What can I complain about?

Yesterday I was really grumpy and tired the whole day. I went to bed late the night before, woke up tired and had the most tiring and inefficient day for ages. I made a spontaneous appointment to go for lunch with a friend and thought this would save my day. My lunch break was really nice but after that I was even more tired. On the way back to work I accidentally found a chocolate store and bought some “healthy” chocolate. After eating two bars of it I started feeling quite sick. At least there were only a few hours of work left, so I endured somehow. After work I went to my singing class. I started singing last summer and I absolutely love it. No matter how I feel beforehand during singing class I always feel like a great artist. I was still tired though but at least less grumpy and even went to my kung fu training afterwards which was also great. I’ve been doing kung fu for more than 8 years now and no matter how many trainings I miss, whenever I go back it feels like family. The way we train, the inappropriate jokes we make, everything is so familiar and has become one of the few real constants in my life. In the end I fell into sleep quite happy and exhausted. During my singing class I suddenly felt a paradigm shift in my head. I thought about how gifted I am to take singing classes and follow my new passion, how happy I am to have found such a great singing teacher and how much I enjoy it. I’m very happy when I experience moments like these as they change my mood immediately. There is some magic about these moments when you stop for a second and realize how gifted you are. Of course things can be better, jobs can be more interesting, more money can be earnt, friendships can be closer, relationships can be better, legs can be thinner and eyebrows can be more symmetric (I hate eyebrows!) but do we really always have to strive for more? Isn’t it tiring? Why can’t we just be happy about where we are now? I’ve been thinking about this whole topic of gratefulness for a long time now and turning 30 last month also helped with this topic. I love being 30. It’s such a nice and complete number. 27, 28, 29 … they seem like they wanna reach something but 30 is whole and complete. Of course this is just something I made up in my head but I like to think about it this way. Many people (especially women) feel bad about turning 30, it’s just a number nothing more. I think as long as you make sure to live a great life that you’re happy to look back at there is nothing bad about turning older. It just means that the great moments add up. Reading this many people will think “but I still haven’t reached this and I still want that”. Calm down! It will come! And if not you will survive too. There is nothing you really need, it’s all made up in your own head. If you’re not happy now you’re happiness will also not last when you have reached your goals. Happiness comes from within, you already know that but do you really live it? Of course this is all easily said, on some days this is in fact my reality. On other days I’m grumpy and complain about everything. That’s okay! Everything is fine the way it is. The moment you relieve all the stress and pressure you’re putting on yourself and take a deep breath, that is the moment you can actually really start to live the life you want.