Now here's a really neat way to spend a year of your life! Gretchen Rubin is writing a book and an amazing blog called The Happiness Project. It's about spending a year testing every principle, tip, rule, theory, and scientific study about happiness and reporting on what works! How cool is that???? She includes so much neat stuff that I'm going to have to do a series a posts about her. This is definitely one of those must- see - "wish I'd thought of that, but I could not have said it better myself" blogs!
I think the Happiness Project is a FABULOUS idea. And it has inspired me share my thoughts on happiness here with you - because you really can't experience true happiness without learning to let go of emotional and physical clutter from the past and without establishing a peaceful order in your life. Not perfection, but a sense of order.
Happiness for me, at least, was VERY hard won. I grew up on welfare in a very violent, abusive home with angry alcoholic parents. My father finally left us alone (thankfully) when I was 8 and I haven't seen him since. The violence didn't end there though. My next stepfather was almost as bad. My mother took out her frustration on her kids, and on a succession of boyfriends and husbands.
Happiness Poster - Photo source:
http://flickr.com/photos/justinshattuck/198831800/
Without going into lots of gory detail on my life story, let's just say that I developed a very strong need to be responsible, especially for my younger siblings, a strong need for order to counteract the clutter and emotional chaos in my childhood, a strong need to please, to achieve, and to basically be perfect - perfect grades, perfect home, perfect work assignments, and to have perfectly happy bosses, students and clients.
I moved out of my mother's apt. (can't call it home) the first time when I was 12 to be a live-in babysitter and housekeeper for a single mom. I got a job and my own small apartment when I was just 14 - so that I could help my 4 younger siblings get away from my mother. I took on a lot of survivor's guilt for being the oldest and strongest of 5 kids and took on a lot of responsibility as well. I also had a lot of distrust, fear and disappointment just under my perfectly responsible surface. Even today I have a hard time sharing my imperfections, but I've gotten much better about it. As you can imagine I was anything BUT happy.
I can actually vividly remember the first time I started to feel like I had found peace in the world. The first time I felt truly deeply happy. Not just the momentary earned happiness of getting good grades, getting a rave review from a client, or getting a good job or promotion. I mean really feeling happy with my imperfect self and feeling just peaceful existing in the world.
It was just after I turned 40, the culminations of all my struggles, achievements, and learnings finally started to sink in. I remember a deep peaceful feeling of acceptance, forgiveness, faith, and of letting go - letting go of the past, letting go of failures, letting go of my expectations that I would be married and have children by the time I was 40. Instead I had memories of 5 broken engagements and several abusive relationships.
I also had a lot of career successes that I had thought would make me happy - but didn't - I let go of that too. And I started to let go of physical stuff that was associated with a past I didn't want to carry around with me any longer. It was incredibly freeing to release stuff I kept out of sentiment and fear of letting go. Something clicked and I finally let go of the parts of me that were on hold - waiting for someone else to join me in life.
Peace without Borders Photo Contest Entry
Photo Source: http://flickr.com/photos/cybercare/57049784/
I started to feel a deeper faith in the universe - faith that things would be okay - even if they didn't turn out exactly the way I dreamed of as a kid hiding in my closet. I stopped dating and stopped worrying about pleasing other people. I started to create new dreams and fulfill them on my own.
For example, I traveled to Spain - alone!! Something I NEVER thought I would do. I always thought I would go to my ancestral country and see where my grandmother was born and raised (Malaga and Marbella) on my honeymoon. It turned to be the beginning of my honeymoon with myself. Traveling alone for me was the ultimate expression of my faith that everything would be okay. I finally became truly happy being alone in the world.
Oddly enough, a few months later I met my husband to be! We never really dated though. We were "just friends" right up until we realized we were in love. Anyway, it boils down to this. In my 46 years of living, I've finally found that my ultimate deep happiness comes from what I DO with my life, what I LET GO OF in my life, and what I BELIEVE about the world. Whenever I do nothing, or whenever I hold on to unrealistic expectations, or attach too much importance to things, I become unhappy.
Happiness for me is a by-product of:
- Having faith and believing things will all work out even if I can't make it work out my way.
- Having goals and accomplishing them
- Taking care of myself & my family (Exercising, keeping my home organized and clean, my marriage and my pets)
- Helping other people overcome their life obstacles (This is the greatest high for me - and making a living doing it, helps me be able to do it more! It's the best career move I ever made)
- Being actively grateful for all the good things in my life - every day
- Letting go - not only of physical stuff but of emotional baggage as well. When I stopped expecting myself and other people to be a certain way and learned to forgive myself and others for human foibles and weaknesses, I became gradually more peaceful and happy
Learning to let go of most of the anger, fear and anxiety of my childhood; And, actively accepting the paradoxes of being human in an imperfect world that can be so cruel, violent, hypocritical and randomly horrifying, as well as stunningly beautiful and kind, was not easy, but it was essential to my happiness.
For me, happiness was and is a by-product of loving, letting someone love me their way, trusting even while accepting that people will let me down, forgiving them when they do, keeping my life and home in reasonable order - not perfection, doing work I am deeply passionate about, and practicing being grateful everyday for what I have, and being kind to people.
It may sound hoaky or corny, but every day, my husband and I express something we are grateful about, something we appreciate about having the other in our lives. It's so easy to take each other for granted. Expressing to each other what we are thankful for really keeps love, respect, kindness and appreciation alive for us.
Kindness Graph Source:
http://flickr.com/photos/51453931@N00/73796459/
So that's my story - long - yet actually short! After all, Gretchen Rubin is going to write a whole book about Happiness! : )
If you got this far, thanks for reading my story! If you have a minute to share, I would to love to hear your answers to this question:
Where does your happiness come from?
"I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances."
- Martha Washington (1732 - 1802)
“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort”
- Franklin D Roosevelt
Source: http://quotes.wordpress.com/tag/happiness-quotes/
For more about The Happiness Project visit Gretchen's amazing Blog!
Sending Neat and Happy thoughts,
about different aspects of running a successful business." Learn more about Ellen Shapiro here
Dr. Dyer talks about how the 
for letting go of sugar, was recently featured on CBS News Sunday Morning during a segment in which they spent a whole 8 minutes on our skyrocketing sugar consumption and related health problems. If you missed the CBS News Sunday Morning segment it's not too late! 
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