If you had to pause a minute to answer this, or worse yet, you have to answer ‘nothing’, we have a problem on our hands. Our days can be filled with one responsibility after another. Chores that have to be done. Deadlines that have to be met. People to meet, places to go as they say. Well, what keeps us going is having a little something to look forward to. I hear a lot of you responding “yeah friday, 5 o’clock” While the weekend is certainly fun, we can’t live our lives dreading 5 days and enjoying 2. No, I am talking about both big picture and daily. First let’s look at big picture. Plan a get away with a group of friends. Make it months down the road so you can work out vacation time and child care and any other needs that may arise. It need not be a trip to Vegas, although that can be fun. Even a weekend get away at a cabin in the woods with the girls or the guys can be a blast. Fun thing is, you can spend the days, weeks and months leading up to it doing fun things to get ready. Maybe taking out the sleeping bags to make sure they’re clean. Picking up a good bottle of wine to share. Anything that can get you excited. Plus, sharing with friends can keep all of you looking forward. How much more fun would that work meeting be if in the middle of it you receive a picture message of your favorite wine with a caption that reads “Here’s to next month” or a picture of a campfire with the words “don’t forget the marshmallows”. A female friend of mine even worked out with her husband to take the kids to a hotel with a water park while her and her girlfriends had an ‘adult sleep over’ for the evening. They all brought something and stayed up all night drinking wine, watching movies and laughing. As sad as it can be when it’s over, your left with fun memories and an eagerness to plan the next event. This also has the added bonus of strengthening friendships, or relationships if you do it with your spouse, and that can always add joy to our lives. So what are you waiting for? Get some friends, or your spouse together and start planing some fun!! Tomorrow we will discuss the daily aspect of this.
Month: March 2013
LIVE IN THE MOMENT…OR THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT..
One of the biggest obstacles to people living a happy life is they are never really in it. They either spend too much time regretting and reliving the past, or even worse, worrying and dreading what might happen in the future. I am a big fan of setting the past free, and not worrying about things that ‘might’ happen. I did find one interesting caveat to this theory. When we focus on ‘what is’ it becomes really hard to get to where we want to be. How many times have we said to ourselves “I really feel fat, I need to lose some weight” Only to find our efforts end in vain? Have you ever looked at a stack of bills thinking “I really have to get this budget under control” only to end up more in debt at the end of the next month? The reason for this and the solution is rather quite simple. I must confess it escaped me until earlier this evening. While spending time debating if my current job is for me and if I will be able to handle the upcoming challenges considering how overwhelmed I am already feeling, the answer came to me. I was focusing too much on what is! How could we ever expect to achieve weight loss when starting with feeling fat? You can not achieve financial well-being out of thoughts of poverty. Instead we should spend a good 5 to 10 minutes a day doing something most of us haven’t done since childhood. Daydream! That’s right put the power of our imagination to work for us instead of against us! When we were young we dreamed of all the great things we would do when we grew up. We pictured what our life would be like. Here is the important part, when we pictured that we were filled with all the excitement and emotion that we would feel when that situation came to pass. Then as we grew up our imagination changed. We wonder what will happen if I lose my job? How will I pay the bills? What will life be like looking for a job in this economy? We also fill it with all the feelings of worry and dread that go along with that situation. Either way we are drawing what we are picturing with such intense emotion into our life. So do yourself a favor, become a kid again! Imagine how it would feel to win the lottery. How it would feel if your job was thrilling and enjoyable. Picture it, but more important, feel it! Take yourself on a mini mental vacation. I would type more on this idea, but my flight to my mental vacation is boarding as we speak!
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
“The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of Happiness. This world is not perfect. There are problems. But things like happiness and unhappiness are relative. Realizing this gives you hope.”
The Dalai Lama
I really like this quote. How many times in life have we looked back at an incident that at the time seemed terrible only to realize how much good had come of it? The secret here is to try to shorten the time it takes to see the good in a given situation. Here is something to carry around with you and try when we encounter one of life’s unavoidable challenges. Ask yourself, “What is good about this situation” Spend no more than five minutes pondering that. Then move on and do your best to forget about what is troubling you. Your subconscious mind will still be focused on that very question. Then later that day sit down and ask yourself the same question. Although it may not seem you have given it any more effort you mind will have been working behind the scenes to come up with several ideas. It may even help to sit down with pen and paper and work on creating a list. The more you do this, the more you work on training your brain to be positive and this same formula works for solving problems. This week, let us all try to see and focus on the positive side to everything!
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 