How about happiness?

Good sunny Autumn day!

I just read something in a very good book that I’m reading, “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin, that one of her casual advisers told her to blog everyday. So let’s see how many days I will blog… everyday. It’s interesting, I do think some pretty cool thoughts everyday, at least to me, however will they be to other people? If I can remember them when I approach my computer, I may put them down too!

The book I’m reading is pretty cool because it’s from another woman who has taken on a year long project as did the author of “Eat Pray Love” who also chose to ‘discover’ things about herself over a year but one of the major differences is that Gretchen has a husband and children and has no desire to pull up stakes and travel the world to “find herself” but instead has created this project to investigate her happiness. What is it? What does it mean? How she can shift it? Etc. It is a book worth reading.

If I think about happiness for me, I’ve decided that I am the one that has to create it. Just yesterday, my “happiness factor” was challenged. Someone in my life did something, with full intentions of “taking care of me” and it bordered on overturning a major “condition of satisfaction” of mine of me being aware of, and choosing for myself, any choices that affect me in a way that may have adverse or non-adverse circumstances in my future. In other words, something I will now have to be conscious of which could potentially be a problem in my future and, which I’ve created as a personal COS so that unpleasant situations have less of a chance of showing up. To have choice in important situations of an agreement before an agreement is completed. (Isn’t free choice awesome?!)

My happiness factor was challenged and with it the emotions that showed up immediately were fear, alarm, disbelief, surprise, helplessness and finally, a mood of indignation. This act, I believe, given my history with the person who made the decision that would affect me, was done with the intention of being “for my happiness” so I am not saying it was malicious. However, I was not a happy person that I had not had a choice before .. “now”.

In the past, I might have yelled, cried, thrown a hissy fit and walked out of the room. However, with the ‘work’ I’ve done on myself, what I get is that I am not living in my past. Over the years, I have studied my “automatic” ways of being that have shown up for me when similar situations have occurred. Those automatic WOB may have worked the very first time I handled whatever happened probably at some young age when I did not have a say so of what would happen in my life, however those WOB do not work now and I’ve learned to upgrade them ‘to the age I am’ now.

Another part of my WOB was that my body would have immediately gone into action in a way that would not support the future of the relationship I have with this person. In other words, I may have stood up, put my body in a very dominating position of leaning forward, pointing, yelling at the top of my lungs, squinting my eyes and generally moving about like a mad woman. That, I have realized over the years, does not and will never work for every situation. What my body did instead was to sit up straight, open my eyes wide, and use a voice with a slightly raised yet calm tone such that I had the attention of the room, and asked with very a careful, focused, inquisitive and intentional voice the situation that I was now confronted with making a choice of what to do next.

Being aware of my WOB (way of being) works for my choosing happiness. To monitor, what I say, to check in with the emotions and moods that I am experiencing “in the moment” as I KNOW, this was NOT a past based situation but something that has happened NOW in the present. Then, to be aware of what my physical body… dispositions (language, whatever you want to call them), are doing. What is my body doing in the present situation that is not working for me and the situation I am in then shift or alter it so that I am responsible for me and respectful of others. If I’m pacing and yelling and pointing fingers and flailing my arms about, that is not going to be the body disposition of “inquiry” or “discovery” or just plain “choice.” That, instead, will bring me “upset” and “confusion” and a lack of happiness.

It’s all based in choice; choosing my own happiness.