Life can be a bitch. Not a startling thought, because we all know it. All experience it.
And when life isn’t rolling smoothly and you aren’t traveling freely along the highway of peace and calm, you can get distracted. You start looking inward instead of outward. You miss things that way. Mostly your friends and colleagues – other people.
It’s easy to collapse into ourselves because we’re worried about paying bills, losing weight, selling books, ranking on Amazon or a million other things. And there are times when you must concentrate on yourself. Times you must go to your internal world and work on you. Self care is important.
But self-absorption? Not so much.
I’ve been living there for a while lately and I’m not proud of it. And it hasn’t helped either.
And I have once again realized that if you want to feel better, in general or otherwise, help somebody. It doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It can be as simple as giving somebody the right of way, letting a person with one item ahead of you in the checkout line, smiling at someone, or saying thank you.
I promise you’ll feel better, worry less, and probably like yourself more. When you’re happier, good things happen.
I wish nothing but good things for you. Thank you for reading, when you could be doing a hundred other things.
Have a lovely weekend.
Annie
Anita Rodgers Mystery Writer 
You are so right, Anita. It’s why I love it when my readers contact me. It’s why I still maintain a Facebook page, a personal page, in lieu of a professional page, so we can more fully converse. Helping others helps us help ourselves. Puts things into perspective. Thanks for this post.
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Hi Hope,
Thanks for your kind words.
It is funny how there seems like there is so much more interaction on the personal pages than the author pages. I have one set up but not a lot of interaction. Though Facebook has it’s own rules about feeds and such so that could be part of it. I love meeting and talking to readers too – it’s such a humbling and gratifying experience, always touches me.
Yes, perspective is definitely what it’s all about.
How’s the new book faring? I really enjoyed it.
Annie
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You’re right. Life can be a bitch. So when I saw this on your blog I thought, let me read this because I have been totally ignoring my fellow wordpress bloggers, lately. I have been immersed in trying to understand my “purpose” here on earth. I finally realized that I was really trying to give myself permission to do nothing if I didn’t want to, because (I told myself) my Creator has the plan and what I want doesn’t matter anyhow. The reality is what I really want is to just sit around and feel sorry for myself and the world. And eat. And drink diet root beer. So I read your post, which, I believe, is exactly what I am supposed to be doing right now. 🙂
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Hey Elva,
Good to see you.
Listen hon, we all have that need to find our higher purpose. And it can be all consuming.
I totally feel you on that. Believe me. Even the diet root beer part. 😉
But you know, I was thinking back to when I’ve been most happy in my life and also doing well – and it always tracked back to helping other people. Not necessarily in big ways or particularly notable ways. Just being generous with my time, knowledge, skills, lending an ear, lending a hand. Stopping to pay attention to other people.
For me, it really does make a difference to try to keep my focus there.
So I’m happy if this helped you in some small way. We’ve got to help each other out when we can, right? Even in the little tiny ways. They add up.
❤
Annie
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