Life changes...

This week's prompts for Mama Kat's writer's workshop were quite intriguing.  I thought about a few of them.  In fact, I've started a life list, but I'm not up to 100 things yet.  I think part of my problem is that I think of the 100 things as events rather than what could be a simple, happy moment.  I think that pretty much sums up my psyche at the moment.

Prompt:  1.) What would you change about your life if you could?

This is both a really hard and really easy question for me.  Immediately, the answer that springs into my head be healthy and lose weight.  It's something I'm working on, it's something I've worked on for years with yo-yo success, but was really driven home into me after my mother passed away last year.  She died so unexpectedly and it reminded me of how short life really is.  it's a cliche for a reason - we don't know how much time we get and why spend it miserable?

However, on my weight loss journey over the past year, the one thing I've finally realized, even on those horrible, bad days (of which there have been plenty) is that if I don't deal with other things in my life, the other reasons I'm so unhappy, losing weight loss won't change things.  It leads me to think that what I most need to change about my life right now, aside from the always hope of winning the lottery and running off to Bora Bora, is how I view myself.  I think simply changing that would change my life in so many wonderful ways.  And yet, it's probably the hardest challenge I have ever undertaken.  I didn't grow up in a house where I was supposed to be positive about myself.  I didn't grow up around people who made me feel positive about myself.  And once I was an adult, I never did anything to change that way of thinking and living. 

It's something I'm working on, one of those two-steps-forward-eight-steps-back sort of things, but I know that it can be accomplished.  Maybe it's because, at my core, I'm an eternal optimist.