This is NOT the Sweet Life

Sweet Friends –

I have to apologize. I’ve recently realized I made a huge mistake.

This is NOT the SWEETLIFE ~

This is NOT the SWEETLIFE.

For years I thought it was. I told others it was. With a great team, we built a business saying it was. We gave out postcards and stickers and framed posters of it for the office wall.

And now I sit here with this crazy realization how mistaken I was.

In a clever twist, it took some seriously SOUR life for me to realize what a SWEETLIFE is. At first it seemed sad but it’s really not at all. It’s quite delicious actually.

Without a doubt, the images above were really SWEET moments in LIFE. We all have really SWEET moments in LIFE. They are golden. They are the fuel to our life fire. They light up Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest like nobody’s business. Capturing, honoring, celebrating, and sometimes sharing these SWEET moments in LIFE is critical.

But still, SWEET moments in LIFE do not mean we are living a SWEETLIFE. A SWEETLIFE cannot be curated through a series of shiny images.

Living a SWEETLIFE is a mindset. A chosen, practiced, and heavily nurtured mindset.

Oh wow, now we’re going deep. Buckle up.

Every moment in life, we get to choose how we will respond. Every. Single. Moment. We choose. I choose. You choose. We choose the words we use with others and perhaps most importantly, we choose the words we use with ourselves.

The choosing — that’s where the sweetness lives. The moments that happen don’t define us but choosing our mindset before, during, and after does.

So when life is all mountain tops and blue skies and accomplishment, we throw our hands up and soak in Mother Nature’s high-five for our awesomeness. Those SWEET moments in LIFE make it really easy to choose a SWEETLIFE mindset.

But what about when life gets SOUR? Like really, way expired carton of milk SOUR.

It was gulping some seriously SOUR moments in LIFE that got me chewing on all of this. It became crystal clear that I had to decide if experiencing SOUR moments in LIFE meant I was living a SOURLIFE.

It was suddenly that straight forward. I could gag and choke and get all whoa-is-me about my stinky SOURLIFE or I could freaking plug my nose, wash down the clumps, and go buy some new damn milk. (Option A was really tempting sometimes.)

Choosing to go buy the new milk, that is the SWEETLIFE. Choosing to seek out SWEET moments in LIFE as they sit ready and waiting all around us all the time, that is the SWEETLIFE. Choosing to celebrate others’ SWEET moments in LIFE with genuine love and happiness, that is the SWEETLIFE.

And here’s a very cool part. The SWEETLIFE is incredibly personal to each of us. It’s my SWEETLIFE, my mindset, my choice to make over and over again. I guide it. I honor it. I nurture it. There’s no way anyone else can SOUR up my LIFE if I keep fighting* to hone and protect my SWEETLIFE. *And in my experience it does require a serious fight because sometimes SOUR moments bring their A-game.

Inevitably life is going to serve us sweet and sour moments. Being grateful for all the SWEET ones is important for sure but learning to be truly grateful for the SOUR ones is too. Those little (& big) suckers offer our SWEETLIFE mindset the chance to shine the most.

There will be more to come on what this shift to my SWEETLIFE mindset may mean in terms of Sweetlife Adventures but for now its pure joy to say there’s definitely more sweetness to be explored. Thank goodness because Sourlife Adventures just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Sweetly,
Kristi

ps– This year’s holiday cards had a bit of SOURLIFE flare. Glad we didn’t send them out. SOUR eggnog is a total buzzkill.

pps — Happy New Year.

This year’s (unsent) holiday cards. Big stack of them still sitting sourly in the desk drawer.