Got Peace?

Wherever you go, there you are.

You can only journey from where you are already standing.

What is real?

"We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again, if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjur up to avoid the unavoidable."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remian unmoving

till the right action arises by itself?"

Lao-Tzu

"Don't go outside your house to see the flowers.

My friend, don't bother with that excursion.

Inside your body there are flowers.

One flower has a thousand petals.

That will do for a place to sit.

Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty

inside the body and out of it,

before gardens and after gardens."

Kabir

"Direct your eye right inward,

and you'll find

A thousand regions in your mind

Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be

Expert in home-cosmography."

Thoreau

Another Way to Foster Happiness

In addition to expressing gratitude, and investing in relationships, another way to foster happiness in our lives is to have goals to work towards.

People who are working towards a goal are happier than those of us who have no goals or who feel we have reached our goals and now are at a stand still.  Goals don't just help individuals spice up their life and be more content.  When couples/friends/groups, work towards a goal together, it not only makes them happier...it makes the relationships stronger.

Goal setting forces us to look at our lives and see what we want the big picture to look like. After we have an idea of where we want to go, we can break the bigger journey down into smaller distances. In this way, we have the big goal and then we can create smaller goals to help us reach our destination.



It is easy to see why so many people are challenged when they get to what we call "mid life." They are often in a job they've held for a while and it is getting routine. Maybe it doesn't even fit their life and personality anymore but they have kept doing it to put bread on the table...but now the table has fewer place settings because the kids are grown and on their own. Now that the raising of the children is over ....Or ...now that the house they worked so hard to build is beautiful and quite finished...where do they go from here?




Some goal setting tips for creating a SWEET life:

• Be as Specific as you can about what you want to achieve
• Write your goals down.  You may even want to write everything down...               the pondering, the questions, the winding road of thoughts that leads to the embracing of the final goal(s).
• Create goals that Energize you. If what you are thinking you should do feel likes a drag to you, it is less likely that you will do it.
• Make the goals small enough that they are fairly Easy to achieve and measure. Being overwhelmed by a daunting task leads to procrastination and a feeling of hopelessness....which does not foster that happiness we are looking to cultivate.. ;-) We want to be able to enjoy the journey and know when we have finished one goal and can move on to the next one.
• Set aside quality Time to evaluate your life and goals. If possible, go away for a day or two to a place where you can relax, let go of your usual worries, and dream big.

by Canadian designer Aaron Christopher Judd 

More Contentment

At the end of last week's blog I said: "In reality, all of us could be without a home or a vehicle or...insert words here...in an instant. There are no guarantees."


I used to work at a church and one of the parts of the job I really enjoyed was answering the door when people came looking for help. In the course of trying to find how best the church could help them, I had many conversations with the seekers. One thing that made an impression on me year after year was that most of the people at the door did not have relationships with friends or family that could sustain them in their time of need. I came to see that homelessness, especially in the case of single individuals, said something not only about the person's ability to find and hold down a paying job but also about the state of their relationships with others.


That brings me to happiness and the second quality of people who are happy.
The happiest people are those who invest in relationships with others.

One must be careful when reading the above statement. Even though happy people generally invest themselves in relationships, we are each responsible for our own happiness. Looking to other people to make us happy does not work. Saying that I must be in a relationship with so-and-so in order to be happy is a slippery slope.


True happiness comes from within and not from others.



Yale University Psychologist June Gruber: “The strongest predictor of happiness is not money, or external recognition through success or fame, it’s having meaningful social relationships. That means the best way to increase your happiness is to stop worrying about being happy and instead divert your energy to nurturing the social bonds you have with other people."



Investing in relationships means spending time with others, giving of yourself to others and allowing them to give back to you. At the heart of investing in relationships is the ability to be open and vulnerable and allow yourself to receive comfort from others.



So find occasions to enjoy and nurture the relationships you already have and also to encourage new friendships. One of the ways you can strengthen your relationships is to do a certain thing together....no....I'm not talking about anything sexual....more about that next time.




In the meantime, here's something else for you to do:

The Oxford Happiness Inventory, developed by psychologists Michael Argyle and Peter Hills at Oxford University in 2001, shows positive correlations for happiness with satisfaction with life, self-esteem, and sociability.

Take the Happiness Inventory for yourself at
http://www.meaningandhappiness.com/oxford-happiness-questionnaire/214/

The Road to Contentment #1

A blog follower commented on last week's blog about small spaces by saying, "They look like well decorated jail cells to me...but if it's the only only home I had, I would be happy there."


That led to me think about being content.


When I was a kid there was an ad for Borden's milk that said it came from contented cows. The television commercial showed an animated pretty female looking cow, named Elsie, happily chewing her cud. That's the first image that comes to my mind when I think of the word - "content."



Research shows that one's actual circumstances have very little do with happiness and that it is rare that it just happens. A feeling of happiness is a combination of one's personality, thoughts, and behaviors.


Now please, DO NOT think that I am saying that if a person is homeless or hungry that they can think their way into shelter and a meal. I am NOT saying that. I am talking about the feeling of happiness in a person who already has their basic needs met.


Why all this concern with contentment? Well, lately I have not been feeling as content as I would like.
And since I am a do-er and a fixer at heart, even though I try to practice "just being"....my next question is:


What are the facets of cultivating contentment?
What can one DO to foster an attitude of contentment?



I believe the first thing is to BE GRATEFUL for what you already have.
Many times when we feel discontent, it is because we are wanting something we don't have.
or...We are living out of mindset of scarcity instead of acknowledging that we have enough.



One of the mantras I use when I am worrying about something that I cannot change is "Just let go, you already have everything you need."



And it is true. I do, right this minute, have everything I need. I don't have everything I want...and how boring would that be anyway...but I do have everything I NEED.
Next month I might not have everything I need but all I can do about that right this moment is what I can do now to plan for and work for next month.


In reality, all of us could be without a home or a vehicle or...insert words here...in an instant. There are no guarantees.


That leads me to think of the second thing one can do to foster an attitude of contentment.....but you'll have to wait unti next time for that.