10 tips for happiness

the last few days have found me in a good mood. this is rare these days. i think that part of it is a new medication, but more importantly, i think that it has been examining how the positive and huge changes that i have made over the last few years. 

so while i am in this good mood, i wanted to share ten tips for being happy:

1. express gratitude. i keep a gratitude journal and every day i make a list of things that i am grateful for. it helps to have positive thoughts in your mind. 

2. set the bar high and expect the best out of life. thinking negative thoughts leads to negative feelings. turn your negative thoughts around and allow yourself to think positively. 

3. don't compare yourself to other people. you are a unique gift on this planet. you are no one else but you. as oscar wilde said: "be yourself everyone else is already taken."

4. forgive yourself. seriously. forgive yourself. you are human. life will be messy and filled with mistakes. and as it says in anne of green gables, "tomorrow is a fresh day with no mistakes in it." forgive forgive forgive your mistakes, your messiness, your imperfections. 

5. be kind to others. pay it forward. it makes you feel good. 

6. treat yourself the way you treat the people that you love (thanks geneen roth ... what a concept!) 

7. therapy. seriously. therapy. if you are chronically unhappy, there's a reason ... or reasons ... and having someone guide you on a healing journey is helpful. that sounded incredibly cheesy ... having someone to listen to you and talk out your issues is beneficial. 

8. see people. go out. see people. socialize. even if it's hard. do it anyway. keep contact with your friends. find a group to join. for me it's choir. i will admit that i have NOT been enjoying choir this semester. but i go every week anyway. it's my community. 

9. "be the lab scientist and not the rat."  http://www.purposefairy.com/ which means pay attention to your mind, to your reactions to situations, your reactions to things that people say. learn your triggers and find ways to cope. strategies for coping will help you reframe the situation.

10. this is the most challenging step (for me). be good to your body. feed it. feed it healthy and nutritious foods. feed it what tastes good to you. feed it what you LIKE. and move your body. even if that means simply going for a walk (yes, i DO listen to you nosy nora). 

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

being angry is a natural feeling and it's okay to feel angry and to talk through those feelings. nosy nora says it's even okay to be angry with people that you love. including your parents. yikes! but holding onto that anger for a long time and not doing anything with it hurts you more than it hurts the person that you are angry at. expressing that emotion in some way helps you to let it go. that doesn't mean you have to tell the person you are mad at. you can express your anger in many different healthy ways. that's a post for another day. 

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” 
― Dalai Lama XIV

i woke up feeling happy the last 2 days. but i cultivated that happiness by following the 10 steps above. by acknowledging that i have put in the work to change my life. (and possibly by upping my meds. just saying)

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer

one of the biggest lessons that i have learned through therapy and through facing my addiction is that when you numb yourself to the hard feelings, you numb yourself to the wonderful feelings as well. when you protect yourself from feeling, you don't get to experience the joys that life is filled with. 

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” 
― Ayn Rand

make yourself important. you matter. did you hear that? i'll say it louder ... YOUUUUUU MATTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

“All happiness depends on courage and work.” 
― Honoré de Balzac

you wont just BE happy without working on yourself. and that takes time and small changes that lead to bigger life-long change. (another gem from nosy nora)

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” 
― J.M. Barrie

i included that quote because i love the idea of fairies. and i love baby laughs. what brings more joy than a baby laughing!?!?!?!?!???

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” 
― Hunter S. Thompson

one of the first things i remember nosy nora saying to me when i started therapy a few years ago was that i seemed like i wasn't present in my life. i was on the shore merely existing. terrified of the potential storm out on the sea of life. i am trying really hard to be present. it's not easy. but i feel like i am more alive. like i am experiencing life instead of watching it pass me by. 

“Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” 
― Guillaume Apollinaire

pause and experience your happiness. there's no point in following my steps to happiness if you spend all your time focusing on trying to make yourself happy without enjoying the feeling of BEING happy. 

and MOST importantly, 

be kind to yourself, 

xoxo

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“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” 
― Dr. Seuss

i have been worried about writing an update on my state of mind. worried that i would jinx it. worried that i would be speaking too soon and everything would come crashing down around me if i dared to write about how i am doing these days. 

the truth is ... i feel ... happy. 

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

i have worked hard to work through issues, to face my darkness, to be vulnerable, and to come out of my cocoon into happiness. 

maybe it's the sunshine. or the love and support i am receiving. maybe it's the warm weather or the long walks. maybe it's the changes i am making in my life and in my mind; in the way that i think. whatever it is, i feel true happiness for the first time in a long time. 

“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.” 
― Stephen Chbosky

do you ever laugh so hard that it hurts? do you ever get the giggles and laugh until you cry? laughing with friends is better than any medicine. when i was a kid, i would get the giggles and couldn't stop laughing. i had to leave class on several occasions because i just couldn't get myself together to stop laughing. those are the best kind of laughs. 

