The Sun Always Shines

January 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The sun is the giver of life. And it is always there.

Yes, even on cloudy days. Even when highly overcast, there is sun. That huge ball of fire so unimaginably far away pierces through outer space and even through the clouds.

Ever since setting up our solar power generation, I have been highly focused on the ridiculous lack of sun these past two months – most likely a world record for this time of year.

But the sun has been shining through and we have been generating as much as 40% of solar capacity on overcast days. While this is a minor victory for solar power and a pain in the butt for people looking for excuses to ignore sunscreen warnings about cloudy days, it is of some comfort to anybody who feels like the sun might have abandoned them.

Yes, even on dismal days, there is a sun smiling on you. And if you don’t wiggle your way out of putting on the sunscreen, it’s a happy smile indeed.

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: ,

Fable of the Porcupine Family

January 4, 2012 by 6 Comments

It was deep in the midst of January, and the cold was taking its toll on Hidden Valley’s wildlife community.

The Porcupine Family was hunkered down, trying to keep warm by cuddling close to one another. Like this, they were able to cover themselves and protect each other from the cold, much the way penguins do in Antarctica.

Alas, the quills of each porcupine wounded its closest companions. Before long, each of them had had pretty much enough and they decided to distance themselves one from the other.

But cold is cold and freezing is freezing and they slowly began to die – alone and frozen. So the Porcupines had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or succumb to a slow and painful death.

Wisely, they decided to get back together. It was not easy, but they learned to put up with the little wounds caused by such a close relationship with their companions, in order to receive the living warmth that came from the others. It was like this that the Porcupine family was able to survive the cold winter.

Moral of the story: The best relationship is not the one that brings perfect people closer together. It is when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of the others and can admire each other’s endearing qualities and find happiness together.

READ ALSO: OZ: the fantasy or the reality

READ ALSO: The Four Candles

 

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , ,

Mow the Lawn?

December 21, 2011 by 4 Comments

JOKE: If your child wants to mow the lawn, you know he is too young to do so.

REALITY: Isn’t the grass always greener on the other side of the fence?  When you can’t do something yet, you long to be able to do it.  As a kid, we long to be able to mow the lawn. As teenagers we can’t wait to leave home, but not long after we seem to gravitate back.  Whatever our neighbor has looks great … until we get one, too, and then we notice another neighbor has something else that looks pretty good.

But we already have all the things we need, and whatever age we are is just the right age for us right now.  It is great to have dreams and to work toward them, but not at the expense of missing what we have now…which quite often are the dreams we once longed for.

JOKE: Someday, all kids who can mow will want to, and all who are too young will be happy to wait.

 

 

* image by Michael Marcus

 READ ALSO: Enough

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , , , ,

The Power of Focusing Your Attention

December 15, 2011 by 4 Comments

In a world of multi-tasking and hand-held devices, our moments of laser focus are in danger of extinction. Instead of dedicating our full attention to one thing at a time, we live in a society that promotes the opposite. The idea seems to be that the busier we are, the more productive we’ll be. However, the critical question is, how do we continue to approach our tasks at hand during the busier times?

I have encountered many professionals who are perpetually busy with various projects and aspects of their work, yet, seem to rarely ever make progress. I believe the culprit is multitasking, and the answer is focus management. Contrary to time management and multi-tasking, focus management is a thorough approach to getting things done. It’s about being in the moment and dedicating full attention to the task at hand until it’s complete.

Too often I have found that whenever we come across a large amount of things to do, we tend to fall into a state of desperation, causing us to hit the panic button and scramble our attention. This is when multitasking comes into play. Instead of trying to swallow the elephant within one bite, we need to relax, take a step back and dissect this large, overwhelming task into small individual steps. Once we accomplish this, it is our responsibility to then focus our entire attention on that step, without thinking about the next step until the current one is completed.

READ ALSO: 11 life lessons

Consistency is another vital attribute when it comes to focus management. I believe that focus + consistency = tremendous gains and results. If we manage to set up a focus management plan but lack consistency, we will not get very far in whichever endeavor we pursue. This is one of the reasons why I believe it’s important to break down our tasks into small, individual ones. This gives us the opportunity to accomplish more as well as gain momentum. Once we begin to gain momentum, we will then begin to generate the energy needed in order to achieve consistent results.

This new style of working may sound a little bit awkward for those who are accustomed to multitasking, but I guarantee it is more productive than divvying up your attention. It’s all about making consistent and focused increments towards accomplishing your goals.

This is a guest post by Luis Rosario, the Director of Communications / Event Relations for MorningCoach.com Personal Development Community, an online community that focuses on prosperity & abundance, lifestyle design, quality of life, and motivation. With an educational background in Sociology and Inter-cultural Communications, his mission is to change the world for the better one event at a time!

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , ,

Enough – [Christmas video]

December 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This is my favorite Christmas song, by Alberta country artist Remi Boudreau.

I’ve got enough
I’m completely satisfied
I don’t need stuff
Just this thing that’s true and tried
I don’t need the perfect gift to fit me like a glove
I’ve got enough

Even on an average day, I find that we are surrounded with so many messages that tell us that no matter how much we have, no matter how gluttonous we might become, that we could never have enough.  More.  More.  More.  And those messages only seem to grow in abundance as we get closer to Christmas.

Given that we are full-steam into shopping season, this might help us all to keep it real. Watch and listen to the video, and hopefully it will put you in the Christmas spirit.  In THE Christmas spirit.

READ ALSO: Proud to Be a Grinch

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With:

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.


 

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , , ,

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

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , , ,

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
« Previous Page
Next Page »