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!

The Hitchhikers Guide To Child Rearing

I need a parenting handbook, badly. I am not talking about textbooks explaining the ins and outs of diaper changing or milestones they should achieve. I am talking about a full blown, down and dirty, guide to help us turn these little things into wonderful people, whilst still holding onto my sanity in the process. Who knew that this whole parenting chapter of our lives could be so fraught with anguish. In the book (if it exists, because I don’t think it does), I would like to see a chapter on mythical fairies and magical people. For years, fourteen in fact, I have been the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Father Christmas (although I have to say my husband suited the latter role better), and I loved it. Unfortunately, there comes a time when we know we have to admit to our children the whole scam. My son, at the tender age of ten, took my husband and me aside one day and gave us a scolding. He reminded us that being deceitful is wrong and that he had worked out our deceit. There was something in me that wanted to defend myself  like a ten year old and jump up saying “smarty pants”, but I couldn’t. He was technically right. Not wanting a repeat of our first experience and given the fact that our daughter will be twelve in four weeks we decided it was time. We thought she knew, after all her Christmas list last year consisted of items that  added up to approximately $4,000 and when asked to think carefully about the items she simply said that Father Christmas doesn’t have to worry about money as he makes everything. There was our first clue, or so we thought. She had been talking about the Easter Bunny all last week, even to her friends, who all gave her the knowing look, so we decided to tell her. After all being the last to know is always painful.

WRONG DECISION!

Our fabulous, fun loving daughter collapsed, crying uncontrollably. Heartbroken by the knowledge the Easter Bunny does not exist. There wasn’t anything we could do. The words were out, and life as she knew it would never be the same. Trying hard not to cry myself, I hugged her and tried my best to comfort her distress, but no amount of consoling worked. What had we done? Had we taken away her dreams and given her the first harsh lesson of reality? She is one of life’s innocents, a super sweet genuine girl and I pray I haven’t destroyed that. Obviously, my husband and I are crushed by the outcome of our decision, beating ourselves up every day since. We feel like the worst parents in the world, but we truly thought we were doing the best by helping her to avoid the harsh tongues of other children. I hope that one day she will understand our thinking and forgive us. Until then, if anyone knows of a handbook as I described above, please let me know.