Tag: “secret”

friday’s “secret”: “make someone else happy”

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One of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin has the following quote:

 

Make Yourself Happy

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.

I have shared Jennifer Belthoff’s The Love Notes Project here. What’s so great is that it was an experience that keeps on giving. On The Love Notes Facebook page, a fellow member posted about the Chemo Angels Program.

This simple but truly wonderful program supports individuals battling breast cancer matching applicants together based upon age, gender, interests, etc. You then send your assigned fighter cards, letters, and small tokens of positivity, support, and encouragement through good old-fashioned snail mail. The goals of the project are to show individuals battling this terrible disease that they are not alone and maybe help fuel a positive attitude to aid their recovery.

There are two kinds of angels: (1) Card Angel and (2) Chemo Angel, which is a little more involved than a Card Angel. To be a Card Angel, all that is required is that you send one card or letter once a week – 49 cents per week = $27.44 a year. Once you have accepted your assignment, you commit to sending something every week. It is worth noting here that Chemo Angels and Card Angels is a very serious commitment. Someone is counting on your notes!

I applied last month for a number of reasons:

  1. Making someone else happy would help make me happy!
  2. If I were ever diagnosed with breast cancer, I would love to receive notes of encouragement. “Do unto others…”
  3. By writing someone who is in a more challenging situation than myself on a weekly basis, I will be more grateful about my own life and my own circumstances. I received my assignment two weeks ago: a young woman, my own age with three young boys! Mission accomplished!

If you are able to spare the time, please take a look at this program and if you feel so inclined, please sign up. It’s such a little thing to do that could have a HUGE impact in the life of someone else. The website is: www.chemoangels.com and link directly to an application here.

enjoy life…

friday’s “secret”: “this life right here, right now is beautiful.”

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writing in the night

“This life right here, right now is beautiful.” – Jessica Flannigan

As I am writing this, it is 12:45 AM, on a Thursday morning. Now anyone who knows me well, knows that I value my sleep. I am one of those individuals who needs 9 hours a night. Or should I say, I use to be one of those individuals who needed 9 hours a night. With the arrival of Buddy Man, 7 hours is an absolute luxury!

Sleep often eludes me once I have had to wake up and tend to Buddy Man’s needs; my brain will often go into overdrive thinking of all of things I need to do, worrying about stuff, just refusing to go down again. Buddy Man often follows his pattern of refusing to go down again, which keeps me up even longer.

However, over the past couple of months, instead of fighting valiantly to the bitter end to go back to sleep, which is really nothing but staring at the clock as the minutes tick mercilessly by, I have decided to embrace the solitude and do things that, if attempted during the daylight hours, would be interrupted.

One of my very podcast is The Lively Show and on October 29, Jessica interviewed Jessica Flannigan of Live the Fancy Life. You can listen here. It was a good interview and a lot of things were very helpful to me but the quote that stuck out and that I am trying to remember daily is the quote that I started the post with and bears repeating again:

“This life right here, right now is beautiful.”

Even though my eyes are slightly heavy, and I know I will have a sleep-deprived headache in the morning, my life, “right here, right now is beautiful.” I chose to enjoy that I am able sit in my bed with my Mac Book Pro and write in the stillness of the night. I chose to enjoy this season of life. “Live in each season, as it passes,” said Henry David Thoreau. I chose to enjoy the seasons, as tired as I may be.

enjoy life…

 

friday’s “secret”: to be happy, you gotta step outside of your comfort zone, sometimes

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“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.” – Pearl S. Buck

Every Friday, OK, most Friday’s, I like to post a “secret” to being happy. Of course, they are not really secrets, at all; they are just things that I have learned over the past few years, that have increased my happiness quotient.

Today’s secret comes from the events of two weeks ago – I gave a presentation, up-front, speaking in public – to about 90 individuals at a weekend-long health and wellness retreat. I have been deathly afraid of public speaking in the past. I think it has something to do with my introverted personality, among other things, and it is not something that I say I enjoy. But I have made a decision to stop letting fear make MOST of my decisions, and so I accepted the engagement.

What I learned from doing it is the most important thing that I take away from the experience.

While I was preparing for it, when I didn’t concentrate on how scared I was and other random emotions, it was exciting. To be sure, there were a few nights when sleep eluded me and I was up at 2 AM working on the presentation, but I decided to embrace those nights of beautiful solitude, as I worked on a topic that I am very passionate about. While I was speaking, it became enjoyable. The audience was kind of enough to listen and be engaged with me and that made things a whole lot easier. Afterwards, peoples’ responses were kind and they seemed receptive to what I had presented. Gretchen Rubin speaks of this phenomenon in her book The Happiness Project. She states, “Many activities that I consider enjoyable are not that much fun while they are happening.”

I was proud of myself for doing something that I don’t normally do and there was a satisfaction in knowing that I had accepted the challenge, prepared, and delivered my best effort. That made me happy.

How about you? Have you found this to be true? Tell me about it.

enjoy life…