Category: Sunday Letters

“Climbing up the mountain,” the man said, “you can count the number of water heaters that you see in the debris. That gives you an idea of how many people upstream have lost their houses.”

*              *              *

From behind the house a thundering sound crashes down the mountain. You run to the balcony to see an avalanche of mud and trees and doors and roofs and lumber roaring down the creek not 100’ below your house. Torrents of rain have transformed your yard into a lake, and it’s rising.

“Mommy! Mommy!” your 7-year-old screams, running to you and wrapping her arms around your legs. You see the neighbor’s truck from up the hill tumble by in the mud cascade.

The house is shaking as if it’s in an earthquake. You wrap your arms around your daughter and lead her to the fireplace, thinking maybe it will stand and support this part of the house.

“Stay here,” you tell her as the power fails. The house is dark and the only sound is the roar of turbulent mud washing away the world. You rush to get your cell phone and a blanket from the couch and snuggle next to your daughter, wrapping the blanket tight around both of you. You try to call 911 but there’s no signal.

*              *              *

I’ve watched dozens, maybe hundreds of videos in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, trying to get a clear picture of the extent of its impact and to learn how on earth people were coping with the unimaginable situation they faced.

Members of my own family were in Milton’s path. Thankfully, they are all okay and escaped irreparable damage. But I felt the sting of apprehension as the storm neared them, sending tornadoes across their city.

I’ve been heartened by the preparations and responses I’ve seen in Florida. While the destruction they face is impossible to assess yet and rebuilding with be a monumental effort, an organized response is in place.

The situation in western North Carolina is another story. The region is inland, not subject to hurricanes. The residents had no reason to expect what was about to befall them could ever happen.

The scene I described at the start was lived out by countless mountain families. And for many days, they were without help, stranded, with no power, no plumbing or running water, no cell phones, no internet, no radio, no transportation and a landscape torn to shreds and heaped with debris.

Some may still be waiting for rescue. Rivers now flow twenty feet from where they were before and are clogged with debris. Roads and bridges are washed out. Whole little towns have vanished.

The situation is different in North Carolina than it is in Florida. With no experience to draw from. the response is more haphazard and spontaneous. The locals have banded together and are working out what needs to be done and how they can do it. The obstacles are enormous.

To complicate matters, cold weather is setting in, and families have lost literally everything but the clothes on their backs. It’s been below freezing at night already.

Donations are pouring in. Local folks are organizing them, mostly setting up centers in churches, and they’re working on ways to get the supplies to those who so desperately need them.

On November 2 a large number of churches will be taking a second load of supplies up the mountains with a team of pack mules. The man describing the effort paints a clear and chilling overview of the situation and its challenges in his YouTube video, “Western NC update. OPERATION MOUNTAIN RELIEF” (He’s the man who made the statement about the water heaters in the debris.)

If you click “more” in the description below the video, he gives information about how you can donate and what is needed. Take the time to watch it. He plainly explains what’s real for the people there.

It’s not too late to organize a little collection effort of your own and get a donation into his hands. And it’s never too late to enclose both those who suffer and those who help in your prayers,

Congressman Chuck Edwards, Representative from North Carolina’s 11^th District, also has a web page listing places that are accepting donations and listing what items are most needed. It lists the phones you can call to see what their current needs are and how to get contributions to them, however small.

Events are moving fast in our world. It’s easy to lose sight of events that happened two days ago, let alone a couple weeks before.

But sometimes events cry out for our continued attention. Give some of your attention to the people who need help, those in the North Carolina mountains and to those around you. After all, as James Crew’s poem “Neighbors” says, “Kindness is what keeps us alive.”

May you have a blessed week.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Jack Drafahl from Pixabay}

How can we keep our balance and our sanity when the world seems insane? 

I’ve been asking myself that question all week as I watched the news about the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene.

Then, as I sat down to gather the thoughts I want to share with you, I learned that a second storm is heading for Florida and is predicted to reach hurricane level before reaching landfall mid week.

And that’s not the only news coming across the airwaves. I’m hearing of intense missile attacks on Israel as I write.

We live in perilous times.

