A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 12 – Easy Does It

May 1, 2020

“Be Easy To Get Along With” is Day 12 in 30 More Chic Days by Fiona Ferris. Fiona writes that she wants to become “an easy-going, pleasant and positive person who travels lightly through life and enjoys a happy-go-lucky disposition.” She found that she was happier herself when she chose to see the world in an optimistic, upbeat way and to act in kind and down-to-earth ways. Even though things are often not perfect, she has found how to keep her internal setting at a positive level which allows her to enjoy her day.

We are all getting a lesson on how to be calm and easy-going this Spring! So many things are changing and completely out of our control during the CoVid-19 crisis. If we wanted to feel (and act) tense and worried, we could certainly find many things to help us “strengthen” those qualities.  But who really wants to feel tense, worried and stressed out? Those are pretty exhausting emotions and not much fun. It’s not like we look back on a day where we felt nervous and jittery and like the world as we knew it is coming to an end and say, “Wow, what a great day!”

But how do we change our internal setting from uptight & prickly to good natured and easy-going? As someone who is in the process of trying to be a “recovering overboard-Type-A”-type, this is what I am trying.

1. Get more sleep. (Everything is easier with more sleep.)
2. Accept that nothing is going to be perfect. Ever. CoVid-19 or not, this Spring would still have had issues that I would have to work through.
3. Actively look for what is going right and is positive in any situation. That’s something that we do have control over – where we choose to focus our attention. (Even if we are feeling irritated by events – and, truthfully, many events in life are irritating – we can choose to change our focus to something that feels less irritating.)

Fiona also advises us to try to be the kind of person that we would like to have more of in our lives. If we want more high-maintenance, irritable, prima donnas in our lives, we can choose to act like one. If we want to include more upbeat people in our lives, then we have to try to become more upbeat ourselves. It’s a good suggestion because we do tend to receive back the type of energy that we are putting out.

Another point that Fiona makes is that being positive-focused and easy-going is very different from being someone with no personal boundaries or a doormat. There is a large collection of literature that can give us tools to handle the inevitable rocky patches of human interaction without compromising our own ethical code and without destroying our internal sense of calm.  Fiona is presenting the idea that we can choose to be easy-going and good-natured which will lead to feeling much happier inside than if we choose to be snide, prickly perfectionists.