Find joy in everything you do...

Even though I'm not teaching yoga right now, I've decided to bring back my weekly reflections.  When I'm teaching, I always make an effort to find inspiration for my students because yoga is as much about the spirit and mind as it is about the body.  When I'm not teaching, sometimes it's easy to let my own spirituality slip through the cracks. So, I'm adding my weekly inspiration into my Hurricane Shannon blog.

This week's quote:

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.

Chuck Palahniuk 

I recently started a job that is definitely not my dream job and I spent the first few days mentally fighting it.

This is my view. meh.

I made myself miserable.  I put a big strain on my relationship.  I felt lost and frustrated and wanted to quit.

But yesterday, I had an epiphany.  I had been focusing far too much on the fact that the job wasn't perfect, and completely unwilling to find the ways it was actually a good thing.  I have a cool manager, a relatively flexible work schedule, I'm learning new skills and improving my attention to detail.  Not to mention, it's a paycheck, which in this day and age, is a pretty major blessing.

Even though the second part of this quote says to change your situation, change doesn't happen over night. In fact, sometimes that change only comes when you sit back and accept your current situation.
In this case, we have no choice but to love our situation and do the job to the best of our ability.

Plus, your current situation is not just your job.  It's your home life, your significant other, your extracurricular activities, and other great things in your life.  Letting a frustrating job overshadow all of those other things is the worst thing you can do for your spirit. It might seem obvious to some, but it has taken me a while to learn that lesson.

We are where we are for a reason.  If we focus all of our energy on fighting that, we can't be open to good things that come along.  Accepting a not so ideal job is the first step to happiness.  Being grateful for all of the other positive things in life is the key.

I'm grateful for my wonderful boyfriend, an awesome family, yoga and dance classes, warm days in December, drinks with friends, everything funny, being an actress and writer, a healthy body, and my imagination.  That's just the short list.