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer

i think that allowing myself to feel the sadness. to feel my grief, and my hurt, and my pain. to feel the dark emotions that i avoided for so long. i think that feeling those emotions - letting them in - has allowed me to let in the good feelings. and these good feelings are filling me up with happiness. don't misunderstand, i still feel the bad feelings. i still have stress and anxiety and worries and fears and grief and sadness and all the pain of the world. but those feelings don't weigh me down. i feel uplifted. i feel like i can fly. 

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” 
― Chuck Palahniuk,

i allowed myself to look inside. to face my own darkness. to be vulnerable. to put myself out there. i allowed myself to share my stories. and this has left me feeling happiness. 

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” 
― Ayn Rand

i am learning that i am worth something. i am worthy, and deserving. these are new words for me. and these are words that scare me. but also make me feel happy. 

“All happiness depends on courage and work.” 
― Honoré de Balzac

it has taken a great deal of work to get to this place. i have had to be brave and face my darkness and face my fears. i have had to take risks. and all of this has brought me happiness. 


so there it is, readers, i feel happy. something i never thought would happen. when you are numb to the bad feelings of the world, you are numb to the good feelings too. 

be kind to yourself, 
xoxo

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” 
― J.M. Barrie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM&feature=kp

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catching air in my hands ...

i had the most fantastic day. 

i laughed so much my abs hurt. 

and then i came home and felt happy, and joyful, and i was trying not to get my hopes up and yet i was convinced that a switch had been "flicked" and that the new meds were working and that i was feeling better and that i was going to get to go back to work early! i started thinking about all the things that i was going to do back at work. the people that i miss. and i was excited. 

i was smiling and snuggling and feeling like i was on top of the world. i rolled over to go to sleep and listened to the gentle breathing of the love of my life beside me. and then it was like i was trying to hold onto air in my hands as the joy and happiness slipped through my fingers. 

and i started to cry. 

no reason. nothing that i can identify anyway. no trigger. 

just the slowly fading feeling of happiness that had filled me trickled out of me and was replaced with the empty feeling that has haunted me for so long. 

i wanted to be able to hold onto that happiness. i wanted that joyful laughter that filled my afternoon and evening to fill up all the empty places inside of me. 

instead, i feel hollow and sad. and inconsequential. 

so i decided to reach out to my blog readers tonight. how do you hold onto happiness? how to do you keep the joy inside of you? please leave your comment at the end of this post, or contact me by email using the contact form on the right side of this page. let me know if i can share your ideas with my readers. 

xoxo
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enabling joy ...

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.” 

― Rumi

last night i was brainstorming with DS about how i could go back to being 3 years old and finding pure  joy and elation just from eating cotton candy. he suggested that i could find a random 3 year old and give them cotton candy, revel in their  joy, and then give them back to their parents for the fallout of all that sugar. i thought it was a funny idea, but not what i was looking for. i wanted to FEEL the  joy myself. and DS said, how about "the  joy of enabling  joy?" 

PAUSE

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river 

moving in you, a joy.” ― Rumi

i had to think about that. the  joy of enabling joy. 

what brings me  joy? what brings you  joy? for me, it can be singing, or holding a happy baby, or seeing the faces of my children when they master a new skill ... and it occurred to me that in fact most of the times i feel truly  joyful is when i have enabled  joy in someone else. 

“I don't think of all the misery, but of 

the beauty that still remains.” 

- Anne Frank

if anne frank could still find  joy, then who am i to focus on misery?

earlier this year, i had a truly  joyful experience. one that has few words to describe it. i was able to bring a pile of donations to a family in need. i often experience the let-down of giving to someone and having them behave as though they are entitled to what i have given them. but this time it was different. this loving and humble family welcomed us into their home, and experienced pure joy at receiving coats, and scarves, and art supplies. their gratitude was so sincere. their happiness was heart-warming. and their  joy brought me pure  joy. i couldn't stop smiling as their tried on their winter coats, and planned out who would get to keep the markers in which bedroom. 

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.” 

― Terry Pratchett

i found  joy by enabling  joy.

“To get the full value of joy 

you must have someone to 

divide it with.” 

― Mark Twain

DS is onto something. he spoke to me about his work, and how he finds job satisfaction by the unconscious smiles of the people he works with. it reminded me of my own work and the  joy i find through working with others. 

joy: let it fill you. let it wash not over you, but through you. 

i leave you with this thought ...

“Sometimes your joy is the 

source of your smile, but 

sometimes your smile can be 

the source of your joy.” 

― Thích Nhất Hạnh

xoxo

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