In the face of all that we’re confronting, I want to share two pieces of practical advice that I hope will be of value to you.

Facing Emergencies

The first is about what to do when you’re personally confronting an emergency. I read it in a book on self-hypnosis I borrowed from the library when I was a kid.

“Memorize this,” the book said. “Repeat it over and over whenever you can. Then it will be there for you when you need it.”

I did what it said, and I can truly say that it probably saved my life more than once. It’s a little chant that goes like this:

Relax.

Think Fast.

Do What is Necessary.

Please commit those simple words to memory. And practice releasing tension from all your muscles as you do. See what it feels like to be relaxed and totally aware of your surroundings at the same time.

(As a bonus, I’ll add a bit of counsel from Fred Rogers. “Whenever you’re in trouble,” he said. “Always look for the helpers.” That’s one worth tucking in your pocket, too.)

Dealing with Catastrophe

The second offering I have for you is about how to get through life when the world seems to be collapsing all around us.

Back when the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, one of the pioneers in the field of positive psychology took a look at how her students had fared during the crisis.

She found that they fared well. They had learned that it was healthy to be honest with themselves about their feelings and they paid attention to their sorrow, and shock, and grief.

But they also payed attention to the acts of courage, and heroism, and kindness that they saw and gave emphasis to them in their recall of the events. 

They looked to their personal strengths and found ways to use them to help themselves and others deal with the trauma.

Resiliency is founded in paying attention to the needs of those around us and to giving comfort and help where we can.  

The key is to lean into the wind of misfortune and let it awaken us to our shared humanity, to offer assistance where we can, to lend our strength to the weak, and to dare to believe in our strength and resilience. Because they’re real, you know. Humans find ways to rise to the challenges before them.

I stumbled on a quote this week that said, “It is what it is . . . but it will become what you make of it.”

Whatever situation you’re facing, whether it’s painful empathy for the misfortunes of others or for misfortune of your own, you can use the situation to find and express the highest and best in yourself. And remember, the highest and best is always rooted in love—for yourself, for your fellow beings, for the gift of life itself in all its pain and all its glory.

May you be safe and well.

From my heart,
Susan

^{Image by Edyta Stawiarska from Pixabay}

It was a beautiful week here in western Pennsylvania. September quickly brought summer to an end and is ushering in what promises to be a colorful autumn.

The goldenrod is glowing in the fields, and the leaves are beginning to fall. They crunch beneath your feet as you walk down a sidewalk or, if you’re lucky, down a woodland path.

The beauty was a comfort to me as day after day brought difficult news both from up close and afar. As one friend wrote, describing a devastating setback, “When a dream breaks, it hurts.”

Yes. It does. Life holds frightening, disappointing and painful times for us all. Sometimes it hurts almost more than we can bear.

The only healing salve I ever found for that kind of pain is kindness.

I learned that from Tara Brach, an American Buddhist and psychologist. “Say to yourself,” she advises, “’this is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.’”

Be kind. You never know what burden someone is carrying in silence. But above all, be kind to yourself.

When you’re in pain, recognize that what you are experiencing is universal; everyone suffers. You’re not alone in your suffering.

Part of self-compassion means you set aside, at least for the moment, your longing to have things be different than they are. Accept that you are hurting. Accept that you are angry, or deeply disappointed, or in pain, or that you feel abandoned or betrayed.

Accept that those feelings are part of being human and that it’s okay to feel them right now. Hold yourself as tenderly as you would hold a crying child.

Know, too, that all suffering is temporary. It exhausts itself, all of its own accord. It may return; it may come in waves. But always, it exhausts itself and finally gives way to a new perspective, and you go on.

Life isn’t static. It carries us into new circumstances at every moment. And at every moment, it offers us comfort and peace. As soon as we are ready to receive them, life’s gifts are there, waiting for us. And they wait with patience and love until we can be ready.

Sometimes it’s as simple as letting go of the story you’re telling yourself about how awful things are, and of waking up to the broader reality. Sometimes it takes a good meal, or a good night’s sleep, or some time with an understanding friend. Sometimes it takes a new idea, a willingness to try something new.

And sometimes it just takes the passage of time.

