good

When you focus on the good, the good gets better

~ Fridgesays ~ 2 Comments

Anon

This quote makes me smile and then makes in practise is frustrating, like all things – it’s much harder to apply.

To master this it’s best to break it down into two parts, let’s begin with focusing on the good.

Focusing on the good: as mentioned previously I keep a gratitude diary and begin my day by scribbling down three things that I’m grateful for, for me personally it’s an instant energy boost to what I have, before I roll out of bed and any potential dread from the day ahead can creep in.

There are other ways you can focus on the good, during early lockdown I sent many handwritten letters to friends thanking them for the part they play in my life. Saying thank you is underrated energy booster for everyone (you and the recipient) but again instantly makes you feel a sense of positive connection.

Meditation can also help to refocus on the good when you feel imbalanced, or simply planning an indulgent meal to look forward to can help you to focus on the good and raise your vibration.

The good gets better: now we have established some appreciation with a dash of gratitude and a dollop of good will, you’ll notice that the next bits effortless. Much like riding a bike or any new skill the learning bit at the start is hard work, often feels like hard work and takes hard work BUT once you’ve acquired the skill, you’re off! The enjoyment increases and you can sit back and feel fabulous.

Forgive me for sounding like Pollyanna (the Disney film is in my top 5 Disney films of joy and my favourite childhood film) but once you give out good will, good vibes and general positive energy – you attract even more with little effort. Just keep noticing it and you’ll see even more to be grateful for.

A warning: before you send me a list of reasons why your life is horrendous and you’ve nothing to be grateful for. You found this post, which means you have internet access and you can read. Many don’t have these * I did warn you the Pollyanna affect can be irritating.

Extra warning: just because you chose to see good, focus on good and in doing so align with seeing more good, DOESN’T mean life won’t be bad. Sadly, good things happen to bad people and vice versa. However as good and bad events are going to enter our life anyway, I’d rather see them with my Pollyanna spectacles than sink in doom and gloom.

Is your glass half full or half empty?

Cling to what is good

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

Quote Anon

According to the power of google an adult makes 35,000 decisions a day, a child around 3,000. That’s everything from what to have for dinner tonight to what to wear and where to go. Most choices fall in to three categories: positive, negative and those we feel obliged to do, feeling like we don’t really have a choice.

As an adult I do feel that at times I need to make negative decisions for overall good, an example being telling my son off and setting consequences – in hope that he learns and grows into an adult with clear morals and boundaries. At the time of sanctioning him he would tell you it was a negative decision I’d made.

Not all choices are transparent and many come with a wealth of other choices, at times resulting in others taking control or contributing to the end result.

Many of us suffer from decision fatigue and with the stats so high, I’m not surprised. If you find yourself overwhelmed then the experts encourage you to pull back; have a duvet day, a social media detox and even better a week away from WiFi. Don’t answer the phone, relax and live in the moment where possible.

Except that is a short term issue. At the moment my son who is six years old is sneaky when I ask him to make one of his 3,000 choices for the day. He will say things like “I don’t mind” or “‘ask Daddy what he wants” in order to avoid conflict or people disliking his ideas. As a result, as parents we are now throwing him even more options…and not letting him wiggle out of them. It’s a tough love choice in hope that it will help him grow in resilience and assertiveness. More importantly we are asking him to ‘feel’ the decision, to reflect on what feels good, to reconnect with his instincts and to not be put off by other people’s reactions. Making choices in the moment that feel good are meant to be the best way to promote positive wellbeing and overall happiness in the long term. Without guides, I wonder how many adults are out of sync with their own sense of good? Making time to rest and play has never been so crucial for a blossoming and positive planet.

Jar Moments

~ Fridgesays ~ 18 Comments

There are many things we have to teach our little humans, from taking their first steps to the glamour and delights of wiping bottoms, my son still insists that having his bottom behind him is a design fault (as he can’t see it).

