Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Recognizing Happiness

There's a site called www.DailyOm.com that sends out a daily email about things to think about. This one was excellent:

Recognizing Happiness

Those of us on the path of personal and spiritual growth have a tendency to analyze our unhappiness in order to find the causes and make improvements. But it is just as important, if not more so, to analyze our happiness. Since we have the ability to rise above and observe our emotions, we can recognize when we are feeling joyful and content. Then we can harness the power of the moment by savoring our feelings and taking time to be grateful for them.

Recognition is the first step in creating change, therefore recognizing what it feels like to be happy is the first step toward sustaining happiness in our lives. We can examine how joy feels in our bodies and what thoughts run through our minds in times of bliss. Without diminishing its power, we can retrace our steps to discover what may have put us in this frame of mind, and then we can take note of the choices we’ve made while there. We might realize that we are generally more giving and forgiving when there’s a smile on our face, or that we are more likely to laugh off small annoyances and the actions of others when they don’t resonate with our light mood.

Once we know what it feels like and can identify some of the triggers and are aware of our actions, we can recreate that happiness when we are feeling low. Knowing that like attracts like, we can pull ourselves out of a blue mood by focusing on joy. We might find that forcing ourselves to be giving and forgiving, even when it doesn’t seem to come naturally, helps us to reconnect with the joy that usually precedes it. If we can identify a song, a picture, or a pet as a happiness trigger, we can use them as tools to recapture joy if we are having trouble finding it. By focusing our energy on analyzing happiness and all that it encompasses, we feed, nurture, and attract more of it into our lives, eventually making a habit of happiness.




Monday, April 21, 2008

A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Harley Amadeus who is 7 years old. This is a gift that one of his friends at Dogster sent to him today:

You can see Harley's profile here: http://www.dogster.com/dogs/698451


Monday, April 14, 2008

An acquaintance of mine went on 2 retreats in the past week. The first retreat was an overnighter to work on a client's book. The second, to someone's ranch for what purpose I have no idea.

When I heard about the first retreat, I didn't think that much about it; the second one made me pause for consideration.

I could see something along the lines of, "Hey, we're going to a lake cabin to work on Michele's book," or "I'm off to Donna's ranch for some R&R".

When did any adventure outside the city limits start being classified as a "retreat"?

I suppose what struck a chord with me is that I've never heard of a biker going on a retreat. We have motorcycles...we don't need retreats! We get on the bike and embrace the aromas of spring wildflowers, we feel the temperature cool as the road takes us into a lower section, we strike up camaraderie in the most unusual of places like when a couple in their 80's approaches you at a country gas station to tell you about their biking days back in the 1950's!

Ditch the retreats...get a motorcycle!