But whenever you’re ready, the side of life that’s good and beautiful will be waiting to meet you. Keep your faith in life alive.

Life can hurt, and life can be exquisitely beautiful. Go with the flow, shouting out, “What a ride! Oh, Thank You! What a ride!”

Wishing you a week of sunshine and good fortune.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay}

We live in stressful times, in a stressful, conflicted world. But the most significant part of that reality is contained in the first two words you just read—“We live.”

The quality of our lives, although impacted by external events, isn’t determined by them. How much goodness, and beauty, and truth we experience in our lives depends on how open we are to recognizing them and to creating them in our individual lives.

Happiness opens us to seeing broader vistas. But it’s not only we ourselves who are enriched by allowing more happiness into our lives. Happiness is contagious.

Happiness radiates out from us and affects everyone we encounter. It wakes people up. It encourages them. It makes them feel connected and validated.

Each person who finds happiness in life moves the whole world in a more positive direction.

Over the past nine weeks, we visited each of the nine choices that happy people make in their lives. Looking at them together, we can see that each of the choices supports and builds the others. 

What all nine choices have in common, is that all of them are rooted in the awareness that the choice is ours to make.

1. The first one is intention, a commitment to allow more authentic happiness into your life. This is the central choice around which all the others revolve.

Happy people begin their days by recalling their intention to find the juice in every situation the day brings. They imagine their plans unfolding well and benefiting everyone concerned. They expect happy outcomes.

2. The second choice, accountability, is a commitment happy people make to choose from all the viewpoints and alternatives available throughout the day the ones that are most in harmony with their genuine needs and desires.

In order to build more happiness into their lives, happy people make a choice to recognize for themselves what brings them joy, or pleasure, or satisfaction, or a feeling of well-being and peace.

3. Happy people work at noticing and naming for themselves what enriches them. Identifying the kinds of things that uplift you lets you know where to invest your energy and time.

4. The fourth choice, centrality, is a choice to make the things that enrich you central to your life.

You commit to giving those things priority over activities that hold lesser value for you. You learn to say no to the things that don’t matter in order to say yes to your honest desires.

5. Recasting is the choice to find new paths to happiness when your life is struck by misfortune. It’s remembering that you and you alone are accountable for your happiness. You determine to recast your attention toward positive possibilities regardless of the setbacks that life sometimes brings.

6. Happy people keep their options open. They look for alternative ways to create a sense of well-being or to achieve an important end when their original plans are blocked. They adopt the attitude that when there’s a will, there’s a way. They look for opportunities, or create them.

7. Happy people choose appreciation as a primary orientation toward life. They actively look for, and express, things to appreciate in their circumstances and in others—even those times or people who seem difficult or distasteful.

They look for qualities to appreciate in the current moment, in their surroundings, in their activities, in the company at hand.

8. Because they’re appreciative of the people, things, and events in their lives, happy people are giving. They share their talents and strengths, their wisdom and knowledge, their time, energy, goods, and money freely, with a sense of gladness, from the core of happiness in their hearts.

9. Finally, happy people unfailingly choose truthfulness as a fundamental guiding force in their lives. Knowing that truthfulness is the foundation for genuine intimacy with others—as well as for genuine personal authenticity—they choose to be honest and to live with integrity.

Few of us make all of these choices consistently. We all have our off days, our stretches of darkness. But as with all ways of being, we get better at what we practice. Practicing the choices for happiness allows them to come more and more freely and naturally all the time.

The key is being honest with yourself about wanting greater ease and contentment in your life and then making a real commitment to allow it. That commitment means you remind yourself every day that you are by nature happy, that you intend to let happiness play a central part in your life from now on.

Then you make the choices that foster happiness. For your own sake, and because your happiness makes the world a better place.

Wishing you a week of happy choices. Beginning right here, right now.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Pexels from Pixabay}

Well, here we are at the final, and in many ways, most fundamental choice that happy people universally make: the commitment to be truthful with themselves.

They’re truthful with others, too, of course. But happiness springs from their choice to be honest with themselves—about what they truly think, and feel, and need, and want, and value ,and believe.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. It takes courage and a willingness to look at the difference between what you’re pretending and what is genuinely real for you.