Over the Summer holidays I have created ‘Jar Moments’ and have taken several ideas from the web of joy to hopefully teach my son to spread love, be grateful and for him to experience appreciation with a sprinkle of happiness. If you have a little dude or dudet, or even a gaggle of dudes then feel free to join in. My ideas initially came from Jacqueline from Go to Mindfulness who was a featured blogger on #thesatsesh, click the link and you’ll see that in the jar I’ve added some of her inner child ideas. I also used good old pinterest to find some ‘random acts of kindness’ (although its always made me wonder how random a planned jar of activities can actually be?) then I added a few of my own. J isn’t keen on writing and at the grand old age of 5 years and with a teacher for a Mummy if I can sneak in some pencil time then its an added bonus.

However, we’ve actually been doing ‘Jar moments’ for a while and I didn’t set it up as ‘something for my blog’ but friends have asked if they can join in, so I thought I’d take some time to type it up. I’ll be sharing all of our ideas via the hashtag #jarmoments so feel free to follow me on Facebook to see what the latest note out of the jar is, my Facebook page is @whatmyfridgesays of course you can just do the odd note or even create your own jar. I’m using Facebook as a platform as I think it may get lost on Instagram and I also need to show my Fb page a little more love.

Instruction wise the Jar is simple; you simple unscrew the jar (Gratitude goes to Nanny for providing the jar) and pick out a note. You then have 48 hours to complete the task. I gave us this time as I didn’t want it to become a burden on planned days out that we have during the summer holidays.  Once the task is complete and you’ve returned home, pick another to see what adventure the next forty eight hours holds.

You’ll notice that none of the activities cost any money. I really believe that showing love, gratitude and experiencing happiness always comes from the most simple tasks.

I should probably add that you also don’t need a mini dude to play along – why not create a jar for adult self.

I hope you enjoy #Jarmoments and if you do get involved please let me know by sharing pictures, stories and moments. The more love we can throw out in to the world the better.

Be a good person but don’t waste time proving it.

~ Fridgesays ~ 24 Comments

Quote Anon.

The word that sprung to mind was ‘integrity’ when I saw this quote. It’s so important when you have an audience to still do the same things when your audience has gone home.

Being ‘good’ is obviously a word thats open to interpretation, but proving it is something I find people who are often insecure in their self do. Lets face it many people suffer from ‘lack of self love love’ and we certainly all have days where the self love monster eats our souls and spits us out in a top thats too tight, eyeliner thats clearly thicker on one side than the other – and thats only if we can be bothered to open our make up boxes.

Self love aside, there is nothing worse than meeting a person, thinking they are ‘good’ (feel free to enter any other adjective of your choice in here – I’m partial to ‘kind’ and also ‘stupendous’, although I just looked up good in the thesaurus and ‘ship shape’ made me laugh), only to find a few meet ups down the line that they are more plastic than Tiny Tears.

However, don’t despair below I plan to outline my own survival guide of 2018 for surviving and even thriving around these people. Its a comprehensive guide and I hope will be of value to you and others, in true fridgesays manner I have created it in magnets.

In essence, if someone is good to you or others to impress you or so you think they are good, suck up their good vibes like a baby and their milk bottle and don’t worry about their motivations. If they are doing it to impress you, firstly be honoured they give a shizzle and then know that in time people always show their true colours. I believe Phil Collins (legend of the 90’s) created a song around this theme, aptly named ‘True colours” although I can’t recommend the song to you, the video is hilarious with more fist pumps than the average 90s classic.

If you are an ‘impress’ kind of person, take a moment to sit down. Think about your motivations – if you want to bake a cake for people or show kindness and compassion, do it…if you feel socially bound, don’t. I live in a village and my son attends the local school, some of the parents are lets say a little keen to get involved. I am not. If its in my sons interest, I’m there. If its not or of no interest to me, I’ll avoid it like I do day time TV. I couldn’t give a scooby doo what any of the other parents thinks of me…why? because I don’t have the luxury of time to think about them and when I do have time, I’d rather show kindness to those in my tribe. I don’t aspire to be the class ‘rep’ Mum and I don’t wish to meet up with them in the holidays, unless my sons wants to see his friends.

