 |
| Photo courtesy Iva Balk |
“…your story doesn’t have to be perfect or complete to
inspire others. After all, perfect isn’t real. We cannot connect with, or be
moved or changed by perfection.”
—Courtney Carver, Soulful Simplicity
 |
| Photo by Tj Holowaychuk on Unsplash |
Recently I read a blog post that I really liked. I liked it
so much, that I immediately wanted to use the same format to write one of my
own. It started with an epiphany, and went on give an example from the author’s
life of how she grew to understand the epiphany.
As I sat in my office rocking chair, pen and paper in hand,
I wondered, “Why can’t I think of any epiphanies and great stories like this to
share with my readers?” I mulled it over for a while, and there it was…an
epiphany about epiphanies (how many times can I write “epiphany” in one
post?!):
You can’t force epiphanies.
They come when they come. So much as I would love to have
new and brilliant epiphanies to share with you every week, I just…don’t.
Perhaps this is an indicator to me that I need some
well-filling—an artist’s date, a mini-break. Noodling time has been scarce for
me lately, and I’m feeling the effects. And after all, it is winter. Winter is
a time for introspection, staying warm, allowing some dormancy so that spring
can bring new growth. A time for gathering thoughts and seeking inspiration.
When searching for life lessons (you thought I was going to
write epiphanies, didn’t you?), all you can do is open your mind and heart to
what’s around you. Have a humble and teachable attitude. Try not to be
oblivious. And even if you do all these things, you may still come out with
nothing.
Epiphanies sold separately.
That’s OK—they’re still there, and you’ll—we’ll—find them in
due time. At least, that’s what I believe.
Have you had any epiphanies lately?
Hurray for Friday! This has been a busy and happy week for
me—how about you? Just in time for the weekend, here are a few links I’ve loved
lately:
Do you listen to podcasts? I rarely do, but would like to do
so more often. Action for Happiness has some that look good. (What are your
favorite podcasts? Suggestions welcomed.)
This post (and this one) would have been perfect last year,
when my word of the year was “deeper”. They’re still really great reads for
those of us who want to live with depth and intention. Some tidbits: “What a
discovery it is, to suddenly see the wealth buried in your own house, or even
lining its walls.”
and
“Do we need more and better possessions, relationships,
homes, hobbies, skills, and opportunities, or do we simply need turn our
efforts towards cultivating our land, rather than prospecting for more and
better places to dig?”
If you want to be happier, think like an old person! According
to this New York Times article, “When the elders described their lives,
they focused not on their declining abilities but on things that they could
still do and that they found rewarding.” The author of the article, John
Leland, wrote a book about his experiences with six New Yorkers over the age of
85. Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old
was published this week.
Stop by the Good News Network when you’re fed up with bad
(or “fake”) news. This was one of my favorite stories, and so was this one.
Some good advice in “This Is What ‘Self-Care’ Really Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths and Chocolate Cake,” including: “If you find
yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you
are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with
‘treating yourself’ and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making
choices for your long-term wellness.”
I found this article about headwinds and tailwinds
thought-provoking. As the article points out, we tend to remember the struggles
we’ve had (headwinds) more than the advantages we’ve been given (tailwinds).
How can we help provide tailwinds for more people?
I think Tank would be willing to give Prudy a ride, but I
don’t think Prudy would be as happy as this cat is:
I live in Florida, so I like winter, but I know it’s a
challenging season for many people. All the more reason to look for and savor simple
pleasures and everyday adventures that will help you through the cold, dark
days. I’ll start. Here are seven simple pleasures and everyday adventures
making me happy right now:
- Actually having a “winter”. I’ve been cold. I’ve worn sweaters and jackets and fuzzy socks and we ran the central heat! This is noteworthy in central Florida.
- A milestone wedding anniversary. My husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary last week! We’ve now been together far longer than we were alive before we got married. We’re planning a celebratory trip of some kind later in the year.
- Jigsaw puzzles. I put together a puzzle a friend gave me over the course of a week or so, and I enjoyed it so much! Bonus: this made me realize that if I set up my sketching supplies the way I set up a place to do my puzzle I might actually start sketching again.
- Reading. I always enjoy reading, but the books I’ve picked up in January have been stellar: Do Not Become Alarmed, Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, and Magpie Murders, to name three.
- Riding Tank at full strength. All his owies are gone. We’ve started jumping again. Another bonus: spending time with him without coming home drenched in sweat (see #1).
