Sunday Challenge for 20/20 - My Happiness Project

I am on a journey. A journey to happiness.

So, let the challenge begin!

Happiness can be mine...oh yes, it can...

But how to start???

Well, I did go out and purchase the book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin as she is the one who got me thinking "happy" in the first place. And I have pondered and thought and pondered and thought some more.

To begin with, I will post a quote from Gretchen's "Happiness Toolbox" (found on her website), called the "Happiness Manifesto." These points will be things that I will be considering as I craft my days around the thoughts of happiness.

"A Happiness Manifesto

• To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
• Your body matters.
• Happiness is other people.
• Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
• "It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."—G. K. Chesterton
• What's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.
• Best is good, better is best.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.
• You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." —Robert Louis Stevenson
• You manage what you measure."

Interesting thoughts, eh??? (Ah, I'm so Canadian, eh, and incidentally that makes me "happy"...hee, hee...) I am blessed to enjoy the privileges we have in this country.

This week, I thought about my attitude, the way I see the world from day to day. I asked myself this question, "On what am I focusing my thoughts?" "Am I thinking happy thoughts, good thoughts, pleasant thoughts, uplifting thoughts...or is my FOCUS negative???"

I cannot and will not be in denial, pretend that everything is wonderful if it is not. I will not play that kind of game. However, it is in my power to shift my thoughts away from the things that bring me down. It is also in my power, to express those things (the sad, heart-rending, soul-bending things) so that I can be free to breathe in and to partake in the happiness that is there waiting for me to enjoy. Things of which I am often not even aware.

My beloved sister had sent me, years ago, some pages from a treasure, a little book called "Telling Secrets" by Frederich Buechner. He addresses this lack of awareness: "Consider...those dwarves in C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle. They are huddled togehter in what they think is a cramped, dark, stable where, like the dungeon of the Little Ease, there is hardly any room to move or breathe. The truth of it, you will remember, is that they are not in any such place at all. Instead they are in the midst of an endless green meadow where the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Aslan himself stands there offering them refreshments and freedom from their self-imprisonment, the great golden Lion who moves through Lewis's fairytale the way the fierce power of God moves through our world of Cowardly Lions - to be called "Dear heart" by whom is an everlasting blessing... But the dwarves see none of this. About all they can is is each other.

Now transform that scene. It is not Lewis's dwarves who are gathered together. It is people very much like you and me."

As Gretchen says, in her Manifesto - "you are not happy unless you think you are happy."

So this week, I gathered my wandering thoughts, as dogs nipping at the heels of horses running wild. I corralled those thoughts and turned them to happiness. I do not want to be one of those dwarves who cannot see the beauty right in front of them. And it made a difference, it really did... There were far more moments and far more hours where there was the light, delightful feeling of happiness. Because I thought I was happy I felt happy...

There are, still, of course, concerns and burdens. But in the midst of all that worries me, freaks me out, causes me to grieve deeply and completely, light is breaking through.

Let me share another quote by Buechner that has been so helpful...

"This...was a rule that I had no less devastatingly laid down for myself, and it was this: that I had no right to be happy unless the people I loved - especially my children - were happy too. I have come to believe that is not true. (Me here: this was a riveting insight and one that after years of having these pages sent to me I can finally begin to believe...) I believe instead that we all of us have not only the right to be happy no matter what but also a kind of scared commission to be happy - in the sense of being free to breathe and to move, in the sense of being able to bless our own lives, even the sad times of our own lives, because through all our times we can learn and grow, and through all our times, if we keep our ears open, God speaks to us his saving word....I have come to believe that to be happy inside ourselves - to be less and less as the years go by in the dungeon the the Little Ease and more and more in still chapel where beyond all understanding there is peace - is in the long run the the best we can do both for ourselves and for the people closet to us."

!!! Did you catch that last phrase!??!!
Being happy is a gift I give myself and I can give it to those I love.

So join me on this journey.

This journey of happiness.