Question: What did you give up to get what you got?

Fear – the fear of making a mistake or being wrong.

Anger – about things over which I have no control.

Remorse – wishing I had the knowledge I have now – wanting a “do over”.

Second-guessing – not trusting my own instincts or decisions.

False security – believing lack of change was safety.

My façade – being the person I thought everyone else wanted.

Surprised?  When I initially saw the question I thought of the great sacrifices that some people make to get where they want to go and I realized that my sacrifices were giving up on myself and my happiness to stay in a place that I didn’t like.  Hanging on to things that gave me no comfort, no solace, no sense of the joy in life; I was missing out on the beauty of a life well lived.

Choosing to give up on the negative in our lives and focus on the positive sounds like such a simple concept, yet it is frightening to those of us who cling to our fears and the things that hold us back out of a false sense of security and safety.  Letting go, really flinging ourselves at happiness requires fearlessness, and a determination to give up our old selves.  Taking the risk of actively making changes is like stepping off a cliff into the vast unknown.  Yet looking at where one is presently, are you so satisfied with your life and the pleasure it brings you that it is not worth the risk of intentional change?  Or do you know when you look deeply inside that there is a better way?  To find that better way is to begin shedding the things that are holding us back, letting go of our fears and doubts and trusting that we can actively replace them with confidence and strength.  One must be brave to choose another path.  Today I will practice bravery.

“From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.”    ―      Anaïs Nin

A wise woman once said the “misery doesn’t just love company, it loves miserable company”.  How many times are we drawn into the circle of complainers at work, or become trapped hearing out the drama of a friend’s latest encounter.  It is so easy to join in, to become miserable along with the others and before we know it we have our long list of injustices and disagreeable events.  To be brought down to the level of the most miserable of the group is an easy enough occurence and takes strength and determination to stay neutral in the face of that much unhappiness.  Yet, participating does harm us and we can risk losing our ability to reframe to the positive.

As a daily goal to be happy and to apply the tools we have to find happiness, it is also wise to actively avoid unhappiness and misery.  It is not to say that one cannot offer help to a friend or loved one who is in a difficult situation, but to become caught up in a cycle of complaining about something with no interest in a solution, is to undermine our best efforts to be a happier person. When confronted with a miserable person looking for company in their misery it is important to remember that offering assistance and trying to be helpful will benefit both of you, joining in the misery benefits no one.

We make choices large and small each day and to take that brief moment to decide if the choice is one that adds to our overall happiness or subtracts from it is time well spent.

“If you cannot be the poet, be the poem.”  ~ David Carradine

Poetry is the result of painting a picture with words.  The result is not a story, but a vision shown.  To live one’s life as a poem is to use our actions to show ourselves to the world.  As my poetry instructor intoned, “show – don’t tell”.  How do we show ourselves to the outer world?  Are we painting our lives with broad strokes of color, are we crafting tightly constructed lines of rhyme?  Who are we in there?

It is not the message but the means.  A poem can be soothing, a poem can also be jarring, it can be tight metered stanzas or it can be flowing unstructured free verse.  To “be the poem” does not mean that your life must have a certain order or that you are charming or witty or thoughtful (although you may be all of those things), it simply means to paint with your actions, put yourself out there, live your vision in a full and vibrant manner.

And on a particularly joyous day perhaps you can be the song.

There is something so optimistic about the dawn of a new day.  And not just the beginning of the day as we have come to understand the expression, but the actual dawn of the day.  Even lacking a spectacular sunrise, exciting plans, or a narrative of any kind; the fact that the sun rises every morning and yet shines on a day that has yet to define itself is a time to reflect on what we want from the day.  The sun has a particular  way of starting the day; slowly, stretching itself along the horizon before peeking the rim of itself over the eastern sky.  And it wakens the world slowly as well.  The early rustling and quiet first song of the birds, gentle drips of the moisture that has been captured in the dark, signal this slow stretching into full daylight.

One cannot help but feel wonder at this event, even as it repeats itself, reliably throughout our lives.  It is almost a magical moment, the colors slowly returning with the added light, the stillness of the air, a sense of softness wrapping the earliest part of the new day.  Wonder is a special kind of happiness, and the wonder of the sunrise gives us an uplifting herald to the day ahead.

I will admit that I have varied from earlier riser by necessity, to sleeping through the sunrise to becoming an earlier riser by choice.  The calm, gentle, slow start of the early morning gives my day a tone and feel.  Jumping out of bed as the alarm goes off creates a day of always feeling rushed, slightly behind, and somewhat irritable.  Waking slowly, allowing my body to find the rhythm of the day, and starting from a center of peace and calm gives happiness a head start in my day.

