Elemental

We watched Elemental, the new Pixar movie, yesterday. Sam, G, and I all cried. (G clarified that he cried once but he doesn’t remember which part!) Pixar does such wonderful movies. This one was very emotional (obviously!), beautiful, and quite touching. It had amazing imagery as well.

There was a line at the end where one of the characters mentions not regretting going through their experience.

I’ve been thinking about regrets lately. I was sitting with it trying to figure out why I have that initial feeling of regret in certain situations. And had to have the obvious realization that it’s such a bad habit of my overthinking and playing the game of “what-if” in my life. Of avoiding the sadness and hurt that might come up in situations. What if I was able to tweak a situation and it be magically better? What if I choose a different path and had a different, happier experience?

I’ve been working on stopping my overthinking habit – which is incredibly hard – so I’ll just try to appreciate my super tiny minuscule wins at random times in my day.

There are people in my life that have such a wonderful appreciation for the here-and-now, the present, the experience. It’s humbling to be able to watch and learn from that.

My goal this week is to sit and take the time to really appreciate the experiences in my life. I’m doing that by writing down 5 things I’m grateful for each morning. There was a Gratitude Experiment that was completed at multiple universities…

We randomly assigned our study participants into three groups. Although all three groups received counseling services, the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.

berkeley.edu

Results were very significant where the gratitude group reported significantly better mental health than the other two groups. The study was repeated at multiple universities and had the same results.

Every experience pushes us in different directions and I’m doing my best to appreciate the flow. Even if it hurts.

In the interest of giving thanks, and being appreciative and grateful… one of my gratitude reflections this morning was that I got to watch this movie with Sam and G. We all loved it – for different reasons – but went through the same experience together and that was so nice.