Self-help Comment Carnival – December 1, 2011

December 1, 2011 by 1 Comment

New on this blog is a blog carnival with a twist. This is the first Self-help Comment Carnival, where I share with you a few of the more interesting comments I have left on various blogs over the past week or so.

 

I loved this quote so much …

A pastor saw a beggar amidst the crowd at a Christian conference he was attending. He felt compassion for him and prayed to God, “Lord, please touch him!” Immediately he felt the Lord speak to his heart, “I will, if you will.”

… that I just had to leave a comment over at City Rescue Mission

When Stacey at The Habit Building Challenge started talking about – you, guessed it – habits, I could not resist putting my oars into the water …

I have always believed this is true, that habits define how we succeed or fail at things. We are creatures of habit and we will do mostly things we are accustomed to, so we better make sure those are good things, positive things, productive things. That’s why when I write my book on happiness, I focused on the habits that can make the biggest difference, mostly negative habits that can and should be turned into positive habits.

I had to agree that Dr. Sahnnon Reese’s Life is Abundant (and all of ours are, too) …

Those are ten great reasons why your life is abundant. Even if you stopped after the first two – I am healthy and strong, and I have what I need – your life is abundant. The rest are all great, too, wonderful bonuses. But the fact that even the “poor” people in North America and Europe are rich beyond the wildest dreams of our great-great-great-great-great-grand-parents is enough to make us abundant.

I could go on and on about materialism run amok, but The Cyber Monday No Show did a pretty good job for me. I just added a few words…

Bravo! The last thing our spoiled-brat society that is drowning in overconsumption needs is a holiday dedicated to shopping. Which, unfortunately, is overshadowing the very holiday on which we are supposed to feel gratitude for our overabundance. When greed battles gratitude, look who wins. People may say with words that they support the Occupy Wall Street protesters, but Black Friday and Cyber Monday prove that they would much rather feed the beast than tame it.

On Accepting Inconveniences as a Part of Life, I added this…

Beautiful. I have always said that the reason we get sick is so as to appreciate our health the rest of the time. And the reason we have winter, is so we can appreciate the summer (I still haven’t reasoned away why we need 5-6 months of winter, but that’s another story).

And I got mushy (no, that doesn’t happen very often!) at Kevin’s 20 Things I’m Thankful for this Thanksgiving post …

Kevin, a wonderful list of things to be grateful for, and I think I see my name between the lines there. I can say wholeheartedly that it goes two ways; the “cyber friends who helped make my blogging career possible” are just as grateful for your ongoing support. It has been said before, but in many ways I feel we are more like a family than folks who work together in offices. We have all the support and none of the office politics. Happy Thanksgiving.

There is more great self help reading at Self Help Magazine.

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Smile or Go Naked

November 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

If the title made you think post is more exciting than most…you’re right. Because a song and dance is always exciting.

In one of my my girls’ dance classes, they are rehearsing some of the numbers form Annie, the musical.  The other day, one of them was playing some of the music, and I heard for the first time one of the songs they are NOT dancing to: You’re never fully dressed without a smile!

Who cares what they’re wearing
On Main Street,
Or Saville Row,
It’s what you wear from ear to ear
And not from head to toe
(That matters)

So, Senator,
So, Janitor,
So long for a while
Remember,
You’re never fully dressed
Without a smile!

Annie is a pretty popular musical, so I know many of our readers will be familiar with this one, but it is a wonderfully upbeat song to enjoy one more time. And if you are like me and have never seen Annie, I hope you will enjoy this for the first time.


 

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Make a Silly Face

November 24, 2011 by 2 Comments

Make a face in the mirror. Make another. OK, now make another face.

Make sure they are funny faces.

We adults are so silly. We sometimes get so caught up in our serious worlds that we forget to act silly. And that is silly, because acting silly is a great stress reliever. It is a great reminder of our own humanity. It helps us to go easier on ourselves for our slip-ups. It connects us with our selves.