This day will be unlike any other in its detail and richness.  Stop a moment to breathe in the loveliness of an early morning to appreciate the beginning of that day.  You may be surprised at the difference in your day simply having greeted the sunrise.

“Your thoughts become words, your words become actions, your actions become you.” Vlad

How often have we thought something yet said something different, only to have our actions betray our thoughts?  Making a conscious effort to think clearly and positively, to translate those thoughts into words of choice and inspiration and acting upon our words in a positive and responsible manner is a primary method in creating our own happiness.  Not just unhappy thoughts are undermining; thoughts that disparage, thoughts made without heart and understanding, can cause us to act in unhappy ways.

And interestingly enough, to take this to the next step, our actions then reinforce our thoughts and our emotions.  Being fully aware of the process back and forth between our brains where thoughts and words form to flow into our bodies creating actions, and our muscle memory that sends those actions back to the brain to reinforce the thoughts and words, allows us to create and reinforce the positive.

Quietly observing, then chosing to create a positive thought about what we have observed and acting upon that in the same way that we have chosen to think about it not only adds to our happiness, but creates a harmony throughout our system.  To become a happier, calmer and more peaceful individual we need to remind ourselves to begin with our thoughts and follow through with our actions.

There are plenty of silly, annoying and worthless bits that float around the Internet; this one I found clever.  I could not track down an author but it certainly sounds like a takeoff on an old Seinfeld routine.  I hope this causes the reader to crack a smile and to think a bit about how playing with words can be entertaining and fun.  Since it is Sunday and Creativity Day, I will leave you with this…

“I have been in many places, but I’ve never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can’t go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone. I’ve also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane. They don’t have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work. I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I’m not too much on physical activity anymore. I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I’ve been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm. Sometimes I’m in Capable, and I go there
more often as I’m getting older. One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense. It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart. At my age I need all the stimuli I can get! I may have been in Continent, but I don’t remember what country I was in. It’s an age thing.”

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”    ―      George Bernard Shaw

It is incredibly freeing to find out that the search stops now.  Once I stopped looking for myself and proactively started building my life the way I want it to look, the doors and windows of my life flew open. In the past I often described by life as a cork bobbing along in a stream traveling whichever way the whim of the current took me.  Once I decided to climb in a boat and grab the oars, my life looks and feels far different.

Most individuals need some sense of control in their lives; feeling as though one is being pushed or tugged a hundred different directions without any real choice about which way to turn, builds a sense of helplessness.  One of the reasons that a book like “The Happiness Project” and the associated web site by Gretchen Rubin are so popular, are the tools that are offered to chart direction in one’s life.  Actively thinking about what steps need to be taken to create the life one desires, opens up a new direction to carry one to the limits of their imagination.

For me the life I am creating includes charting my course, setting good boundaries, and checking in with myself daily to see how often I am making choices against how often I feel pushed in a direction I would not actively choose.  Being mindful that I do have choices I am far more likely to find that my day is filled with things that are of my creation and with that comes happiness in even the smallest of tasks.

For some, writing is the mechanism to sort one’s thoughts and bring order to them as well as to explore them beyond what simply sitting and thinking allows.  For others speaking their thoughts and using verbalization to sort and explore is a more comfortable method.  Often though, to the listener or reader, these are not unformed thoughts being explored and sorted, but conclusions by the source, fully formed.

One must be careful then I think, to allow the reader or listener to understand that it is a process rather than a conclusion, however ungracefully we may have to state it. “I’m just thinking out loud” is a common enough phrase, but “I’m just writing out loud”, is not.  To preface one’s thought explorations clearly and succinctly is a skill sorely needed by the modern commentators on newsworthy events.  To opine is to give an opinion, not to wander around within the topic searching for some sense of it on paper.  Too often one reads a piece where the author begins with an apparent stance, then comes to a completely different conclusion.  The pundits are “writing out loud”, but fail to give fair warning.

While it is tremendously helpful to sort one’s thoughts on paper, there is a purpose to editing oneself.  Unfortunately, with the rush to be the first to get one’s opinion in print, the editorial process seems to have been forgotten.  The frenetic pace of the technological world leaves little time for careful reasoned argument.  Perhaps this is one of the causes of so much upheaval and simmering anger.  Imagine one of the opinion pieces that begins with one stance and changes to another in conclusion, and the information flooded  reader only reads the opening paragraph!  With that “conclusion” the reader is off and spouting to the detriment of reasoned thinking.

Exercising care in our words, written, spoken or read requires time and patience in a world in short supply.  However, reasoned discourse may be the last salvation of the human kind, and some small effort given to that by each of us, can provide some collective hope.

~Just writing out loud 😉