Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Beautiful things now.

I'm not quite a week into my "thinking more about happiness" project, and I have to say, things are going well.  Now I'm definitely in my post-workout endorphin influenced high right now, but some positive things are happening in my life and I'm doing my very best to take notes.

  • I sold another Disney trip! (yay can't wait to sell more)
  • A 77 y/o patient at work told me that I was a "very beautiful girl."  (no dementia)
  • I learned THE CROSSOVER at the skating rink!!  (been roller skating since March but a wonderful woman there who's probably the best skater I've ever met coached me for 30 minutes and I got it! what a wonderful gift of her time & energy)
  • I went to work and earned money. (thankful to have a job where I only work 3 days a week)
  • I made a commitment to start drinking more water and getting better sleep. (yep, 64 ounces a day of pure water, and a benedryl at night to help me stay asleep longer)
  • My dad came over tonight to "get [his] Sarah fix." I really enjoyed his humor and the way he loves my child.
  • Talked to my hospitalized mom on Saturday and she's doing better after her back surgery and can actually stand up straight now.
  • Got my tire pressure maintenance system sensors fixed on my Honda Insight and got the air filters changed out too! (no more orange warning lights, and yay I had the money to do it)
  • I've written every single day in The Happiness Project One Sentence journal since I got it!
  • I continue to work out by riding my recumbent bike, even when I don't feel like it, and I'm pushing myself hard.
I'm working on myself.  I'm trying to change the way I look at life, specifically my own life. I'm gonna see the glass half full and be glad I've got clean drinking water at all.  I don't have the money to re-carpet my home, buy a new wardrobe and bedroom furniture, or fix the creaking floors upstairs.  I am still not happy with the shape of my body and how much I weigh.  I'd love to have a job where I could work day shift so that I could spend even more time with my daughter.  But I recognize all the beautiful things that are happening to me right now.

What beautiful things are happening to you?

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Thinking about happiness.

One of the things I used to love to do, pre-Sarah, was leisurely read books.  Mostly nonfiction of course because I tend to be a nerd, but I'll throw in a "just for fun" book once in a while.  My most recent stack of reading includes books to better my life.  Get it back on track.  Stop wasting days, weeks, months, years...not being happy.  While I don't think there's a magic potion that I can drink for pure unadulterated happiness, I do think that by thinking about what it means, and feels like, to be happy might bring more awareness to me for what it is in my life that needs changing.  So I have already finished The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and have now started on her follow-up book Happier at Home.  I also ordered and just today received in the mail the 5-year, one sentence a day journal to use in conjunction with your own happiness project.

I'm not a stay at home best selling novelist yet, so unlike Gretchen, I don't have the time to take a year of my life and focus completely on a bunch of experimental resolutions that might make me happier.  But I can take notice of my feelings day to day, write down important things that happen, and start living each day with the question, what about this day made me feel happier?

Is the glass half empty or half full?  I have much I could sit and cry about that's currently going on right now in my life.  But you know what?  Today I woke up happy.  I woke up singing and humming and even though every muscle in my body hated to lift itself out of bed, I joyously went to get my daughter and played with her for an hour when we got home.

I believe we each have multiple lives, so I do not ascribe to the "one chance to get it right" theory before plunging up into heaven or down into hell.  I've studied mercifully and enlisted the help of others along this path to spiritual awareness.  If you'd like more information about my beliefs then I'll be glad to tell you if you promise not to judge and hate just because I may not believe what you do.

But belief in soul progression, in multiple lives, does not mean each day here on Earth in this life isn't important.  Sometimes it feels like happiness eludes me always, and sometimes I have a great deal of hope for my future, and Sarah's future.

I'm gonna start taking note of the days as they pass, and I'm going to keep reading and studying books that I feel will help change my attitude and open my eyes to new ways of thinking about what it is I'm here to do.  And the successes I've already had.  One of my quiet promises to myself is to get back into my blog here, so you can expect to hear more from me.  The more people who read and comment, the more energized I'll be on my journey.  Let's talk about what makes us happy, about each days little gifts, about things that make us stop and think, and about how our higher selves, and our higher power, guides us along our path.

Interested to see what happens!