Think about an area of your life where you’re experiencing some difficulty. Then try this exercise: Say to yourself, “I’m pretending that . . .” and describe how you’re not being authentic. Then say, “But the truth is . . .” and see if you can dig down to a new clarity.

We fall into pretending for a lot of reasons. We buy into our stories or the stories our family or culture tells.

We obey programmed “shoulds.” We give in to fears of embarrassment, shame, disapproval, rejection and judgment.

We assume that in order to be a good person we have to put the needs of disadvantaged others above our own.

We tell ourselves that we’re being kind or gracious by holding back on our own desires. In reality, when we’re truthful about our own needs and desires, we empower others to be truthful, too, and that gives us a greater chance for meeting everyone’s needs.

Even difficult truths can be spoken with tact and consideration. And even when we don’t say them perfectly, we’re affirming the importance of honesty in our relationships when we try.

Honesty, especially with yourself, is the bedrock foundation of happiness, and the only path to genuine intimacy with others. It’s the quality that provides you with the third “C” of happiness—centeredness—because the voice at your center is the voice of your truth.

You can’t know who you really are without listening for that truth. Self-honesty is the very core of authenticity.

Lack of honesty leads to tension, distancing from others, lack of motivation, burnout, fatigue, even illness.

Without truth, trust can’t exist. You can’t rely on your own judgment when you’re not honest with yourself about what you value, what you feel and think, what matters to you. And others can’t rely on you either.

But know what’s true for you and you become a pillar of strength and trustworthiness both to yourself and others. You know where you stand, and so does everyone else. You can be counted on; you’re reliable.

Honesty is highly attractive to others. More than that, you’ll feel an inner harmony that nothing but the truth can give you.

We grow as we experience life, of course, and our truths can evolve or change over time.

 Happy people learn to pay continuous attention to their inner sense of truth to find new layers and new dimensions of it. What do I really believe? What do I genuinely want? What do I need? How do I really feel? Am I pretending?

These are the questions they ask, fearlessly listening for the answers, following truth’s light, and shining that light into the world.

Next week, we’ll put all nine choices for happiness together and see how they work as a synergistic whole.

Until then, I wish you fresh winds of honesty and a fascinating week.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Viktoriya Yu from Pixabay}

Have you ever noticed that feeling you get when you do something for somebody else? That little lift you get? That little burst of energy?

It’s such a clean, strong feeling, even when it only lasts a second or two. That’s what giving does for us. The boost it generates is life’s way of telling us that easing the way for someone else makes us happier, too.

That’s what “the golden rule” is all about. Treating others the way you’d want to be treated makes for increased happiness all the way around.

We’re happy when others help us when we need it, and when can help others, we’re made happier, too.

Giving stimulates our sense of our capability. When we respond to somebody’s need we feel connected to our hearts, the place from which giving rises,

Happiness researchers Foster and Hooks have this to say about giving:

“True giving, radiant giving, comes from the same inner place as deep happiness.  It’s a desire to share our personal sense of worth and values. 

“It’s having the self-esteem to feel that what we have to offer is valuable—our advice, wisdom, expertise, skills, physical labor. 

“The manner in which we give these gifts is a reflection of who we are.”

That’s a very special way of giving.  It’s not giving from a sense of obligation, and especially it’s not giving from a sense of guilt or as a compensation for feeling unworthy in some way.  It’s giving for the sheer joy and beauty of giving; it’s giving from a full heart.

The highest level of giving, Foster and Hicks say, is giving in a way that helps other people live better, more independently and more effectively.  

They found that many of the happy people they studied volunteered time in their communities working for causes they considered worthwhile. Some acted as mentors. Some spent time counseling family or community members.

Sometimes their giving was the habitual performance of kindnesses, stepping up whenever they saw a way to fill a need or to ease someone’s way.  Sometimes they simply offered encouragement or gave appreciation to others, or brightened others’ days with a genuine smile.

Happy people, Foster and Hicks say, “give because it is a decree of their heart, letting their internal sense of contentment and joy overflow into the world.”

One of the most fulfilling ways to give to others is simply to share what you love.  Share your passions.  Whether you’re into music or carpentry, reading, gardening, exercising, playing chess—whatever you love, engage somebody else in it. 