- Crazy Aunt Purl is back as crazytourist.com. CAP/Laurie Perry was one of my favorite bloggers when I first started blogging myself. She took a break from writing for a while, but she’s back and as delightful as ever.
- My Reticular Activating System (RAS). Say what?! The RAS is a part of your brain that “takes what you focus on and creates a filter for it. It then sifts through the data and presents only the pieces that are important to you,” according to Tobias van Schneider, writing on Medium.com. My RAS has been active in looking for flow—I’m seeing it everywhere, including the January 2018 Editor’s Letter in Better Homes and Gardens. (Thanks to my friend Kerri for introducing me to the RAS.)
 |
| Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash |
“Happiness is
achieved by flowing with the known and the unknown within you, being in a state
of simplified simplicity.”
—Pablo Andres
Wunderlich Padilla
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider myself brave. My
first reaction is to shrink back rather than charge forward. “I am afraid” is one of the limiting beliefs I’ve been doing battle with all my
life. And while I’ve found work-arounds for times when I need to push through
feeling fearful, I’ve never actually thought about fear in a positive way.
Until last week.
Last week I picked up a pretty and deceptively simple little
book, My Friend Fear: Finding Magic in the Unknown (2018,
TarcherPerigee), by Meera Lee Patel. Just like reading The Upside of Stress
changed my attitude towards stress, reading My Friend Fear triggered a
change in my attitude toward fear by helping me see it in a new way.
Some tidbits:
“Fear is a friend, and it’s here to support you. Like all friendships, the one you have with fear is a two-way street. It requires time, hard work, and honesty in order to become and remain healthy. It requires us to sit with it, listen to it, and try our best to understand it—even though we don’t always know how. Like any friend, fear can help you only if you let it.”
“Becoming aware of fear is the first step to befriending it. After all, how can you become friends with something you’re pretending doesn’t exist?”
“It’s okay to be afraid. All it means is that there’s something you care deeply about. It’s okay to have fears, as long as you are willing to explore them. It’s okay to hug fear closely, to poke and prod and discover what’s underneath that heavy, dark cloak.”
“Fear is here to help you uncover your greatest wish.”
As I was finishing up My Friend Fear, I picked up my copy of
Susan Jeffers’ classic Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. After a quick skim, I realized these two books worked
together to help something click in my mind. (Don’t you just love when that
happens?)
Here are my epiphanies:
- Fear will always be there when you step outside your comfort zone. All learning and growth occurs outside of your comfort zone, so unless you want to stop growing, you will always have some fear.
- The only way to get over being afraid of doing something is to do it.
- The doing comes first, then the fear fades.
- Everyone feels this way—I’m not an anomaly.
- Fear is my friend. It shows me what matters to me.
My tendency has always been to think something was wrong
with me when I felt fear, and to push it away instead of listening to it. Or
I’d become paralyzed and overwhelmed—the antithesis of flow.
After reading these two books, I’m changing my response to
fear. Instead of trying to “overcome” fear, I want to learn how to be comfortable
with it, and with being afraid. I’m no longer going to feel like I shouldn’t be afraid, or
that I should just ignore fear and push ahead. I’ll be looking on fear as the
friend who highlights the areas of my life that matter the most, the areas where
I’m stretching outside my comfort zone. 2018 is already giving me opportunities
to test this theory, with new writing projects on the horizon, the chance to
help teach a yoga and journaling workshop this weekend, and, in October, a
chance to travel to Paris with Laure Ferlita and The Blue Walk.
Do you welcome fear into your life? What would you do if fear were your friend?
Introduction by Ted Kooser: This is the sixth poem we've published by Peter Everwine, which testifies to how much I admire his writing. How fine it is when a memory arrives from the past to surprise us into happiness. Everwine lives in California, and his most recent book is Listening Long and Late from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The Day
We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog,
still young then, running ahead of us.
Few people. Gulls. A flock of pelicans
circled beyond the swells, then closed
their wings and dropped head-long
into the dazzle of light and sea. You clapped
your hands; the day grew brilliant.
Later we sat at a small table
with wine and food that tasted of the sea.
A perfect day, we said to one another,
so that even when the day ended
and the lights of houses among the hills
came on like a scattering of embers,
we watched it leave without regret.
That night, easing myself toward sleep,
I thought how blindly we stumble ahead
with such hope, a light flares briefly—Ah, Happiness!
then we turn and go on our way again.
