Chronically Joyful

Have you ever noticed that some people are just magnetic to all the good things life has to offer? Some would call them “lucky” or say they were “dealt a good hand.” After really pondering over this for some time now, I think it ultimately just comes down to one simple thing. 

They made a decision to walk through life a certain way and hold true to that decision through everything without fail. 

Our lives are defined by our choices every single day, so why not choose to see the brighter option? This is something I have actively been practicing since the middle of 2025 and hope to maintain through not only the entirety of 2026, but the remainder of my life. 

When I’m thrown off track, I’m able to bounce back so easily simply for the fact that I know the “bad” thing that occurred is likely only preparing me for something unimaginably wonderful. While I don’t necessarily find myself to be one of the “lucky” ones, this is the exact mindset I’m dedicated to changing so that narrative flips right on its head. 

One of the most critical decisions we are faced with every day is how we choose to respond to our external reality. The inner workings of my mind is a beautiful garden I take the time to tend to every evening, but I still find myself reactive to my surroundings. The day that I realized I truly believed in magic was one day I refused to react to my outer world; in that refusal, I was granted an abundant amount of blessings, very much aligned to my inner garden. 

The day I write this, I have experienced a Hell of a work week; anything you could imagine going wrong, certainly did. I am not proud of my reactions in certain scenarios, where you could understand how I felt about a topic just by looking at my face, or in listening to the resistance I had to certain ideas my peers were trying to solve. In reflecting, I’d have preferred to approach these things in a different way, while continuing to tend my mental garden. The garden of our minds is where life truly begins, and what we pay attention to there is what ultimately comes to fruition externally. 

The weather where I live has been relentlessly arctic, and as such, we’ve all spent a lot of time cooped up inside, thrown out of standard routines. I found myself ruminating on things that brought on sadness and disappointment in myself, and as such, I’ve experienced more things that confirm that narrative. Now that I’ve personally woken up to this realization, I am electing to change it through my decisions in every arena of my life moving forward. 

One of my favorite phrases since getting diagnosed with MS nearly 12 years ago has been “Watch Me;” taking a fun little spin on that, it’s just become “watch me get through this sh*t with the biggest smile on my face” because nothing can take our joy away except for ourselves if we let external factors have that much power.

The next time your world decides to give you exactly the opposite of what you’re looking for, or just keeps throwing punches – smile. Smile and know that you have the power within yourself to keep going. Not only keep going, but stop giving negative circumstances any power over your life. Make the decision to accept things exactly as they are, but tend to your mental garden and flip that narrative on the inside. Once your inner garden is flourishing, your external world has no choice but to follow. When you are beautifully mindful of your mental state within, good things follow in your outer world. 

Make the decision to pursue a brighter future within yourself. Take the hardship that life throws at you with a polite “that’s not what I’m going for” and start making the inner shift towards what you are going for. 

Let me make something abundantly clear – this is NOT toxic positivity. In order to tend to your beautiful mental garden, you need to allow every single emotion to exist at your table; in my moments of sadness, I felt it fully and I accepted it. I allowed myself to feel sad, but I did not allow myself to get lost in it. Call it hope or call it optimism, but allowing my “low vibe” emotions a seat at my table has helped me to sit with and understand them. They are allowed to exist with me, I am not resisting. Instead, I am deciding to accept these emotions and move past them as opposed to ingraining them into me. Feel your emotions and feel them deeply, but let them pass through you, they don’t need permanent residence in your garden. 

Let me give you a real-life example: 

I had someone close to me choose to forego a 2 year friendship based on one occurrence that was outside of my personal control. My immediate reaction was to think that something was wrong with me, or that I was less-than because I wasn’t good enough to make someone stay. I felt sadness, anger, betrayal and just that dull ache that comes on when you’re sitting alone at night – the kind that just makes you go, “oh, right.” I allowed myself to feel all of these things, and let me tell you, it wasn’t linear – I had moments of elation because I realized I deserved to be treated better than that and I was better off without them in my life. I had moments where I would break down and just feel absolutely hopeless because my self worth was bruised. I had moments of pure anger in realizing that I may have wasted 2 years of my life filling someone else’s cup that had a hole in the bottom of it from the start that I didn’t see. All of these emotions had a seat at my table and I let them work their way through my heart and soul and led me to where I am today. 

Today, I accept this circumstance fully as it is. My feelings are fairly neutralized toward it because through silence, reflection, and time on my own I have concluded that my self worth is in no one’s hands but my own, and it is non-negotiable. It taught me that I tend to see the people closest to me with rose-colored glasses. Reality slapped me hard on this one and it taught me a valuable lesson that I will carry for the rest of my life: people show you who they really are through their actions. Words matter to a degree, but people always show their true colors through the things they do; from there, it’s what you choose to do with the information. I have moved through the anger, hurt, and even the elation that arose at the idea of emotional freedom – now, I just am. 

For those of you out there resonating with this, allow me to share a bite of wisdom that got me to this state.

Stop seeking closure from those who are unable to provide it and give it to yourself.

I have 24 letters I wrote that I never intended to send; I have had the conversation mentally enough times that if it were to ever actually manifest in my external world, I would still remain neutral and grounded. I found peace in my internal garden, and in this practice, I not only forgave this person fully but I also forgave myself for so many things I have been carrying. 

So, my lovely reader-friends, make the decision with me today to stop compromising your peace because of what’s happening in the external world. No one deserves the power to influence your mental state except for you; approaching life this way opens doors you couldn’t see before and brings such internal peace, I can’t even begin to describe it. 

Just one decision, and that decision is to tend to your internal garden, see the good things in life, and trust that you’re doing just fine.