The tug of the tides, the cozy feeling from a log fire on a cold night, the restful sound of a burbling creek, the adrenalin rush of a mighty river roar; we humans have a deep connection to the natural world if we allow ourselves the quiet moments to connect on a very basic level.  Certainly many of us enjoy some or all of those things from time to time, but are we not also doing something else at the same time, taking a photo of the spectacular waterfall, watching television in front of the fire, chatting on the phone as we walk along the beach?

Taking the time to be fully present within the natural world requires a slowing down of the senses, to breathe more slowly and deeply, to shut off the urge to capture or comment.  Turning up the volume on our hearing to catch the nuances of the wildlife skittering out of sight, noticing the salty damp on our skin, touching the reeds and rocks of the stream at our feet, we tune in to the world with our full presence.

Why does this matter?  At some level in the very core of our being Mother Nature’s umbilical cord ties us to this rock sailing around the sun.  To dismiss that, to ignore the truth in that, is to deny an essential, elemental part of our being.  Celebrating our spiritual selves allows us to soar into the heavens, celebrating our natural selves allows us to feel the connection that is our bodily, earthly personae.  Being firmly rooted to the earth creates a sense of belonging, awareness of our role as one of the many intertwined elements of this place.  And from that, a sense of contentment, a key to our ongoing happiness, that extends and spreads so far beyond the highs and rush of elation.

Today, we can give  ourselves the gift of contentment through connection to the natural world.

When one embarks on a new venture it is often with high hopes, energy and enthusiasm.  As times passes the inevitable details of life impinge on the excitement felt at the outset.  It is during this critical time that one can throw up their hands in despair and give up, plod along without the joy and exhilaration of the beginning, or we can choose to find add-ons to refill the pitcher for renewed energy and devotion to the project.

It is easy to forget that the initial high comes from the creative spark and the novelty of the chosen task.  Once that has worn off we are left to the mundane.  Adding a twist to the task can add back in the novelty.  There are a myriad of ways to reignite the creative spark. Pursuing an unrelated creative project can often stir up further ideas for the project that has grown stale.  Looking at how others have completed related projects can inspire new energy to your own.

And let’s not forget exercise.  It releases the chemicals that allow us to return to that state of elation, yet gives us the quiet mental time to allow one’s subconscious to work on the creative task at hand.  Even a long walk, while seemingly putting the project out of mind for a time, can lead to further inspiration.  Being fully present in our surroundings can often lay the groundwork for a creative ah-ha moment.

Sitting with the pleasure of the ongoing creative process can give one the opportunity to discover what might be missing to fulfill  the vision and bring new energy forth.  Continually refilling and refueling the creative drive can bring a continuing stream of joy.

“When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself.”    — Plutarch

 How often do we ask a question just to express our own opinion on the subject rather than asking out of a sincere desire to know the other’s perspective?  Active listening, the process of restating the words of the original speaker actually does more than acknowledge the other’s words, it causes the listener to pay close attention in order to capture the essence of what is heard.  In our world of massive input, being bombarded on all sensory levels much of the time, the tendency to feel that our attention needs to be divided is a common one.  But to really hear another, not just the words, but the emotions behind them, takes a focused listening technique.  It is possible, wordlessly, to communicate to another their value, strictly through the attention given the speaker.

Often we can create unhappiness in our lives simply misunderstanding what has been said.  When one seeks to clear the pathways of communication, it is far easier to clarify as the conversation goes on with statements, such as “I am hearing you say…”, “if I understand you correctly…”.  The trick is that both parties must be willing to participate in this type of exchange.  If the listener mishears, the speaker must be able to restate without becoming defensive, and both parties must be infinitely patient in covering the same ground, in order to have the clearest sense of the intent of the speaker.

When a matter is urgent, rather than a general conversation asking another’s opinion on the local sports team, the request is often stated as “we need to talk”.  Perhaps it should be, “I need to listen”.  Hearing, really hearing with one’s heart as well as one’s ears is a gift to the other of respect, time and patience.  I would like to propose to change the old expression “I’m all ears” to “I’m all heart”.

