Choose happiness more often.

...and needs to sharpened up if I want to have steps to follow to make any progress. Onto the back burner until things stabilize after the move to the UK. Then I’ll reformulate later on.

the secret of this is saying no sometimes. Or saying it ever. One reason I remain a poor student-type in spite of having pretty marketable skills is that I volunteer too much and give too much to charities (through automatic debit so I forget I’m doing it). World Vision for example. Thing is they’re all good causes and I don’t want to stop….however someone told me something yesterday (one of my bosses where i volunteer): like a good doctor, stop taking new patients. Good idea. It’s not like I’m not gaining a lot personally from this stuff, but I spend between 10 and 20 hours a week volunteering for different places and man, the opportunity cost is adding up for if I’d used that time to work. Trying to learn something here. I did my taxes last week and the charitable donation part made me go “holy $#*%” ! when i added it up. Anyways all this to say I think I have to recenter myself and rebudget and tell insistent volunteer-seeking people to take a hike more often. Spa weekend on the horizon I think! :)

I’m working on this one—it’s hard to do, and I like it when I can keep the idea of ‘choice’ front and center in my life.

I read the book Fish recently, and it had a focus on the ‘choice’ aspect of happiness – nice little read.

I really need to take the time each morning to work with Alexandra’s book though—it’s the best for this, and I’m just not setting aside the time for it. (this goes along with the going to bed early thing)

Alexandra Stoddard wrote this funny(odd) little book called “Choosing Happiness” and I want to work with it more actively to try and do so.

I’m tired of hating my life.