Don’t die old, die empty. That’s the goal of life. Go to the cemetery and disappoint the graveyard. ~ Myles Munroe

Happiness when you’re on empty

We live in an ever increasingly turbulent and stressful world. Hell, just in the last week a prominent right-wing podcaster was assassinated leading to all kinds of hateful rhetoric all around. Russia decided to fly a dozen drones into Poland causing NATO to scramble jets and shoot them down giving off all kinds of WWIII vibes, prices at the grocery store are up and it’s increasingly looking like the economy is about to tank. Not to mention that this country probably hasn’t been this politically divided since the 1860’s. So if you’re feeling a little stressed out, a little anxious, a little drained of the energy it takes to be happy, well, that probably means you’re a thinking and caring human.

Times like these, and even personal situations where your pushed and stressed to the edge does a very specific thing to us, it drains us of our emotional reserves. Emotional reserves are that cushion or barrier that help you take a breath and not just react. When you have them, and someone cuts you off in traffic, you might swear a little in the car but you keep driving. When you don’t have them, you lay on your horn, you become irate and it ruins the next hour. Those reserves give you the space and ability to moderate your emotional reactions. When those reserves have been drained for a long time you just go flat, meaning you start to lose the ability to react at all, the world becomes a dull, gray flat landscape and that’s where empty turns into depressed, so it’s important to stop that slide.

It’s been a long six years for most people since COVID and that applies to me. Since COVID I spent two years working in a turbulent work environment as literally everything we do in education has changed. Add to that an organization that has had continuous changes in leadership, I’ve had 6 supervisors in 6 years, and our organization has had 6 presidents in 6 years. And finally, the stress and changes associated with having impending, then actually having open heart surgery and recovering. Now I’m fully engrossed in a cross-country job search which quite honestly has been frustrating for a number of reasons.

So many of us are on empty.

The question then becomes, what about happiness? How can you continue to be happy, when you’re on empty. I believe that this is one of those situations where you have to fall back on the answer to the age old question, how do you eat an elephant? One small bite at a time. Likewise, if you try and make grand gestures or huge changes you often fall flat on your face. So you need to work back a little bit at a time. First, and if you read this blog regularly you’ve heard this from me before, you have to start with the basics. Are you eating right, drinking enough water, getting exercise, sleeping enough and are you safe? That safety is both a physical and mental question. You can’t move forward to work on being happier until you get the basics well in hand.

After you’ve got the basics handled then you can work on being happier. So what does one bite at a time mean in terms of happiness. Honestly, it simply means to start small. And my recommendation is start with yourself and your internal voice. It’s a silly thing that I often recommend to people I coach and counsel, it’s about changing your internal script. We internally talk to ourselves all day and this has an impact, it goes back to the old cliche, whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right. If you are consistently reminding yourself that you are stressed out, on empty, that there’s nothing positive to look forward to, that is exactly where you will remain. So here’s my recommendation, each morning, first thing, and I mean this literally, take a look in the mirror and tell yourself, I’m a good person, I deserve and I can be happy. Then follow through and consciously plan to do one thing that makes you happy that day, no matter how small.

The small things can be a whole lot of things. Maybe you plan to buy a cookie after lunch. Maybe it’s planning and taking a 10 minute tea break all by yourself or a short walk in nature. Maybe it’s an act of gratitude where you purposefully take time to write a thank you to someone today. Maybe you plan to do something nice for someone today, we know that gratitude and doing for others makes us feel better as well, which fills our own tank as well as theirs.

So my friends, even if you’re on empty, little by little look and find ways to fill your tank. Being consistent about this over time will bring you back to where you hope to be, a happier place, having happier days. ~ Rev Kane