asset. Spend it wisely.  

If your biggest complaint is not enough time, then you probably need to recalibrate your time management.  Not to fit more in and master multi-tasking, but rather to eliminate the time-wasting elements.  

Scroll less.  Watch less television.  Declutter your house to eliminate time spent on organization and storage.  Stop shopping for items you don’t need anyway.  Stop researching.  

Go make a snowman instead. 

Your mind is your strongest muscle, train it well.  

Everything about who you are and how you live begins here.  Some mood distress is chemical in nature but most of it is due to how you think about your life and how you perceive the world.  Cultivate the inner work to train your brain, instead of seeking bandaids and self-soother tools. Acknowledging how much power you have over your circumstances is a most difficult task.  It needs a tremendous amount of work and patience. 

You are what you eat.  If your diet is SAD, Standard American Diet, it’s no wonder you don’t feel good.  

Food is meant to fuel your body with nutrition, that’s it.  We have elevated the status of food and meals to amazing heights, but without understanding the chemistry of life you are suffering the death of pleasure whilst starving.  In a world of so much food, how are we still starving? 

If you aren’t eating food in an effort to feel good, then don’t be surprised when you feel bad.  

Joy and grief can coexist.  

In America, we have such a tendency to focus on one thing.  Happiness. Success.  Achievement.  Loss. As if everything else should fall away so we can concentrate on the singular path.  The truth is, the paths are lined with highs and lows so that none overwhelm you.  They are all markers of the life you’re living.   You can be heartbroken while still feeling joy.  You can feel lost yet keep moving.  

If you carry each one with you the road gets very long.  Learn to live in the moment and leave the markers where they are. 

You don’t pursue happiness, you cultivate it.  

There are moments of happiness and joy that are so obvious, other moments pale in comparison. Work on finding joy in the small and insignificant things that fill the space between monumental times. Which is the majority of our days and our lives. 

When life seems the hardest, you must focus on the most insignificant details to find your happiness and gratitude.  A cup of your favorite hot coffee. The fuzzy socks you got for Christmas.  The view from your favorite place to sit.  These are the tiniest elements that bring joy, and they are sometimes the most profound.  

A happy life is created by filling the smallest spaces with contentment, despite the heartache or loss that might also be standing by.   

When life seems the most villainous, we feel like victims.  Victimhood will keep you stuck forever.  It’s hard to take control over circumstances you didn’t ask for or you don’t understand. There is no blame, no recourse.  You must learn to move forward one small step at a time. You must learn to feel joy while also feeling sadness or loss.  You must find the magic of small things so that the wonder of life returns. 

May 2024 be a year of blessings for us all, even if they are the smallest.   

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