It’s not that we are happier when we act silly, as much that we are usually happier if we act silly every now and them. Acting silly is like a release valve, and all the tensions and all the guilt and all the negative energy is allowed to dissipate into the atmosphere.

So go ahead and make a silly face in the mirror.

READ ALSO: Live like you were dying

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Three Tips for Happiness After the Car Crash

November 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Imagine you are driving down the road, half paying attention, half listening to the radio or reviewing the grocery list in your mind or steaming over some injustice at work or doing whatever you usually do while driving.  (Yes, most people pay only half attention while driving down a familiar road.)

All of a sudden you see something happen on the road.  There is a car or a truck or a bus that is spinning out of control.  Or traffic has suddenly – very suddenly! – come to a screeching halt.  Or you hear the sound of CRASH! right behind you.  Before you even have time to react, you feel the sudden lunge of your car as it is hit or as it hits something else.

It all happens so fast, you can’t even be sure what happens.  But you are in pain.  The details will vary from crash to crash, but such are the stories of people filing claims for personal injury.  Even in cases of whiplash, people don’t always know what happened, because it usually hits them from behind.  People filing claims due to whiplash might not even remember all the details, because the pain might not kick in for a few days.

Their stories may differ, but their emotions don’t.

  • Crashes place stress on a person.
  • Injury places stress on a person.
  • The legal system places stress on a person.

Happiness After Personal Injury

There are ways to rebuild your happiness after the crash. Here are a few tips to recover emotionally:

Call in the troops.

Your friends and family are there to support you, so now is the time to ask for help.  Let them help you consider your options.  let them listen to your thoughts and feelings.  let them laugh with you – yes, go out and have some fun with friends and family.  Do things that are less painful, of course, but you need positive company to regain your strength.

Dive deep.

You are wonderful.  Yes, I am talking to you.  Whether you are hang gliding off the coast of Madagascar or sitting in pain on your  sofa at home, you are wonderful.  The crash is just a situation; it is not you.  The pain is just a situation; it is not you.  The legal process is just a situation; it is not you.  What really counts is you – who you are deep inside.  Focus on yourself, on who you are, on your values.  These have not changed.  This is your rock.

Look ahead.

In most cases, the pain will go away and the injury will heal.  Or, you will learn to cope with the pain and manage your life with the injury.  Sooner or later the lawyers will leave and hopefully you will have the extra money that you need to put your life back together.  Imagine yourself past the trauma, part the anger – really, close your eyes an envision enjoying life when the doctors and lawyers have packed up their bags and gone.

 

Filed Under: Happiness

Hide Your Goat!

November 17, 2011 by 5 Comments

If you don’t want anyone to get your goat, don’t let them know where you have it tied.

One of the very early lessons we determined to teach our daughters was how to be teased. Yes, I know that might not rank high on the typical;list of priorities, but we knew that is they see their parents teasing each other in a positive way and laughing at ourselves, and if we tease them and let them tease us, they would enter school tease-proof. Let’s face it, the worse a child reacts to teasing, the more she will be picked on.

I wrote about this in The Daily Dose of Happiness eight years ago, and based on how freely they will tease us, we haven’t totally failed. They keep chasing our goats.

Teasing does not go away as an adult; it just gets subtler. It is never to late to hide your goat. (For those who have read Climb your Stairway to Heaven, you may be thinking of hiding your goat with a sheep down a well, but that’s another story.)

The next time you are teased, try laughing with the teaser. It can be a very liberating experience.

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November – The Most Depressing Month of The Year

November 10, 2011 by 1 Comment

A few reasons why November is the most depressing month of the year:

  • It is getting colder, not as much fun being outdoors. Bleugh.
  • The green of the trees has left.  The leaves have fallen.  All that’s left are bare sticks. Bleugh.
  • Grass and ground plants are turning brown.  Bleugh.
  • There is no white snow yet to brighten up the landscape. Bleugh.
  • Days are getting shorter, so there is less light. Bleugh.
  • Cloud cover makes the shorter days and the browner barren landscape, making it all even bleughier.

