You know how sometimes you get a little head cold and your nose gets all stuffy and your eyes feel all watery and you know you need to sleep but you can’t because your nose is making breathing impossible and we all know if you don’t keep your mouth wide open in full CPR mode you’ll probably forget to breathe while you sleep and so you end up laying there for hours in a kind of paranoid misery?
Yeah, those days are the worse, right? But chances are if you aren’t living that head cold right now, it was not something that ever crossed your mind today, yesterday, last week. In fact, the last time you probably thought about it how terrible it is, was the last time you were in the midst of it. And then when your symptoms went away 24 hours later, you forgot about how it felt to not be able to breathe out your nose.
When was the last time you were grateful for a clear nasal passage?
It’s a silly comparison, but after making the realization years ago, I genuinely think about stuffy noses nearly every day. I woke up in a chill today with a lack of sleep under my pillow and a to-do list that, despite my best efforts, only grows in length each day. But I could still breathe out of my nose—so everything was going to be okay.
And it was. Once I knocked the sleep out of my eyes, I had an amazing breakfast of granola cereal (one of my top six fav foods). I walked to work in relentless wind but I finally remembered my gloves for back up. I was able to work hard on projects I am passionate about and enjoy lunch with co-workers who challenge my mind and better my journey. I returned home, to the delight of my roommate’s cats who are now snuggled up on either side of me.
It’s been a simple, but good day. And it’s not just because I can breathe out of my nostrils. It’s because I chose to see the world with gratitude. You can look at a lack of sleep as a hindrance or you can appreciate how much more work you got done by staying up extra late. You can think of a prolonged winter as a reason to complain or you can feel extra cozy in your favorite sweater for another day. You can grumble about the challenge of balancing multiple jobs, projects, and a social life, or revel in the opportunity to step up to the plate and accomplish something big.
And you can most certainly be annoyed with your head cold. Or you can hold onto your stuffy nosed knowledge for a blog post 3-4 years in the future.
You might have a little metaphorically cold and it might be hard to try to go to bed without the fear of death by stuffy nose running through your mind. But like every time you’ve had a cold, you’ll fall asleep eventually. And when you wake up you’ll be better than you could have ever imagined.
Don’t curse feeling under the weather. It’s all perspective anyway.
Love always,
Liz
