How was your day?

How was your day?  Was it a good day?  A bad day?  A just ok, blah, day?  How do you know?

Really... how do you know?

What are you looking at within yourself to help define what type of a day you had?  I get it, we often answer without giving a lot of thought to how the day was and that can lead us to lumping together the whole of the day into simple terms - good, fine, bad, hard, ok, etc.

But you are so much more complex than that and so are your days.  There are certainly good moments - perhaps when you got a strong grade on a test and bad moments - like when you spilled food on your pants at lunch.  And yes, some days it feels like everything is going right and your hard work is completely paying off or days when it seems as if nothing you do is good enough and it all just snowballs into a major mess.

The reality is though, I'd love to have you start really paying attention to yourself and noting how you are feeling and how you know that you are feeling that way.  If you are anxious, how do you know that?  Do you get a fluttering in your stomach, tension in your arms, shaking in your legs?  It is the same concept of paying attention to the signals your body sends to you when you are hungry.  You know that you are hungry, but how do you know that?  As the commercials for Snicker's candy bars point out - sometimes we don't realize it and we just get grumpy and mean when we are hungry which is absolutely possible.  That is just another reason why it is important to know and recognize the signs that our body gives us to let us know that we are feeling some way - hungry, tired, angry, sad, happy, anxious, or excited.

If you can start identifying how you feel, then you can identify the why behind it and decide if you want to make choices to build upon those feelings or to make changes to shift away from them.

Additionally, I hope that if you are asked about your day by your parents or teachers or friends or me that you will actually pause for a moment and evaluate your whole day and not just the feeling or sensation that you are experiencing in that moment (although that feeling is valid and important).  There are two key questions I try to keep in mind when planning and reflecting on my days and perhaps they will help you as well...

1. What good do I plan to do today?
2. What good did I accomplish today?

I know that as teenagers sometimes it feels like everything is happening to you, but you have so much power and so much of an ability to make a positive impact and I hope that you harness that power to be intentional about doing good and taking pride as you look back on the good which you accomplished during the day.  The kindness you show others may have taken just a moment, but you may never fully know the impact that it had on someone else's life.

Speaking for myself, I don't know that I am always great about accomplishing as much good as I hope and plan for each day, but I can promise you the desire and drive to continue trying helps motivate me for each new day ahead.