We are in the final stages of setting up a solar power generation system on our land (You can read about it at http://www.solarontarioblog.ca)  Until we saw the month solar radiation stats, we did not realize just how cloudy November is.

See this graph:

Consider that December 21 is the Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year.  That means that December should have the least hours of sunshine, weather excluded.  Because the 21st is closer to January than to November, January should have the second-fewest hours of sunlight, and November should have the third-fewest hours of sunlight.

November is the perfect time to do purposeful things to add some uplift to your days.  In our household, that has meant some games of air hockey, trips to the library and board games – family things we can do together that encourage laughter and smiles.

How do you plan to blow away the clouds of November?

Note: I have cross-posted this (sort of) over at November – Solar Power’s Doldrums.

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Individuality Explained

October 31, 2011 by 2 Comments

Everybody is different.  We each have our own values.  We each have our own tastes.  We each have our own preferences.

And sometimes it is not enough to “be” an individual and “have” our own preferences.  Sometimes we need to express our individuality.

The most common way people express their individuality is through fashion (and much less socially disruptive than graffiti or vandalism or public disturbances).  While following the whims of fashion is probably the way people show the most lack of individuality – everybody’s tastes changing in unison – rejecting a fashion norm or breaking out one’s own fashion trend is one of the best ways to say, “Hey, I’m me.”

My elder daughter brought this home to me a few months back when I noticed that she was no longer capable of finding two socks in her drawer that matched.  It seems that if a matching pair was found, she would hunt it to extinction.  Wearing two non-matching pairs became her small way of saying, , “Hey, I’m me” without being too disruptive to those people around her.

She kindly agreed to model some of her choices over a two-week period for this post.  As you can see, variety is not something she lacks.  If I tried mixing up my socks, chances are that nobody would know the difference.  But here the difference is plain to see.

 

READ ALSO: Do you personalize?

This post was featured in the Carnival of Creativity.

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Got Guilt?

October 27, 2011 by 3 Comments

It’s time to let go of some baggage.  It is time to get rid of the guilt.

“Who, me?  Guilty?  I don’t feel guilty.  I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.  Hey, what are you implying?…”

Relax.  Most people feel guilty.  Yes, even all the innocent people feel guilty. We feel guilty about not spending enough time with our kids or our spouse, and if we spend more time with them we feel guilty about not spending enough time with our friends or our work, and if we spend more time with them we feel guilty about not spending more time on church or community projects, and if we spend more time with them … STOP!

There are only 24 hours in the day.  There are only seven days in a week.  You cannot simply dispense with the laws of arithmetic, nor can you suspend time. Portion the hours you have been given as best as you can.  If you do that, please do not feel guilty.  You have nothing to feel guilty about.

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Is your marriage heating up or cooling off?

October 14, 2011 by 1 Comment

What I remember most vividly from our marriage preparation course (yeah, that’s a long time ago by now) is learning that in most parts of the world and most times in history marriages were arranged.  You did not marry for love, you loved for marriage.  We are used to hearing horror stories about arranged marriages and how people are forced to marry someone they do not even love.  But we rarely hear about how successful most arranged marriages are.  I guess that is not newsworthy.

Recently I read a statement to the effect that in modern society we jump in with a red hot passion, and after the wedding day we slowly let it cool down, whereas in more “traditional” cultures, a marriage starts out cool and the couple spends their life making it grow hotter each day.

Of course not all arranged marriages end up growing hotter, just as not all “true love” marriages last a lifetime.

What are you doing in your marriage?  Are you making it hotter or cooling it off?  A marriage doesn’t have to be arranged to grow hotter – it simply has to have a spark and two people feeding the fire.  So keep feeding it.

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