The opportunities for giving are endless.  It’s simply a matter of being aware of them.  Learn to find them by asking yourself, “What can I offer?”  “How can I help?”  “Whose life can I support?”  “Whose day can I brighten?”

Share your skills, your knowledge, your emotional support, material items, money or time.  Give of them freely, with joy, and you’ll find the giving returns more rewards than you could ever anticipate.

It builds bonds.  It creates trust.  It enhances life both for the recipient of your sharing and for you. 

As a tool for enriching your happiness, it ranks as one of the most powerful.  Make a point of noticing your giving this week and watch what happens inside you.

Wishing you a week of happy-hearted giving!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Harish Sharma from Pixabay}

I looked at my list of tasks as my friend and I entered the store. Shopping for groceries was only our first stop of several. I was mentally planning our itinerary when my friend suddenly stopped one step into the produce section.

“Look,” she said waving her hand to encompass the whole scene. “Everything we need to live is here.”

Her comment shot me back into the moment. In the center of the floor stood several large tables brimming with colorful produce. On one, tomatoes and onions, shiny bell peppers, ruffled heads of lettuce and ears of sweet corn. On another, bunches of red and green grapes and peaches, apples and pears. Each table’s contents were arranged with artful care. On lighted shelves behind them relishes and cheeses, specialty items, salads and drinks beckoned.

“I love the way you notice things like that,” I told my friend. She has a real knack for appreciation, one of the choices for happiness we all can make.

The key is noticing what you value.

She notices how things are designed, how they work. She goes through the world with an appreciative heart, and points out the cleverness of a tool’s design, the quality of materials, the efficiency or kindness of someone’s act, and says so.

Happy people are like that. They look for things to value in the present moment. That’s a key: Looking for what’s valuable right now, in the immediate present. What’s good here? What’s true? What’s beautiful? What’s alive in me right now?

Embracing the Contrasts

One way to do this is to look at your life as if it’s a movie, and the present moment is the movie’s current scene.

It may not be a pleasant one; it might be a tragedy or drama. But you can still appreciate it as a scene in your unique life—being fully conscious of what’s occurring, fully aware of what you’re experiencing and embracing it as a part of the totality of your life.

Genuinely happy people don’t deny life’s sorrows and disappointments. They appreciate the reality of them and experience their meaning and depths. But they equally embrace life’s delights and moments of beauty and goodness.

They’re aware of the contrasts that make up life’s diversity, and of the way the contrasts contribute to life’s richness and mystery.

Because of their total immersion in their lives, happy people learn that no experience is wholly good or wholly bad. It’s all a mix. And all of it contains something to be appreciated once you choose to see it.

Sharing the Good Stuff

Happy people actively look for things to appreciate in others and they share their appreciation in words. They let others know when they see their good qualities in action—their humor, their kindness, their courage, their creativity.

Sometimes they appreciate how well someone deals with their struggles and fears. And because they share what they appreciate in others, they build stronger relationships—in their workplaces, with their children, with their partners, and with friends.

They even disarm their adversaries by expressing sincere appreciation of their strengths. “Well done!” “Good move!”

They brighten the day for strangers by mentioning something the other has done well. “That was so kind of you!” “You packed that so efficiently!”

You never know when a simple comment will entirely change someone’s day.

As poet Elizabeth Barret Browning said, “Earth’s crammed with heaven.” Turn up your sense of appreciation this week and prove for yourself the truth in her words. You might just find your world transformed.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Dhanesh Damodaran from Pixabay}

Remember when I invited you to measure your happiness quotient at the start of July?

How are you doing so far? Take a quick inventory and find out.

If you want to up your supply, one of the best things you can learn from genuinely happy people is to keep your options open.

You might think you’re limited by your age, responsibilities, circumstances, finances, or health, but the truth is you have countless options for expanding your happiness every single day.

The trick is to keep an eye out for them, and to risk grabbing the ones that wink at you as they appear.

One choice that happy people make is the choice to be free to try something new, even if it might make them look or feel silly, even if it violates their “shoulds,” even if it’s not “realistic” (and maybe especially if it’s not).

