My Happy List

An exercise in happiness I hear a lot of my friends discuss recently is how to be present with nine happy things in the midst of anything you find stressful or worth complaining about. I hope to make it a habit, but in this particularly uncertain time, when my restless cacophony is clanging loudly, I thought I’d give it my first attempt. This website explains how to be present and do this exercise effectively.  

 

So what I am thankful for:

1. I am thankful for the smell of coffee in the morning.
2. I am thankful to live in a city I love with people I love, who make Austin the first place I have ever considered setting roots.
3. I am thankful my immediate family is in my life, and I get to watch my niece grow up.  
4. I am thankful that I date a cuddly man. Physical affection is his love language, and it is the most de-stressing thing ever to be around a man who is totally content to just curl up next to me and is certain he would rather be by my side than anywhere else.
5. I am thankful I have intellectually stimulating options of ways to spend my time always. I am never bored.
6. I am thankful for a cat who thinks I’m great no matter what I do and sometimes just purrs when I walk into a room for no other reason than she feels happy and safe in her environment.
7. I am thankful that I get to work outside and with horses, while still totally putting my degrees to use. I have the unicorn job.
8. I am thankful that I am spiritually enriched so easily. Slow breaths, sex, sunshine, hula hooping, horseback riding, dancing, etc all make my internal stress diminish and my sense of interconnectedness and wonder through movement replace it.
9. I am thankful to have a clean, comfortable apartment with a duck pond a couple yards away.

So my tiny little stressor of 10) time management feels a little more okay knowing how much joy there is my life. Well, it's not quite that simple, but I am going to get this list going in my brain's thought rotation. And as always, joy will win out.

Trust & Goldilocksing the Shit Out of Life

I am someone who tries to “Goldilocks the shit out of” everything. I try to get life “just right,” not too anything, applying enough analysis for each facet of my life to be perfectly balanced and in harmony with all the rest of it. It’s one of my forms of geekery. What is the emotionally healthiest way forward? I treat it like it is a puzzle, to make sure my pieces of happy align with each other. 

Look at that over-Goldilocksing bitch.

People have a simpler phrasing for what I just described. I over-analyze. Yep, that’s also accurate.

The closest we can get to Goldilocksing the shit of life is to:

1) acknowledge we will fail at it frequently,

2) accept a certain level of failure gracefully,

3) continue the dialogue about how to better next time after failure,

4) return to shared values again, and

5) do the hard work of re-building trust.

This is my favorite quote about how to do this little dance right now: "I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life. I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou <----That, from the same author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Wow.

I will concede that complaining beyond a certain point is unproductive. However,

·         as long as the immediate solution is fuzzy at best,

·         as long as evidence that the situation will get better is lacking (and evidence gathering often just takes time), and

·         as long as there is no prevention strategy for the future,

communication is still productive and necessary.

Halting the trust building process is the fastest way to lose folks by making them run somewhere they can more easily trust. As a former chronic bolter with trust issues, I know. I so appreciate those rare gems in the world, trying to mindful and vocal about solutions. It’s how we at least attempt to Goldilocks the shit out of life again, when we acknowledge “yes, this porridge is too hot or too cold,” and then start the work of finding solutions, returning to shared valued, and re-building.

Weeding out Complication

Sometimes happiness keeps it simple. It is simply *not* one clear thing/person/aspect of your life. No matter how hard you try to make the *not* thing a part of your happiness, how much you try to make it fit into your life, it seems extremely difficult to find a healthy and good place for it in your world. Maybe you should accept the subtle hints telling you this is *not* it.

It’s okay that no amount of flexibility or hard work can make it switch from *not* to *yes, please*. In its void, things can blossom anew. That’s how weeding works, right?

Today, I signed up for a dance gym and violin lessons. Over the course of the last month, I signed up for a book club and online yoga. I am going back to school in a week. I am making more time for friends. I am writing so many grant proposals at work. These are all new things in my garden of happiness.

So, new things, bloom in the void please, okay? I am trying to take the hints. Don’t just stay empty over there. I crave life and energy in that space. 

On the Heels of a Tragic Day, Pieces of Happy: Learning and Creating

Today, learning is helping me have some peace of mind on a horrifically chaotic and tragic day. How can an elementary school shooting happen? I don’t know. The Onion http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-nation-reports,30743/ actually made me cry today with how completely it summed up my feelings.

Oddly enough, yesterday I concluded that I needed to research violent tendencies in male youth, to implement some new approaches with clients at work. We don’t know a lot about the Connecticut school shooter yet, so I am not going to assume all the research I did tonight could pertain to him. But I felt reassured at the wealth of information out there and early prevention strategies available. I wish we would shift as a country towards mental health intervention at the slightest sign of maladaptive tendencies in a person and towards prevention through cultivating coping skills and providing resources.

I don’t understand the stigma around care for mental health. We have all had maladaptive tendencies at some point, just like we’ve all had the flu or chicken pox. Sometimes we all need a doctor, acupuncturist, curandera, or specialist to cure our physical ailments. Sometimes we all need a therapeutic intervention which suits our personality to cure our mental ailments. We’re people. We fluctuate. We’re not always okay physically or mentally. One of my friends says, “We all have our crazy.”

The school shooting today made me antsy with desire to do something…anything. Small as it might be, I feel more inspired to continue seeking, researching, and over time, creating more interventions for at-risk youth. More prevention efforts must be devoted to violence and aggression. Unchecked, their reach can be even more exponential and devastating than a highly contagious physical illness, as today has demonstrated.

I say all this because I know a lot of people want to do something in the wake of this tragedy. Dissonant as we are, maybe a collective piece of our happy is creating a kinder world, however each of us see that. Instead of getting unproductively angry, we can all channel our energy into positive solutions we are passionate about, to prevent future tragedies.

The Restless Cacophony and Our Pieces of Happy

Restless cacophony, you say? Is that just a failed attempt at poetic phrasing, or does it have a point? I have an attempt at a point. I think we are universally cacophonous together, and we move hastily in different directions, culturally clashing and creating an appearance of constant restlessness.  

So really, this restless cacophony is how I think aliens view us from space: individuals without many common goals, buzzing about, creating a hive of busy noise and clamor to achieve something in this world.

Synonyms of cacophony: discordant, dissonant, harsh-sounding, inharmonious.

The dissonance is so beautiful, right? We are all so different. We live in such a culturally rich world. It’s complex and intricate and multi-faceted. Just when we think we are getting the hang of it, we learn another layer. But all creatures and life and nature are connected too.

What I’m saying is this: I would argue that this cacophony has a melody, a cohesion that makes sense, even if it is hard to find. Most of these whirring individuals, creatures, and elements spin in an attempt to survive and thrive. And most people desire happiness, to make the surviving and thriving more enjoyable.

Is there a way to create universal happiness? Well, no. But there is a way to celebrate the happiness in others while pursuing one’s own. Jack Kornfield calls it spacious clarity. “In spaciousness and clarity, we can understand that every one of us participates in the loss and suffering of life, as well as its marvels and beauty. This awakens our compassion instead of judgment and denial.”

So this blog is going to be an exploration of that spacious clarity, that hidden melody, those pieces of happy that comprise our cacophonous world, with all its beautiful intricacy and dissonance. Enjoy!