Cold Coffee

I end up drinking my coffee cold at some point nearly every morning. I don’t know why I bother to make a cup before I get my daughters on the bus. The hustle and bustle of getting them dressed, hair and teeth brushed (sometimes a shower if we forgot to do it or didn’t have time the night prior due to extracurriculars), feeding them breakfast (cooking is involved half the time), packing lunches for the day, and dispensing medication has me taking a few sips here and there at best. Then there’s the 15 minutes we spend at the bus stop, all the while the coffee sitting on my counter growing cooler by the minute.

This morning I took even fewer sips due to a discussion I had with my 9-year old about perspective and self-control. I often have to have pep talks with her about such subjects, as she tends toward a melancholic and negative viewpoint. She’s always been my moody child, a right-brained, daydreaming sort that likes to shut out the madness and frustration of the world and escape into her mind by drawing and reading. It was the former that got her into such a bad state this morning, her inner critic ripping her confidence to shreds as the lines she put on paper to create a picture didn’t turn out exactly the way she wanted them to. She began to rant about how her art was never good enough, how everyone else’s drawings were better than hers, yadda, yadda, and stopped listening to me when I told her to finish her morning regimen. Then, as usual, she argued with me, voices were raised, and I pointed out how she was acting. Her frustration got the better of her and eventually she proceeded to the crying stage as I sat down and talked with her. She reflected on how much it hurt when others efforts at their drawings were praised and nothing was said about hers.

“Who is everybody?” I plugged.

“No one,” she said.

A-ha! The Voice of Negativity had struck again. I reminded her again that we are our own worst critics when it comes to the things we’re passionate about, and that no one had denigrated her art work except for her. I told her that she would never achieve perfection because it didn’t exist, and that the sooner she learned to let go of such an impossible feat, the happier she’d be with what she produced, and that it was the effort that went into the work that mattered, not the final result. Lastly, I told her that she needed to silence that negative voice in her head with the realization that it wasn’t helpful to her, and that focusing on the positive would help to ward it off.

All the while, I’m laughing at myself silently, feeling I have no room to talk about this sort of thing as I am just as guilty of letting negativity take hold of me as she is. I’ve struggled with it since I was a teenager. How do you change a glass-half-empty mentality to glass-half-full? Answer: IT TAKES YEARS. Though I still fall prey to a depressive spell now and then (damn hormones), I am more optimistic than I used to be, and only became so in the last few years. I have learned to recognize triggers and how to reverse my thinking when those spells threaten, and I use perspective a lot of the time as the cure.

I am alive. I am healthy. I have a roof over my head. I have clothes on my back. I have food on my table (and healthy food, at that). I have a wonderful and hardworking spouse that loves me. I have two beautiful and healthy children. My husband has a good job that pays our bills. I have a job that I enjoy. I have a car that gets me from A to B.

I have nothing to complain about.

The above is my mantra and it is pretty effective in most cases. The constant reminder that I am breathing and am not sick or destitute does a good job of centering me. I can honestly say that I have reached a point in my life where I am the happiest I’ve ever been. Sure, things could be better – there’s always room for improvement. Like being able to drink a hot cup of coffee. But I have everything I need.