I do think good role modelling is essential to our little peoples lives, and so try to be the best me. This summer I am planning a series of ‘acts of kindness’ to others beyond and within our tribe to educate my son on being grateful for what we have, sharing and giving to those that don’t.

So please, if you are anxious about what others think of you, spend the energy of loving you a little more and I promise what others think will become irrelevant.

Don’t just be good to others

~ Fridgesays ~ 18 Comments

Another epic quote from the dazzling and dynamic ‘Anon’

Firstly, lets break this quote down in to two segments and then devour it like its ice cream from a parlour with a cherry on the top…

Be good to others

It sounds so obvious and I can’t remember a time in my life where teachers at school weren’t ramming this concept down my throat? More annoyingly it feels sooo good to be good to others, it reminds me of the episode of Friends (1998) ‘The one where Phoebe hates PBS’ and tries to find a lack of joy in helping people.

Being good to others has to be good for those Karma points; hard core readers of my blog will know this is a game I play with myself where I do good for others – for example letting other drivers pull out before me, simply so I can collect the Karma points that I secretly believe (Yes i’m aware I’m in my thirties) will one day be traded in for greatness and to live the dream, or that I can cash in a few on rainy day when lady luck forgets to shine.

Most religions mention helping others, or more importantly the less fortunate. I recently attended a Gurdwara/ Sikh temple in Southhampton on a school trip and was blown away  with their generosity to feed others – the ‘Langar’ means that Sikhs across the globe are passionate about feeding those in need and not just a few but thousands every day. Luckily for us, their generosity extends to school trips and the opulence shown to us encourages a wonderful infusion of community cohesion and my love for Asian food 🙂

 

Being good to you 

My Dad is an old school fussy eater and I remember every Sunday my Mum would tie herself to the cooker and hours later produce a Sunday roast to die for…my Dad would push his around his plate and never seemed that grateful but every week Mum would give my Dad the best bits of meat and I never understood why? It seems to be a very British / Parent thing to put yourself at the back of the ‘be good to yourself’ line.

Reflecting further more I can’t help but feel to be the best I can for my son, at times I may need to go to the top of the hierarchy – after all what use is an exhausted mother to anyone? And besides the the first rule of life saving is your health first. Balance is prevalent on this blog and I think at times in friendship and family life we need to learn to put ourselves first, to be the best we can for ourselves and those we love…not all the time but on occasion.

As a result this weeks challenge is to put yourself first. Make time to go to the gym, to have a relaxing bath without a rubber duck or toddler for company, to walk the dog in solace or to pick up a book and that well deserved glass of wine, whatever your putting off because you are ‘so busy’ whatever floats your boat of desire…do it. You will feel lifted and I promise you as a result you will be a better human to be around for those you love.

I recently ‘treated’ myself to a bunch of sunflowers and got extremely guilty – I questioned why and then after a mental breakdown in the flower isle I realised I was worried about spending money on me, on a whim and something I didn’t ‘need’. You’ll be pleased to know I quickly defeated the demons and popped the bouquet in my trolley – because being good to me made me smile, feel good about myself and thats worth a million bouquets.

In balance of the week challenge I set above in bold, paying it forward is another ‘feel good’ thing to do. So why not also complete a random act of kindness it could be as simple as letting someone go ahead of you at the supermarket checkout or making cards of thanks for people around you for no particular reason. There is a legend of a (very cute) man called Joshua Coombes who I follow on instagram – he is a hairdresser and cuts the homeless people of Londons hair, the photographs speaks for itself as you see the transformation in his clients eyes. I believe its these sorts of people we should be giving ‘celebrity’ status to.

So this week give the challenges a go and remember that ‘only goodness can come out of good intentions’ its a double positive after all.