Reflections

It has been a long hiatus from blogging. It has been 5 months, yet it seems like I have been through ages of experience and events. It was a roller-coaster of emotions and happenings. It helped that I had been home for a week to sort out my thoughts and priorities. Love is blind and boy, how true it was for me, with every attempt to defend and justify His appalling actions.

My good friend's timely email of an article was consoling and poignant:

1. Holidays and happy at home.

I went to visit a friend while I was on holiday recently. When he saw me arrive he asked me if I had been given the day off work or was I absconding! I said, "Oh I'm on holiday". "How come you are still in Perth then and not travelling?""Because I'm happy being at home", came my answer. At that point he looked at me with total disbelief. "Well you must at least take the phone off the hook?" I shook my head and just smiled at him. I was happy, and I'd spent 2 weeks at home. Bliss. "How come it was bliss?", I thought to myself. I decided it was because I could be happy with small things. In fact I think sometimes our society misleads us into thinking we need high levels of excitement and big things - possessions, parties, occasions, etc. to be happy. And I don't think that this is the case. So where is happiness? And more importantly how can we find it even when things go wrong? Read on to the tips section to find out.

2. Top tips on how to find happiness even when things go wrong.

Tip A. Look for peace, not for excitement.

Happiness is already inside you - it's in the places where you feel at peace. For example, if you sit quietly now, and follow your breath going in and out of the body - can you notice there is a small gap between the in breath and the out breath? In that moment it is usually quite quiet. Now you have the idea, how about you close your eyes and take 3 breaths in and out to notice the gap and the peace. This is something you can do at any time of the day, whether on the bus, the toilet or at your desk. And what you are doing is training yourself to look for peace. Most of us distract ourselves and only look for stimulation or excitement. And if we can learn to do something simple like this when things are going well, then when things are going wrong, we can do the same thing. Find peace by small, simple means.

Tip B. Look for long term contentment not short term excitement.

Having a great night out can be a thrill. Seeing my favourite band, the Sensitive New Age Cowpersons can have me dancing around and glowing with delight for days on end. But this isn't where lasting happiness is - rather it's just an exciting buzz that lasts for the short term. After the excitement there can be quite a downer - everything else can appear drab in comparison. Or, I crave for more, so rather than becoming happier I become dissatisfied; saying things like "Oh, I wish that we can see them again", "Who else is on?" or "There's nothing to do". Instead of short term excitement we need to also look for an attitude to life, to actions and to thoughts that will lead to a more consistent contentment irrespective of what we do. What radiance we would have then! If we have developed long term contentment, then when things go wrong we wouldn't be so thrown by them. We would have built up a reservoir of contentment that we could draw on. It's like putting money in the bank ! for a rainy day.

Tip C. Notice what you say to yourself.

There is research that shows people deal with failure and problems differently. Some people, when things go wrong, talk pessimistically about what has happened, e.g. they blame themselves, they think it will always be awful, they think badly of themselves, or they think the bad times will last for a long time.
Others, in contrast, talk about it in a far more optimistic way. And guess who is happier, who lives longer and is healthier? The ones who talk to themselves about the problems in a more optimistic way.

Tip D. Let it go.

When things go wrong it's easy to go on about them. It's a bit like the cows who chew the cud, people go over and over and over in their minds what has happened and their grievances about it. So your car breaks down, and you grizzle about it. You wish you'd never bought that particular type of car. You then remember it was Richard who suggested it was a good car - so then you start to grizzle about Richard. Even once the car is mended you are still complaining about the car. All the time you are doing this you are depriving yourself of happiness. Every time you grizzle you've blocked out happiness. Let it go. Shrug your shoulders. Write in a journal. Yell at the waves. Go for a run. Put on a Rolling Stones record and sing, "I can't get no satisfaction" until you burst out laughing. Get it out of you. Let it go. And move on.

Tip E. Expect things to go wrong - it's normal.

So often it is our own expectations and high standards that lead us away from happiness and into dissatisfaction. Yet our expectations are often unrealistic - things do go wrong, things do cost more than we calculated, things do take longer than we wanted, people do make mistakes, humans do say the wrong things, bodies get sick, people die, things don't work, people forget, items get lost, others get broken - this is normal. If you can factor in normal expectations your level of contentment won't take such a beating.

Recently a woman e-mailed me because her wedding photographs had not turned out as well as she wanted. Now, months later, she was still upset about it. But were her expectations even realistic in the first place? No! Anyone who thinks that everything about her wedding day should be perfect is going to be disappointed! She had imagined she would look soft, dreamy and demure in her photos but somehow she looked a little stiffer. She had wanted fewer posed shots and more with herself and her husband kissing and hugging in a more natural way. I thought of our own wedding photos - I had a grin fixed ear to ear by the end, like a cardboard cheshire cat, I got so tired of smiling for the photographers. Then there was one with us looking quite mad, and another with my veil blowing all over the place. If you think it's easy looking good in posed photos - it's not - ask any model. To look relaxed in a posed photo is a very high level skill.

Happiness doesn't come from having high expectations, being a perfectionist, or demanding unrealistic standards. Happiness comes by accepting that life does not run smoothly and by allowing the hiccups that happen to do so without their knocking your contentment. As a friend said to me recently, when I asked how he was, "As with all people, problems coming in, problems going out". I laughed. He's one of the most peaceful and contented people I know.

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Perhaps the biggest challenge for me at this stage would be letting it go...