Simple Tasks and a Sense of Accomplishment
Never underestimate the positivity simple tasks can create.
When it comes to goals and the things we are working to do for our lives, they tend to be large.
These are not necessarily just the uber-achievement, huge-money-making large. These are also the not-instantaneous, multiple steps required large. Like building a business, evolving a relationship, or writing and selling a novel.
When you’re pressing towards such a goal, it’s easy to get caught up in the work that goes into it. It’s also easy to feel like you’re just spinning your wheels. This can be particularly complicated, and even frustrating when the goal requires outside matters.
If you have started the food truck of your dreams, you can’t make customers magically appear to buy the food. If you have published a novel or completed a work of art, you can’t make anyone buy them. Marketing and advertising are important helpers – but don’t come with guarantees.
A sense of positivity helps to keep you focused, hopeful, and in sight of that long-term goal. Ultimately, the accomplishment of reaching that bigger goal is going to find and/or create tremendous positivity.
Yet throughout the process, you still need to feel a sense of accomplishment. That helps you build mental, emotional, and spiritual muscle to push through difficulties – much the same as weight-lifting builds physical muscle.
One way to do this is by doing and completing simple tasks to feel that sense of accomplishment.
Everyday tasks taken for granted
There are things that we do every single day that can create that sense and feeling of accomplishment and its accompanying positivity.
For example – I didn’t do the dishes after dinner last night. After taking a walk this morning, then making more coffee, I realized there weren’t that many dishes to be done. So, before setting to work on this, I soaped up the sponge and did the dishes.
The sink and stovetop clear, I looked at the less chaotic space, the dishes drying on the rack, and felt a sense of accomplishment. I did it, the dishes were done. It felt good and positive that they were now clean.
This, in turn, inspired my thought process here. This simple, mundane, seemingly unimportant but necessary task created a feeling and sense of accomplishment. That generated positivity.
There are so, so many little things of this nature which, when viewed mindfully, can generate this feeling.
Taking a walk this morning means I got exercise. Brushing my teeth makes my mouth feel clean and generates positivity towards my oral hygiene. Making the bed when you climb out of it in the morning generates order – and you feel positivity in that organization of chaos.
This is easy to take for granted and overlook. But the reality of it is that these little, mundane, daily accomplishments can have a lot more power. And that is where mindfulness comes into play.
Mindfulness of the power of simple tasks
Simple tasks of this nature tend to be done by rote and routine. Many are habits. And yet doing them automatically generates that sense of accomplishment, which in turn builds thoughts and feelings of positivity.
But to recognize that – especially as rote, routine, and habit are subconscious – you need to be mindful.
Mindfulness is conscious awareness. Rather than just doing the routine or habit subconsciously – you actively be aware of what you are doing. That’s mindfulness in practice.
The conscious mind is your inner being and your subsequent mindset/headspace/psyche self. When you are aware, looking out at the world around you, and focusing on something (anything), you’re practicing mindfulness.
Being consciously aware of the sensory input of your six senses goes into mindfulness. This is what that might look like – while doing the dishes, you feel the warm, soapy water on your hands. You smell the dish soap. As you do the dishes, you see the food particulates and grease come off the surface of what you wash. Completing the task, you hear the sound of dishes being placed in the dishwasher or drying rack.
On top of being consciously aware of that sensory input, mindfulness includes awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. This is what that might look like – your intent is to clear away the dirty dishes. The action is washing them and getting them clean. You think about using the soap and water to accomplish that. It feels good to know the work is being done.
Thus, this very simple task, easily completed, via mindfulness generates that sense of accomplishment. That, in turn, finds and or/creates positivity.
Why is this necessary?
In a world of instant gratification, constant motion, and expectations both within and without, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Meeting your own needs, and then the expectations of others on you can drain you and make you feel negative.
I know how this goes. There have been plenty of times when I got distracted by this, that, or the other thing – and started to feel bad. It’s so super easy to fall down the rabbit hole into news and information and the lives of other people. Before you know it – you’re losing hope, feeling defeated, and wondering how to fix things way, way outside your control.
The only thing over which you have control is yourself. That control is easy to lose sight of – especially as you do the rote, routine, habitual things you do on a given day. You might not even realize how this is impacting you. Except you feel exhausted, defeated, and like you are accomplishing nothing. Negativity dominates your life.
It seems like negativity is easy to find. In a world gone made – dealing with capitalism gone wild, the ongoing pandemic, false narratives – losing sight of feeling accomplished is easy.
But you have the power to change that. And when you find positivity you are acting to do so.
All large changes in the world begin small. Don’t believe me? One man, Martin Luther, nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of a church, forever change Christianity. One woman, Katherine Johnson, overcame prejudice and racism, performing exquisite math to allow the first man to orbit the Earth and return alive, empowering humanity to begin exploring the stars.
Simple tasks have tremendous power for creating positivity. Mindfulness of this opens you to even greater accomplishments, potential, and positivity.
Choosing to find and/or create positivity from simple tasks isn’t hard
It begins with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Knowing that every small sense of accomplishment and achievement feels good and generates positivity, you can make more use of simple tasks for that purpose via mindfulness. When you recognize the power of these simple tasks – and are consciously aware of them rather than performing them subconsciously – that ultimately empowers you.
When you feel empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that gets reflected and spreads to more people. This creates a feedback loop of awareness and positivity. A feedback loop we can all take part in.
Then, we build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That can be the impetus to improve numerous aspects of our lives for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of any current situation, and generate yet more positivity and gratitude.
You, me, and everybody are worthy and deserving of all the good we desire.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of pure positivity. That positivity can generate even greater positive energies – and that is always worthwhile.
This is the three-hundred and eighty-fourth entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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