They ask themselves “What if?” and “Why not?”

They hone their curiosity.

They’re not locked in by plans, or by fears.

They’re flexible and daring.

They’re more driven by exploring life’s offerings and possibilities than by toeing the line in order to achieve an imagined security or success.

They trust life enough to let the conclusions take care of themselves.

Hunting for Happiness

Sometimes the something new starts with a new viewpoint, with asking, “How else can I look at this?” or “What opportunities are here?” or “How can I turn this into an adventure, or make it interesting or fun?”

Happy people cultivate a sense of play.

They teach themselves to see what they were viewing as a limitation as a challenge to their creativity instead.

For happy people, life is an art form, and they are the artists.

Dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille said, “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what’s next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

Happy people don’t expect all their choices to turn out well. But they expect to grow from each of them, to learn, to be enriched by all that they experience.

They know that the joy is in the journey, in taking the leaps.

Taking the Risk

Looking for options keeps us from living on auto-pilot.

It opens a view of possibilities, moment to moment to moment.

Asking “What are my choices?” keeps us aware and alive.

Refuse to accept the lie that you have no choice.

You always do.

Happy people teach themselves to look outside the box, to deviate from their routines.

They learn to risk letting go of preconceived notions and of caring what anyone else thinks about the choices they make for themselves.

I have a poster on my wall that says, “Trust Your Crazy Ideas.” I think that’s great advice.

Crazy ideas can turn out to be the start of learning a whole new skill, or of meeting new people and making new friends.

They can lead to the discovery of a talent you hadn’t known you possessed, of discovering treasures and wonders you had no idea were right around that next corner.

Happiness experts Foster and Hicks say “Every new day presents the potential for relationships, education, personal growth, professional development and just plain fun.”

What calls you? What crazy new idea could you try?

What if?

Why not?

Keep on the lookout for new options—moment after moment, day after day.

They’re in front of you right now.

Next week I’ll share with you one of my favorite keys to increased happiness, one of the most beautiful ones. Stay tuned!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay}

When I was 11 years old, my parents gave me the bad news.

After months of searching for the cause of my mother’s increasing difficulty in keeping her balance and her frequent falls, she was finally diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease that would slowly paralyze her entire body.

Mom’s hand held mine as Daddy assured me the doctors would do everything they could to slow this monster’s progress.

Mom would get a pair of special crutches next week and some medicines that might help her. She would still teach nurses and direct the medical staff at the hospital where she worked.

“And we’ll still be the same happy family that we are now,” my dad said, the glimmer of a tear in his eye.

It turned out he was right.

*              *              *

We all encounter tragedies. Loved ones die. Accidents and disasters smash into our lives. We lose jobs, friends, partners, houses, health. We get betrayed. We fail.

But we’re a persistent lot, we humans. We go on, whether we have a taste for going on or not.

Happiness researchers Hicks and Foster in their book, How We Choose to be Happy, say the ones who made a promise to themselves to rediscover happiness after major life disruptions all used the same process to go forward. The authors dubbed this process “recasting.” I think of it as giving the dice a fresh toss.

Recasting Your Lot

In their world-wide interviews with hundreds of famously happy people, Hicks and Foster encountered many who had endured deep and wide-ranging tragedies in their lives. And all of them described how they had resurfaced by going through the same two-stage course of action.

It starts with their decision, in the face of crisis, not to be a victim, but a fighter.

None of us gets through life without facing our share of painful, sometimes devastating circumstances. When they happen, we’re faced with a choice: to give up or to go on. Healthy people choose to go on, even when they can’t begin to see how going on is possible.

The healing wasn’t instant for the folks who overcame their tragedies. In some cases, it took months or years for people to reconnect with happiness again. But those who succeeded in rediscovering a sense of meaning and well-being all processed their tragedies the same way.

The Process

The first thing they did was to allow themselves to deeply and honestly feel the emotions surrounding their personal tragedy. They allowed themselves to feel their anger, their rage, their sorrow, their grief, their sense of irrecoverable loss.

