“Everything is always working out for me.” That’s a soundtrack I picked up from Jon Acuff’s book “Soundtracks” (if you haven’t read it yet, put it at the top of your “to read” list!). When I first heard it, I knew it would become a phrase I would tell myself all the time.
I’ve been on a gratitude journey for the last few years. It started in earnest when my bestie bought me a Rachel Hollis journal and I actually finally got around to using it. One of my favorite things about it is there is a place each day for you to write five things you are grateful for from the past 24 hours. And her instruction is to focus on the little things.
Focusing on gratitude helps reprogram our brains to look for the good in things. It wakes us up to the little moments that are so worth being grateful for. It literally rewires our brains. Neuroplasticity of the brain is an incredible thing. It’s one of the topics I have become a little hyper fixated on, and the reason that I start my day with mindfulness meditation each morning… more on that in another post though.
I love “everything is always working out for me” because it has a bit of humor and swagger built into it. It makes me laugh at myself and also stand a little taller at the same time. And it works perfectly for times when I could choose to whine and complain but instead choose to find gratitude.
It’s what I kept telling myself when I completed my first half Ironman… in the rain. I could have chosen to feel sorry for myself that it was pouring rain on race day, but instead I thought “Everything is always working out for me. I mean who gets to say they did their first half Ironman in the rain?? That is definitely extra bragging rights.” Plus, my goal was to survive the training and set a low bar to measure my improvement against (I’m going for “most improved triathlete” this year, ha).
So I literally kept telling myself “everything is always working out for me” for 56 miles of biking in the rain, and then 13.1 miles of running in wet shoes (the rain had mostly stopped by then). Also, I didn’t get a flat tire on my race, which is a plus since I never learned to change one before the race. Everything is always working out for me! Side note, for some reason the U2 song Beautiful Day was playing on repeat in my head all through my rainy race day, which had me cracking up.
I’m finally back in Rwanda for the first time in three years. The trip here was mostly uneventful because everything is always working out for me. I mean a couple minor bumps… I didn’t realize I needed a negative Covid test in order to board the plane until I got to the airport (my ADHD means me and details are not the best of friends), but I was able to get one done at a drive through testing site and make it back to check in with two minutes to spare before the cutoff, because everything is always working out for me. I didn’t need to use Imodium until my third layover in Ethiopia, and it started working before I got on the plane for the last leg of the trip, because everything is always working out for me.
It makes me chuckle. And it makes me grateful. I love it. Everything is always working out for me.