But happiness, too, goes on its way,
and years from where we were, I lie awake
in the dark and suddenly it returns—
that day by the sea, that happiness,
though it is not the same happiness,
not the same darkness.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2016 by Peter Everwine, “The Day,” from New Letters, (Vol 83,
no. 1, 2016-17). Poem reprinted by permission of Peter Everwine and the
publisher. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The
introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not
accept unsolicited manuscripts.
One day in December I was cleaning out our pantry while
listening to Marie Forleo interview Tim Ferriss. Something Tim said struck me
as I stood in my kitchen, clutching cans of black beans and tuna:
“What would it look like if it was easy?”
I realized I’m not used to expecting things to come easily.
I’m used to expecting to work hard, to struggle, to sweat, to grind it out.
What is this concept “easy” of which you speak?!
Because even when “it” is easy, I find a way to make it
hard.
It’s my superpower.
I grasp, I cling, I obsess, I worry, I engage in
procrastination and perfectionism and many other unhelpful habits.
And you know what, I’m tired. I’m tired of struggling, of
swimming upstream, of overwhelming myself in “shoulds” and over-analyzing and
over-researching and over- everything.
I’m “over” it.
I realized, standing in my kitchen, listening to Tim and
Marie talk, that I want my life and work to flow. And just like that, my
2018 Word of the Year (WOTY) presented itself to me.
My words of the year have often appeared this way, without
my having to dig around in my subconscious. A word pops into my head or keeps
showing up in what I’m reading and seeing in a fashion impossible to ignore.
I’ll roll it around in my brain, noticing how it makes me feel. Is it a word
that can apply to multiple areas of my life? Is it a stretch, but not so far
outside my comfort zone that I’ll feel constantly intimidated by it? Does it
have layers of meaning? Do I get excited at the possibility of having it guide
me during the upcoming year? Flow fit the bill for 2018.
It’s always fun seeing the ways my WOTY pops up throughout
the year, whether it’s in art, music, or words. I’ve already stumbled on
several passages that connect to the concept of flow in my mind. Here’s one
paraphrased from the novel The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles:
“Life is like a dance partner, and if you relax and let
yourself go, you’ll find yourself waltzing.”
Doesn’t that sound lovely?
So in 2018, I plan to focus on putting aside things that
impede flow, such as fear and perfectionism. I’m going to take up habits and
practices that lead to flow, such as Morning Pages, and remembering to take a
few moments to plan out my day so that things will run more smoothly. I’m also
going to focus on not over-scheduling, because that leads to rushing, and rushing
is not flow.
Working with a Word of the Year is a gentle way to set a
tone, intention, or expectation for the coming year. It can be as simple or as
in depth as you like. In my experience, it can be a useful tool in advancing
your goals and enriching your life.
 |
| Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
“Every piece of the universe, even the tiniest snow crystal, matters somehow. I have a place in the pattern, and so do you.”
—T.A. Barron |
 |
| Photo by Carolyn V on Unsplash |
Does anyone make a New Year’s resolution anymore? There’s a
lot of talk about how resolutions are rarely kept, and how most people give up
on their goals just a few weeks or months into the year. For a person who wants
to set and achieve goals, it can be a frustrating dilemma. If resolutions
aren’t an effective way to a better and happier life, what is?
Here are seven alternatives to New Year’s resolutions that
just might help you make 2018 your happiest year ever:
Choose a Word of the Year
I’ve done this for eight years, and written about it several times on Catching Happiness. I choose my word to focus on an overall theme or feeling I want to carry through the entire year. I choose it to offset tendencies I want to correct, or to remind myself to choose happiness (“delight”). My word for 2017 was “deeper,” and going deeper into life last year added brilliant new dimensions to my experience. My word for 2018? Flow. For a free Word of the Year tool, click here. To explore the concept further, visit oneword365.com.Adopt a “Do More ______, Do Less_____” philosophy
For example, “Read more, watch TV less” or “Walk more, eat less junk food.”
Deceptively simple, but baby steps work.
Commit to a 30- or 90-day challenge
Choose a habit
you want to adopt or a small goal you want to achieve, and work on it for 30
days straight. For larger goals, make a 90-day plan, treating each week as the
equivalent of month (see The 12 Week Year for more inspiration and ideas
about how to do that.)
Make a list of simple pleasures and everyday adventures you want to experience
How often do we pack our goal lists with things we
want to change or have to work for? This is simply a list of things you look forward to in 2018.
