Mindful Monday V6

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend! Ours was very calm, but still fun and productive. We hung out with a few friends and a brand new puppy on Friday night, stayed in Saturday night, and had people over for the Bears game yesterday!  If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw my post and stories all about my chili… it was SO good, guys. I mean, if I do say so myself ?

But now it’s time for a fresh week, and I’d like to take this Mindful Monday to talk about something we all know, but so often forget.

Everyone has their own battles that you might not know anything about.

I recently reconnected with someone in my life that I hadn’t talked to in a while, and they opened up about a battle they had been fighting. And I had absolutely no idea. None. Zero. And ever since that conversation, I’ve been thinking about how we often assume we know everything about someone’s life. We see what they reveal to us and we fill in the gaps with guesses. I mean, right? We all do this, don’t we?

The thing is – it’s not like we can all say “don’t assume anything about anyone!” Of course we are going to. But I’m bringing this up because we CAN pay attention to the thoughts that come into our head about different people we come across. Whether it’s a rude waiter who you want to chew out or someone you see on Instagram who seems nauseatingly perfect – we rarely know what is fully going on behind the scenes.

Even I don’t reveal everything I struggle with to you guys. Sure, I like to be vulnerable and real, and I’ll get very personal with you – but I don’t share every single detail of my life. Some things are private. We can all decide what we want to share, when we want to share it, and how we want share it. We have a right to keep certain things close to our chests.

So the next time you find yourself wishing you could trade places with someone who seems to be living the ideal life, just remember that we all have our shit. And the next time you’re annoyed by someone, maybe try to shift your negative thoughts towards them into positive ones. It doesn’t mean you have to be overtly nice, it doesn’t mean you should excuse bad behavior, and it doesn’t mean you should stay connected to people who are toxic to you. But it does mean that we can usually pause before we jump to conclusions.

Can any of you relate to this?

I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!