Today I will actively listen with my heart.

I read somewhere that the native languages of Alaska and the far north have hundreds of words for snow.  That may not actually be the case, but it is understandable.  It seems there are so many variations of that white stuff that falls from the sky.  This morning I awoke to fairyland snow, the kind that sticks to each individual leaf, twig and seed, each pine needle in its own jacket of crystals.  It is magical and surely has a word in some language.  I’ve learned about graupel snow, pellets that look like tiny styrofoam balls; dry snow, wet snow, fat flakes and more.  And each may have a unique single word that  describes it.

Searching for that perfect word can become the bane of the productive writer.  In the technique of show it, don’t tell it, it can seem especially important to choose just the right word combination.  The trick is not allowing that search to freeze one in place.  The blank spot can be daunting, my system to overcome lingering too long over a single word or phrase is (the right word goes here) and move on.  It can end up looking funny at first, but  leaving the stuck spot to move on can sometimes jar loose the word that was so elusive.

Maybe that is life lesson that needs to be learned as well.  Leaving the stuck spot to move on, with a place marker if you must, but to move on with life.  The resolution to the stuck spot isn’t always at our fingertips, and paddling further downstream the resolution may surface.  Sometimes though, we never have to return to the spot in question, it fades off so far behind us that we stop looking back and decide that the only resolution required was moving forward.  And sometimes there really isn’t the perfect word or perfect choice or perfect solution.  Sometimes we cobble together something that looks close to what we were hoping for and call it good enough.  With luck a sharp editor or friend can fill in the blank someday.  It may remain a band-aid over a wound or a dropped stitch in the sweater, and that is the best to hope for.  The trick is to keep moving forward and not give in to the temptation to rehash and rewrite when no improvement is forthcoming.

Onward!

Today I set up and started wearing a Fitbit, a great little, and I do mean little, wireless tracker that keeps track of steps, stairs, distance walked, sleep patterns and more.  It fits in nicely with my goal of being more present in the here and now, paying attention to what I am doing at the moment, not what I did yesterday or what I plan to do tomorrow.  One of the best parts is that I know this time of year I am more sedentary and this will increase my mindfulness of how much movement is actually happening as I go about my daily activities.

Paying attention to what is going on has always been a huge challenge as in the past I have been driven from the outside in – a reactor and not an initiator. But I find that being reactive is detrimental to the creative process.  Some wonderful things have come out as a result of an external stimulus but the best creative work remains hidden if one cannot take the initiative in the creative process.  Even choosing one’s external inspirations is a step forward.  The books I surround myself with, the activities I choose to help reveal the creative impulses, are within my control, come from within to impact and inspire the internal muse.

The more often I stay in the present moment, the more the floodgates of the words and stories have opened.  Sticking with the mind-body connection, paying attention to my movements, paying even greater attention to the postures and breathing that allow me to fully relax and release, are directly connected to the internal wordsmith.  As I look about me I see how the changes I have created in my physical world are mirroring my internal world rather than the reverse.  Each little piece of the puzzle is another slice of happiness I can add to the growing collection of joy I am continuing to find in the present.

No I don’t mean avoidance through hiding our mistakes from ourselves!  We often make excuses for a behavior or absence of one, yet the guilt persists in spite of the excuses we create for ourselves. I avoided a personal guilt trip by finally getting down to my automatic writing exercise in the late afternoon.  My time was frequently interrupted and it would have been so easy to tell myself that I will “do it tomorrow”, when in fact that rarely happens.  The funny thing about that type of writing is that one starts at point A and meanders all over the alphabet, not landing on B or Z, necessarily, just lifting fingers from the keyboard when the timer goes off.  And when the timer went off I wanted to keep writing.  I have an idea that I am going to adopt next month, so it will be a secret for now.  But part of the automatic writing helped jumpstart the process.

