~ A Joy Warrior's Journey
Acres of golden sunflowers,
more than you could count in a day,
nodded in the afternoon sun,
each head, heavy with seeds, bowed
as if in gratitude for the joy
of such productive lives.
Overhead, in a deep blue sky, floated
a single cloud, looking like an angel
with outspread gauzy wings, come to bless them.
And a warm breeze, as light as feathers,
wafted across the broad field,
whispering its quiet amen.
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
In days of sunshine and those
of trial, whether by happenstance
or choice, life sends us the gift
of companions for our journey,
spirits to walk beside us, to share
our laughter and our tears,
our stories and our silences.
Some stay only for moments.
Some come, then go, then reappear.
Some walk beside us for long miles,
for lifetimes, and maybe more.
Love, after all, never dies.
And it is love that sends them,
these companions, that each of us
may know that we are truly
never alone.
I fell asleep last night
with a parade of flowers
ribboning through my mind—
the spring’s first crocuses
at its start, the tulips, the lilacs
the irises, peonies, and roses.
When I woke, I sighed, sad
that the parade would soon
be at its end. But then the day
brought mums, a little love note
smiling at me from the grocer’s door,
as if to reassure me the dance
isn’t over quite yet.
So subtly August turns us from summer to fall,
sliding the sun from its zenith, inching
the pool of night onto closer shores
almost without notice, as if it were a dream.
There on the hill, the first blush of crimson
creeps onto the maple leaves. The young geese
grow restless as their first migration nears.
The tillers of the land start the rituals of harvest.
Fragrances we haven’t known for a year drift
from kitchen doorways, smelling like home.
And we who dreamed summer would stretch on
find that it’s changed now, its green losing its sheen.
Oh, so subtly August turns us. So deftly she ushers us on.
The woods completely dissolve
the idea that peace and stillness
are the same thing, that serenity
is motionless and silent. The trees
say peace is an endless singing
of possibilities brought into being,
then gone, a rise and fall of notes
echoing through the edgeless
vastness, transcending time.
And serenity is the embrace
of the song, the welcoming
of it, the joyous recognition
that it is the Yes dancing,
within and without,
without end.
You, too, are a climber,
reaching for the heights.
Climb on.
You, too, are meant
to open to the morning sun.
Open singing.
You, too, are a star
filled with inner light.
Shine on, friend. Shine on.
All day, the air pressed against skin
like steamed towels, heavy and damp.
Not a leaf moved. Even the bees
seemed slow, as if they were rowing
from one drooped blossom to another.
And through it all, one wish prevailed:
Relief. Then, as if the one prayer
had finally reached the required level
of ascent, the sky took on the color
of marmalade and the trees began to dance
in its glow, buoyed by a cool wind filled
with the fragrance of rain. And when
it came, falling from the luminous sky,
all the earth, revived and joyous,
sang.
I weep in joy at the morning’s
sparkling dew and at the warmth
of the sun’s rays feeding my leaves
and my petals with light.
But that is not why I have come.
I came to sing beauty into your world
that you might remember that
life is good, and that you are loved.
This alone Is the reason for my being.
Only for this. Only for you.
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
Image by sippakorn yamkasikorn from Pixabay