be the happiest person I know every day

No school! The power is out at their school so life doesn’t get much better than that.

Just read a really interesting goal from TracyYonder that was “find out how forgiveness feels so I can recognize it when it happens…” it occurs to me that I have to put that into practice with love in my life a little more. I practice happiness so much each day but not love so much. Awareness is key here.

You can’t be happy if you are thinking negatively about others or overreacting to situations. Sometimes I have to just take a deep breath and remember that I want to be loving and peaceful.

I am becoming a happy person again. I attribute it to my counseling and a really good sermon I heard last Sunday and a lot of praying and some hard work on my part. Earl Nightingale said it best: We are what we think about. His “Strangest Secret of All” is one of the best self-help things I have ever heard. I recommend it highly. I was so angry when I started my counseling. That was all I was thinking about. My anger was ruling my life. Sunday I heard a friend who had JUST lost his sister speaking of ”...count it all joy…” Man, that hit my heart so hard. Count it all Joy? Why should I? Then as I listened I got it. I can let the hardships kick my butt or I can use them to make myself a better person. Suffering is never a good thing. How we react to the suffering is the key. Will I allow the suffering to rob me of who I have become? Will I sink back down to the emotional cesspool that it took so long for me to crawl out of? I have been through worse. I have lived through MUCH worse. Will I loose all the ground I have covered? Will I give up the only family that has ever cared enough to go through hell and back again to make sure that I was okay and forgiven me for all the pain that I have put them through because I am angry? My anger is paling in the light of His love and of theirs. I do not want to cut off my nose to spite my face; as my Grandma used to say. For today I am working on doing the next right thing. For today I am working realizing that I am becoming what I think about and that it is up to me what it is that I think about.

Was at a breathwprks gathering last night and the instructor read lesson 101 from The Course in Miracles which sort of says that our purpose in life is to be happy. Whew at least I’m getting something right

A couple of the children I regularly play with at my part time job came in today and wanted me to play with them. My mom once said to me that there is no greater treasure than to be loved by a child. When they come and find you and grab your hand, or run up to you and say hello, or ask you to come home and play with them, you know you are doing the right thing. Also, when you can make a baby laugh out loud. And its nice to hear parents say thank you too. Not necessary, but nice.

show me that it doesn’t matter where you are. It just matters whether or not you choose to be happy or sad. You go Michael! Thanks for the reminder!

I was having breakfast at McD this morning and listening to an elderly man and a nearby elderly woman flirt with each other. Both were there for the coffee outing. He was reading the paper. She was teasing him about reading the paper. They were so cute I even thought they might be married and playing some silly game. She was treating him like a naggy wife. He was saying he’s looking for a new wife, someone to drive around to doctors appointments and wait for. They just were making me laugh.
As I left, an elderly man told me that I looked really happy and I told him about my goal to be happy.
He asked me to join him for coffee, but I was leaving to go to work and I said no. He looked so sad. My heart is broken. I should have stayed. In just an instant I lost an opportunity to connect with potentially a very neat person. I felt like such a jerk. I’ll always be haunted by that look. I feel very sad.

I’m really not loving the facebook look and feel. I want my twitter to be a twitter and my facebook to be not twitter. But my kids let me in on their facebooks and I found out that one was friends with my best friend from college! So now I’m happy again. Found a long lost friend and reconnected. Facebook has been vindicated. But darn, first they want to oops, own our content, then they want to steal twitter. What the heck is next?

Redid my task list on the whiteboard in my office and I drew some little flowers in the corner. co-worker liked it. Dry erase pens are a real challenge to write or draw with.