I’m sure that every one of them felt that they were victims in the immediate wake of whatever circumstance disrupted their lives. But none of them allowed themselves to be defined by what had happened. Each of them set an intention to regain a meaningful and satisfying life.

And it was that intention that gave them the will to go on. They activated it by looking for meaning, for an understanding of how their new circumstances fit into their lives—the second step in the powerful, healing “recasting” process.

They asked themselves a lot of questions and looked for sincere answers.

First they explored the question, “What’s the essential core of my feelings?” They wanted to get to the very heart of their feelings, to let themselves understand. Sometimes they wrote letters to others involved—often with no intention to mail them—or they wrote about their feelings in a journal, or talked into a voice recorder, or to a caring friend.

The richer your understanding of your feelings, Hicks and Foster say, the richer the meaning you can derive from the event.

The second step of their healing was to ask themselves things like:

What am I learning about myself from this experience?

What am I learning about the others involved?
About my relationships with them?
About my relationships in general?

What story am I telling myself about this?
Is it true? From what other perspective could I see this?
What’s a different story I could tell?

What’s the gift in this?
What new opportunities for the future can I create from this experience? How can I take action on them?

The turning point comes when you look your emotions right in the face and decide, “I can cope. I can work through this pain.”

 It’s the willingness to face your pain that rescues you from the numbness of denial. It allows you to be authentic—honest with yourself—and in control. It reaffirms your centeredness and capability. And once you have those things, you’re more than half way to rebuilding a vibrant, satisfying, meaningful life.

Next week we’ll look at discovering new options for happiness, both now and when everything you once had seems to have disappeared.

Until then, I wish you a week free of trials and full of joy.

Warmly,
Susan

I^{mage by sippakorn yamkasikorn from Pixabay}

A few weeks back, I challenged you to rate your happiness level on a scale of 1-10. Remember?

Since then, we looked at the choices that genuinely happy people make and I invited you to make those choices, too.

The first one was to decide that yes, you truly wanted to live a life in which you felt contented, capable, and centered—our working definition of “happy.”

The second choice was to decide to dedicate yourself to being happy, to make it your intention, and to practice—before you got out of bed in the morning— imagining yourself being happy as you carried out the activities of the day ahead.

The third step was to accept that you and you alone are accountable for your happiness, that you have to give up blaming anyone or anything else for its lack in your life.

Then, last week, I invited you to identify what kinds of things contributed to your happiness, to create a personal “happy list” of things that brought you contentment, satisfaction, or joy.

Today we’re going to talk about “centralizing” your happiness. Grab your “happy list,” or, if you didn’t make one, have some fun: Take a few minutes to jot down everything you can think of that you enjoy, then come back.

Got your list? Good. Read it over and see if there’s anything else you’d like to add. Now go over the list and mark the things you already enjoy fairly often in your life. Those are the things you have already “centralized.” You’ve made them important enough to make time for them.

Now look at the things that you didn’t check, and ask yourself, “What’s keeping me from doing some of these more? How can I add a couple things?”

That’s an important question, by the way. What is keeping you from doing more of the things that let you feel happy? Is your answer the truth? Or is it an excuse you’re accepting from yourself?

What would you have to do in order to have more of those things you enjoy in your life? What if you did it? How could you start experiencing more of those things, or parts of them, in your life right now?

Give yourself some time to mull it over, to figure out a way to enrich your life with more of the things that bring you joy.

People figure out ways even when they thought they didn’t have the time, or health, or funds, or freedom.

Start by imagining tucking more happiness in your pockets. How would it feel? How much energy would it add to your life? Then keep imagining it, over and over, and over. Imagining it rewires you; it creates new possibilities; it unveils opportunities and ignites new ideas. Once the image becomes real to you, surprising doors open.

Happiness isn’t an accidental phenomenon. It blossoms when you nurture its seeds. Putting the things that you enjoy front and center in your life is the way you water those seeds and give them light.

If you think your circumstances are preventing you from making your life a thriving happiness garden, stay tuned. We’ll deal with ways to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles next week.

In the meantime, go over your list again and pick a few things to centralize in your life right now. Make the time. Make the effort. You deserve it.

Wishing you a week of enrichment and fun!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Ian Lindsay from Pixabay}