The Ramblings of a Woman Trying to Make a Happy List

On Tuesday, I was fired up about making my ‘Happy List’. Yes, I was going to conquer the paper, become queen of my own destiny, start making a mental foundation for me to stand on, but what happened – well, life got in the way!

My life gets more like a cheesy soap opera with every passing day (which incidentally my daughter has asked if we could start following one -- as if there is not enough drama in her life already!). The only thing is, I am not wearing Versace, I don’t have the hunky husband who earns a million after tax, and brings me flowers home every night (yes, I know it is only because they are having an affair), and I am real, every bit of me. I have no extra silicone padding on my chest or extra filler in my lips, I'm just plain old me.

So what happened – crap, lol (just proving I have a modern sense of humor).

Upon my enthusiastic return from the West Coast, (Santa Barbara, I love you! Can I marry you? Is that legal?), I get mail from an old friend, which sent me into a tizzy. Reminding me of why I am where I am today. Cold sweats ran through my body but I suppose it could have been worse, they could have been hot flushes. My brain started to race, and I was hooked. Like a fish, being reeled in, I needed to fill in the blanks of the missing soap opera. The only thing is now I, sort of, wish I hadn’t. The past is written and it cannot be changed so why stay locked in it? I think it’s called morbid curiosity. Morbid – ha – oh yes, definitely the right description.

My happy list is even harder to write after this encounter. The past has gotten in the way once again. I realized I still have a lot of unfinished business to deal with, but what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do I go through a type of painful re-birth of myself, hacking away at the old demons in order to be a stronger me or do I plop an existing egg on the floor and crack it open? What a mess and the blooming happy book doesn’t give me the answer or I haven’t got to that chapter yet!

But wait, that is it. My light bulb just went on. Life is not a book to follow. It can be re-written but the originals are still out there in indelible ink and no amount of erasing can get rid of it. My guru book is right after all (phew), your happy list evolves with you, it changes as your life changes, as you meet your goals, or not as the case may be. I suddenly feel a bit better with my dilemma, but that happy list is still unwritten. 

So here is how my list is going to start:

What makes me happy?

1. To not be afraid of the past.

2 To like who I am.

3.TBA

4.TBA   …………………………and so on! 

Now I just have to figure out how to achieve this – life is an ever-decreasing circle I think!

Road to Happiness

Happiness – how would you describe it?  Emotive to its core, essential to every single person on this earth, and yet sometimes so elusive that you would think it never existed. In my essay “My Crime or Yours? A Wife’s Debate”, I was very honest about my current situation as a stay-at-home mom. My emotions, as I wrote the piece, were running high enough to practically send me into orbit.  I am lost, to say the least, but this morning after listening (at my husband’s work convention) to one of the most inspiring, yet down-to-earth speakers I have ever heard, I finally felt the power grow within me to start making the difference in my life that I had wrote about.

Beth Thomas, the speaker, has just released a book called “Powered by Happy.” Essentially this book is about making employees happy at work in order to increase productivity and bottom-line profit.  Happy campers make for happy bosses and even happier CEOs. The simple correlation between these two is not so new in its concept, and you could easily say it is downright obvious, but the facts and statistics confirm that this is a real problem for corporate America.  Now, I once was corporate, I once was in business, and I once was the one who wore the name identification badge without the word ‘spouse’ plastered all over it, but now my corporate world is at my home.  So as I listened, I realized that the same principles should apply to our family lives. Happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids, and a fulfilling relationship with my husband is the key to my 'company's' success. My return on efforts is not financial profit -- it is my own personal happiness and satisfaction.

Beth Thomas herself reinforced this message during her talk, pointing out that working too many hours or too hard does not make you any more successful; in fact it can be detrimental. Funny, that is exactly how I described my life. The more I do around the house, the more hours I work to keep my family functioning has become a mountain so high to climb that I can never reach the summit. Running around like a headless chicken is not doing me or my nerves any good. I seem to always have a to-do list as long as my arm with no time to do any of it well and it makes me negative – it wears me out. My scales are tipped to one side and I need to regain balance.

So, it’s time for change, time for taking hold of the negative and kicking it out the door. Negative breeds negative, yet simple laughter can take over the world; it is contagious in all the right ways. Apparently there are Laughter Conferences that are held over all over America. People go and just laugh constantly for the time they are there. I am not sure that I will be attending one of those, but it does make you think. If people are selling laughter as a concept to improve your life, then surely we can interject more ourselves, and the best is it is free!

The message this morning was clear. In order to be happy you have to know what makes you happy. The first lesson in the book is to create your own definition of happiness. It is not as easy to do as you think, but I am going to do it. I am going to work through the book and see where it gets me.

Today is my first day on the road to being “Powered by Happy.” This afternoon I am going to sit down and allow myself time to think about my happiness. My list will probably be long, but that’s okay, because I have the drive to do it. I am taking back responsibility for my life and happiness. Who knows, maybe I will share my list with you in my next blog – we will see!