5 Reasons to Not Take Yourself so Seriously

Today I realized something important. I have been taking myself too seriously.

Do you ever do that?

Have you ever been in the middle of a personal crisis and suddenly realized, “Wait a minute. I need to chill.”

Life does not have to be a serious, sad thing. Instead, let life be what you want it to be. Yes, we have had a hard summer, but I have to remember that it is also still funny.

This week lots of funny things happened, and I did not laugh at any of them! Have you ever had a phase like that?

I blame it on moving. Moving knocked me off my game.

How do you get back on track?

I do not actually know… Lists are my personal coping mechanism.

I make to do lists, but I do not actually do all the things on the list.

Then I also make grocery lists, but I cannot focus on them in the store if they are too long, so I never buy everything on the list.

Lists were not cutting it this summer though. My brain has been mush. Total mush. There were so many things to do that I could not focus on any one thing. I was like the radio, if it got stuck on skip, flipping through the channels and rarely stopping on any of them.

And nothing felt funny at all because I was taking this all too seriously. Then I realized that a huge part of the problem was me and the way I was approaching all of this.

So reason #1 to take yourself less seriously:

#1. Laughing at yourself and your problems is important for your mental health.

Make a list of funny things that have happened in your life recently. I’ll go first.

Funny Things that Happened Here this Week:

-Our trash sat on the curb for THREE WEEKS. The trash company never did pick them up.

That American truck was only there to drop off my cans, two weeks after I signed up. They kept promising to come get my trash and recycles, but never did. When I switched to Republic, Republic gave me new cans and took all my recycles and trash in less than a week. PLUS, they even took the trash out of the American cans! I ran outside and gave them both a tip, I was so happy and grateful!!!

-Alan had a funny story that is what helped me snap back to myself.

One day Alan had an appointment in the city, and he needed to take the train. He drove all the way to the train station, parked in the parking garage, walked up to the platform, and that is when he realized. He did not have his wallet. There was no wallet, no ticket, and no money.

Alan drove all the way back home and woke me up searching frantically for the wallet.

Listen, yes, I was still in bed, but I am not lazy. It was extremely early.

I got out of bed to help him look for the wallet, and I spotted it sitting on the sofa. Problem solved.

Alan made it onto the train, but at some point I guess he had to switch and there was a mix up. He insists the train was labeled wrong, but somehow he ended up going three stops away on the wrong train, headed in the wrong direction.

Alan was an hour and a half late to his appointment because of all these little mistakes.

I think God did this for me, so I could feel more normal and have a good laugh.

You see, I am always having those kinds of mornings. All of those things have happened to me before. That is a regular day in the life of April.

The more I thought about it, the funnier it was.

It was so much easier to laugh at my problems back when my problems were two-years old and had marker or lipstick all over them. The cuteness always softened the blow so well for me.

#2. Take photos of the crazy things that happen. They make better stories than the easy days.

How eye roll inducing are the Instagrammers who always tell us to time block our day, wake up at 5am, and all of our dreams will fall into place.

Gag.

No thanks.

I am incapable of time blocking. It’s true. I tried it back in 2016. It was a disaster. Of course, I was all optimistic about it, but I never made it through a full day of that grueling schedule.

Look, I know it works for some people, I am jut not one of those people. An hour-by-hour scheduled day is suffocating to me.

People can relate to you more when you share your triumphs and your failures in a realistic way.

I would much rather read a post where someone is sharing their victory because they worked hard for it and they had struggles along the way that they overcame. We love that stuff because it is relatable.

And the little kids with markers, lipstick drawings, and wrong train stories, those are the best. Those stories reassure us all that we are okay. We are normal, and we do not have to be in the depths of despair.

#3. You are only competing with yourself and no one else.

No matter how amazing you are at something, someone is always better. And no matter how awful you think you are at something else, plenty of people are worse at it.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

We each have our own path to walk.

#4. Life is short. You never know how short, and you never know what may happen next.

Life goes by so fast. If we do not enjoy it now, when will we?

This quote from the movie Cast Away is one of my favorite quotes about life in general:

”And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail….. And now, here I am. I know what I have to do now, I’ve got to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” 

~Tom Hanks’ character in Cast Away

By the way, if it has been a few years since you saw Cast Away, watch it!!

#5. If God can love us, we can love us too.

God made us. He created us on purpose, for a purpose. I guess if he can love us so much that he sent Jesus to earth to save us, we can accept ourselves too.

So take a deep breath. And handle that mile-high to do list one item at a time. The march of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step.

We can accomplish wonderful things, but every day may not look amazing. Some days look like misery, but do not lose hope. Rest in knowing that God provides.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

~ Jesus in John 15: 11-13

So in conclusion…More hope. Less stress.

I am saying this as the reigning Queen of Stress, of course. Hope is always there too for me though. If we take life and ourselves TOO seriously, that gets miserable to me.

Life is short. Find all the humor you can in the things that happen. Sometimes you have to really want to see it and look extra hard.

At the end of the day, God gave us life, and he will guide us through it when we ask him to.

Yeah, I am still an over-reactor who cannot stick to a list and freaks out about being late. But while we work on that, we can still laugh at ourselves.