Happiness 😊

Big thoughts, small pleasure.  High ideals, small wins.  These are a couple of the latest ideas I've encountered in my reading and daily meditation that point me onto the road of happiness. 

Of course I have known about gratitude as a pathway to happiness for over 30 years now.  I have always tried to remember to be grateful, no matter what my circumstances.  I have kept a written gratitude journal on and off for many of those years.  I always seek to be grateful in my heart and mind, for everything I have, for every experience I encounter.

Tomorrow is my first skydive, weather permitting.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.  I know about the mind hack that says to relabel the nervousness as excitement because the brain doesn't know the difference, so choose excitement, because excitement is a positive vibe.

But, I also think that happiness can come from accomplishing hard things, so trying to reframe my feelings into something positive could potentially rob me of an opportunity for happiness.  If I am learning anything from the book on Letting Go, it is to surrender to the feeling AS IT IS.  Surrender will allow the feeling to be what it needs to be for my highest good, no skydiving pun intended here, but I'm always looking for a smile so I will take it.  I'm a bit of a clown that way, I guess.

"One of the ways empowerment comes to us is to feel/face the things we don't want to..."

Does empowerment equal happiness?  It must contribute to it, IMO. Feeling courageous, feeling stronger, it helps me keep going. I'm looking forward to gaining some positive momentum from my experience tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to a Peak Experience.  But maybe I need to pause for a minute and reconsider my expectations.

I'm reading another book called The Gap and the Gain, The HIGH ACHIEVERS' GUIDE to HAPPINESS, CONFIDENCE, and SUCCESS. One of the pages I keep flipping open to states: "Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against. The antidote to being in the GAP is to measure yourself by the GAIN. More specifically, you measure your own GAINS, rather than worrying about other people."

Measuring yourself against yourself, not other people.  I can get on board with that...or at least I can try. Comparing myself to others is one of my greatest struggles.  I do it so often it just feels natural and I don't even realize that I am doing it.  And I think I have probably always done it, even since I was just a little girl, trying to be like and be liked by my older teenage cousins.  

My family was full of judgement, from my Grandma and Aunt commenting on my big butt one Thanksgiving as I went back for a second piece of pie..."and she's not even 18 yet."😲 To my uncle driving us through "niggerville" which was East St. Louis or North St. Louis, I think, I mean I was only 9 or 10 at the time so I don't really know where we were.  And there's more judgement about my appearance and my hand-me-down clothes, even when I was only 10, and my hair never looked good enough and I really did go through some very homely periods in my adolescence and when you are judged like that and how you look seems to mean so much to everyone around you... well I guess I am just trying to say that I have been well programmed to judge myself and be self critical.  

I didn't mean to go off on this tangent.  I've worked a LOT of years to overcome judgement of my Self and others.  I'm in an ongoing but hopefully waning battle of judging, and low self image, and comparing myself to others...but I can't lie.  It's still a thing.  That's why I preach so much self-love.  Sorry, yes, I guess I am preaching that.  I don't want to preach.  I try.

And I do what I can.  My run today was an accomplishment, but not a peak experience like this past Sunday.  But it's what I got and it's what I got to do and I am grateful for it. So GRATEFUL.  I am HAPPY! 

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