If I hadn’t forced myself to start, I would be sitting here this morning feeling awful about making excuses not to write.  And in the end, isn’t happiness sometimes the absence of unhappiness?  The feeling of lightness when we are not burdened with  self-doubt, freed of the internal tongue lashing to which most of us are prone can give a sense of happiness too.  One of the suggestions in Gretchen Rubin’s book “The Happiness Project” is a list of nagging items.  Those are the items that we put off for whatever reason, but they stay with us through guilt and self recrimination.  Getting those nagging items into a list, daunting in itself for some, and then resolving to complete and thus cross off each item within a specific time frame is not just an organizational and management tool, but a way to lift the burden.  Before I cross the last item off my list, I want to create the habit of never needing a list like that again.  If the item has any of the earmarks of a nagging burdensome task,  I will instead drop everything and do it NOW!  I can dimly imagine what the freedom from procrastination might feel like, but I do know what a lifetime of putting off anything I wish I didn’t have to do feels like, and the opposite of that must feel wonderful.  There are so many doorways to happiness, surely closing the door on guilt is one of them.

The challenge in writing daily is that not every day one feels inspired.  I had an English teacher in high school who told me when I failed to turn in an assignment, “You cannot wait to be sitting in the middle of a field of flowers on a beautiful sunny day and be inspired to write.  Writers write every day, in every season, in every mood, whether the muse calls them on not.  Just write SOMETHING!”  Or as Gretchen Rubin’s “Secrets of Adulthood” says so well, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Striving for perfection can become so paralyzing as we approach almost any task, and that in turn becomes procrastination as we further slide away from trying. The push we have to give ourselves is to start the task even if it is not moving along in the direction of our ideal.  Sometimes, just forcing ourselves to keep on a task that is going nowhere is a success in itself.  Not that we don’t want to do our best, but as I used to tell my kids, you cannot do better than your very best, not possible.  So if your very best is somewhat flawed, ta da! proof that you are human. To wake up and say “I will do my very best today” is far different from saying, “today I will be perfect” – good grief, just pull the covers over you head and give up now!

So just for today I will continue to write without a hint of inspiration, getting words on paper (or this friendly little screen of mine), will be an achievement.  I think I will try the automatic writing exercise, where I set a timer and start tying anything that comes in my head and stop when the time is up.  No corrections for spelling or punctuation, simply spilling words on to the page.  Once I drop into the automatic mode, occasionally a gem will fall out; something I can pick up and build from later.  But even without any treasure, writing like that can reopen the channels in the brain where the inspiration lives and the words may come more easily tomorrow.

“The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted.” — Arnold Bennett  (shared by Gretchen Rubin & The Happiness Project)

Often in our striving, loud, pushing, over-achieving society when we are flooded with information spilling from devices that demand attention and energy, and if we let them, become the connector that allows us to set aside the fear that something is going on that we may not know about, that someone has taken a half-step ahead; we forget.

We forget to stop and note the simple pleasures of our small daily routines, the smell of coffee brewing in the morning, traveling the same route and perhaps seeing the same people on our way to our daily destinations.  The comfort of shopping in the store where one knows the location of all the usual items, the confidence that comes from knowing what to expect when you arrive at your desk.

Instead we lose sight of the comfort of the routine and focus all of our energy on the items that are not; the milk that has gone sour, the bus that is late, the rude clerk.  Yet when we savor the simple pleasures, we give ourselves the gentle frame of mind that allows us to be more forgiving of the unexpected.  Cherishing the small habits that make up the routine of our day wraps a blanket of serenity and security around our day.

It is easy to dismiss an action that has generated trite adages like “stop and smell the roses”, yet those phrases are most often born of a truism that is difficult to deny.  Pausing, observing, absorbing and appreciating the small nuances of our daily routines, brings in to focus the largest part of our lives and allows us to delight in even our smallest actions.