Wednesday, June 1, 2022

“Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears.” - Richard Wilkins

 

A dear friend was lamenting the state of the world these days, and indeed, the wars, shootings, political and legal wrangles are disturbing to those who want peace and prosperity for all. In addition to the natural disasters which seem constant: fires, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.

And yet, and yet . . . For every negative media blast there is somewhere on the planet a positive situation or event. An Uber driver sacrificing his day’s work (which he dearly needed) to help a stranger who’d been robbed at California’s Coachella music festival find her phone and a way home. That same stranger turning around and creating a GoFundMe to help the driver with his daughter’s cancer treatment bills, to the tune of over a hundred thousand dollars.

A person just passing by saw that a dog had fallen into bone-chilling water in a frozen lake in NY’s Central Park, and that the dog’s owner was having no luck getting the dog out. The good Samaritan gave it a go, tumbled into the water himself, yet managed to get both dog and himself out of the lake safe and sound. In Costa Rica, police stopped traffic to allow a sloth to cross a busy road – sloooowly, at a distinguished sloth pace.

I could go on and on. Good stuff happens every day in our world, in every corner of the world. The bad stuff grabs our attention, but you don’t have to park your attention there and camp out. If you feel called to action, great! You may decide to protest, petition or pray, whatever works for you. The important thing is that you also turn your attention to the good stuff.

That you pay attention to your dreams. Whether those dreams are for yourself, your family, your community, or our world matters not. What matters, as the quote states, is that you give at least as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears. Because only as we move in the direction of our dreams, both in thought and action, can those dreams come to pass.

And then, yes, miracles can start to happen!

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Monday, May 2, 2022

Finding Happiness, Living Your Joy

 


So often, it seems like the world presses against us, day in day out. Work duties, family obligations, endless chores, finances, on and on. Who has time for anything as frivolous as deliberately “finding happiness”? Much less “living your joy.” Like, when? How? And why would it even matter when getting through the day in one piece seems like “joy” enough.

It matters. A lot. The science is unequivocal: happy people are healthier. Happy people cope with stress better. People who cope with stress better are more successful – mostly because their energies are less bound up in anxiety and fear. Plus, happy just feels good. Look at any toddler running around. They have a singular objective; to be as happy as possible. They don’t care what you think of it, the mess they may create, or how their bouncy, quirky selves annoy others. They are happy, and that’s reason enough for them to do whatever they are doing.

You groan. OK, fine, but what if happiness for you means traveling? To far distant lands, for example, which costs more money than you can afford, and means time off work/family/etc. which you can’t get.

Easy peasy. Use your creative brain (yes, you have one, everyone does) to come up with a way to satisfy – to some degree – your travel urge without costing you beaucoup bucks in time or money. A friend of mine, whose passionate longing to visit Japan has been squelched by work, finances, family and COVID, came up with a unique solution: he and his partner visited their town’s local “Japan town” and spent an afternoon there. They soaked up the different architecture, visited the stores with their Japanese goods, ate at a Japanese restaurant, relished the different language spoken all around them – and went home, guess what? Happy!

Did this replace my friend’s desire to visit Japan? No. But it did give him a wonderful few hours of quasi-immersion in the Japanese culture. It gave him some happiness, while he saves dollars for when the time to actually go to Japan becomes available.

Your happiness might be to become a best-selling author. Great! “But who has the time to write?” you ask. You. You have an hour, somewhere in your week, that you can devote to writing. Maybe even an hour twice a week. You can master the “4 pages a week” writing goal that another friend of mine used to eventually complete her first novel.

It really doesn’t matter what brings you happiness, you can find a way to do some portion of it, to experience the whatever it is, in some small measure, until the circumstances of your life allow you to indulge in a bigger way.

That’s what “finding happiness” is all about. “Living your joy” is the natural consequence of the deliberate cultivation, bit by bit, of what makes you happy.

Go for it! Heck, if the average toddler has nailed this, so can you.

 

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

The Pull of The Familiar, Episode 40

Why is it that sometimes in the best of times, you feel anxious? Like the other shoe is going to drop any minute, and sure enough, something comes along to bump you out of your happiness bubble. How unfortunate! Especially since it doesn’t need to be this way. In this podcast you’ll learn how to keep that happiness going – on and on and on! Cause, why not? You certainly deserve it.


Check out this latest episode!

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

The Trap of Comparison, Episode 39

It’s tempting to compare yourself to others, you know, those slimmer-richer-happier-more successful others, yet whenever you do, you end up feeling awful about yourself. Lower than an earthworm, undeserving, miserable. That’s not a way to live! And certainly not a way to achieve your unique goals. In this podcast you’ll discover how to get past the trap of comparison and actually use comparison to your advantage. Yay!


Check out this latest episode!