Family vacations, books you want to read or movies you want to see in 2018, or
a loved one’s wedding/baby/grandchild belong on this list. Try breaking it down
like Laura Vanderkam does with her seasonal “fun lists”.
Write a letter to your future self
Include such
things as what you hope to accomplish, how you want to feel, what you’d like to
leave behind in the coming year. Open it on Jan. 1, 2019 to see how you did.
Start a gratitude journal, jotting down at least one thing you’re grateful for every day
(Read The Gratitude Diaries for
an inspiring look at how gratitude can make your life happier.)
Join the 7 Things x 2018 Challenge
Fill in the following blanks, and you’ve got some
goals for the year:
Learn how to ____________
Start ____________
Stop ____________
Take a vacation to ____________
Find ____________
Try ____________
Be more ____________
Growth contributes to happiness, so setting and reaching
goals is one way to feel happier. I hope 2018 holds plenty of growth and
happiness for you!
What do you have planned for 2018?
Note: Starting today, I’m changing the usual Catching Happiness posting schedule from Wednesdays and Fridays to Mondays and Fridays. Happy New Year!
 |
| Will there be carrots under the tree for me? |
Wishing you happiness, love, and peace today and every day.
I'm taking a break from posting this week. I hope you and your family enjoy the last week of 2017.
See you in the New Year!
I'm taking a break from posting this week. I hope you and your family enjoy the last week of 2017.
See you in the New Year!
“This is a book about designing your life to make it
happier.”
With a description like that, how could I resist picking up
this book?
There’s plenty of food for thought in Dan Buettner’s new
book, The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons From the World’s Happiest People
(2017, National Geographic). Buettner, the author of several best-sellers about
the “Blue Zones”—five places in the world where people live the longest,
healthiest lives—focuses this book on what makes people live happier,
not just longer. He introduces readers to some of the happiest people in the
happiest cities in the world, shares the research-based “Three P’s of
Happiness” (pleasure, purpose, and pride), and plenty of strategies and
suggestions for creating healthier and happier habits for a greater sense of
lasting well-being.
I especially liked the recognition that there are multiple factors that boost happiness. I think everyone is different in what makes them
truly happy, and it’s reassuring to think that if one area of your life isn’t
bringing satisfaction, other areas can help to make up for it.
Other takeaways:
1. We should set up our lives to make it easier to feel
happy—no willpower involved. We have finite amounts of willpower, and even
something as seemingly no-brainer as doing something to make yourself happy
shouldn’t rely on willpower:
“What does lead to greater happiness is making changes to your surroundings—to your home, workplace, community, and ultimately your nation. The more you design your home to favor good habits, the better your family will feel simply by living in it. The more friends you make at work the more you’ll look forward to getting the job done. The more your community nudges you out from behind the steering wheel and onto your feet, the better you’ll feel. The more trust you put in your government, the more secure you’ll feel. The challenge is to reshape your life so that you’re constantly being nudged into well-being.”
2. How many moments of happiness we should have to offset
negative experiences and feelings:
“Moments of joy, serenity, or inspiration can be easily quashed by worries, doubts, and demands. As a result of their urgency, negative emotions such as fear or anxiety packed a bigger punch than positive ones such as amusement or awe. So people who want to experience an upward spiral of positive experiences could start by organizing their days to include at least three ‘heartfelt’ positive feelings for every ‘heart-wrenching’ negative one. That appears to be the difference between people who are flourishing and those who aren’t, [Barbara] Fredrickson said.”
3. Seeking happiness doesn’t just benefit us—it helps
others, too. People who experience more happiness are more resilient when
setbacks occur. And happiness ripples through social circles, so that if you
become happier, you will likely help those who know and love you become happier
also.
4. Happiness boosters, if done too often, can become routine
and fail to provide the positive feelings we seek. Learn which happiness
boosters to try and how often, and keep varying them.
There are plenty of suggestions throughout the book of
practical (though not always easy) steps to take in order to boost happiness.
Towards the end, you’ll find the “Happiness Power Nine,” which includes such
things as sleeping 7.5 hours+ a night, engaging with the world by getting out
of your house and participating in a club or team, volunteering, living in a community
that supports well-being, and looking forward by setting goals and monitoring
your progress.
If you’re interested in creating a happier life—one of true
well-being, not just superficial pleasure—The Blue Zones of Happiness is
a worthwhile read.
Please share your happiness habits in the comments below!
For more information:
Take the Happiness Test to see how you rate on the Three P’s
of Happiness
The Blues Zones of Happiness website
.jpg)
