Recently I attended a family wedding where people were so loving they joined two families and the extended spiritual family members, not just the bride and groom. The experience of being in their presence and being part of that presence was like living in a bubble of love for three days. As I think of this event, the thoughtful man with whom I attended, the interesting people met, the old friends connecting, the young couple blooming with love, I feel an all-encompassing unconditional warm and fuzzy love. Recalling the many meals together, late night margaritas, morning coffee, ethnic foods, pine scents in the breeze, drizzle, warm sun, snow-capped mountains, sequestered mountain lakes, and lots of fragrances of fun, I feel full and cozy.

EVENTS

It didn’t matter that someone forgot the flowers at the ceremony and no one noticed. It didn’t matter that everyone could never get together for the official picture-taking event. It was great that the MC announced the program with love and laughter as he moved the festivities along. Fathers, best man and maid of honor made their traditional, revealing and devotional speeches of adoration. The bride and groom exchanged musical expressions of love, bringing tears with the lyrical notes of grandmother long passed. The bride did a belly dance for the beaming groom. A dancing professional surprised her friends by performing an exquisite hula while children mirrored with three and four year old zest. We saw a slide show and learned many details of the lives of these two special people being blessed with our love and we with theirs. Eyes were not dry, faces were not long, and abdominals were not relaxed.

ONE LINERS AND BELLY LAUGHS

We had three days of one-liners topping Leno and Letterman. The bride’s comment as they were attempting to feed each other cake, “No! We don’t have sanitizer!” as a fork anally lifted the cake to their gentle lips (no smashing-of-cake-in-the-face at this wedding) was a belly-laughter topper. Another one at the top of the laugh list was from the best man after the bride told stories of her first year of teaching fourth grade, “I hit my fourth grade teacher!” Perhaps Uncle Merle at 92 was the most delightful as he told family stories of everyone, especially an uncle hanging out of the car to check the tires as he drove.

FAMILY STORIES AND LONG AGO SECRETS

Personally, I like the mother of the bride’s story for full belly laughs. Uncle Master of Ceremonies himself, drooling with jealousy not knowing this BEFORE the reception, heard his big sister tell the Wet Shoulder Pad Story. In a transitional feminine year, the bride and bridesmaids as young teens went swimming with new boys of the summer. (Think about it!) All families have this type of tell-all stories or fun secrets. The family lore is important to continue sharing and retelling as families get together to love and laugh throughout the years.

WHAT IS SPECIAL BECOMES THE MEMORY

The day after the wedding, we spent time in a hotel lobby sharing more stories and the special moments of the wedding. The mother of the bride asked each of us to share what made the wedding special. The heartfelt acknowledgements, appreciations, and touchstones helped create another very loving and positive experience. The expressions of regard and love mark and set the special moments as we take them through time.

LOVE, UNITY AND GRACE

Each of us goes away from an experience with our own memories. These are special moments suspended in time to carry with us forever. We have our own special moments of laughter, of love and of joy. Some carry forward the ring round the rosie memory of moving of the towel to keep the bridal dress clean and circling the big trees to escape the drizzle minutes before the ceremony. Some carry the long-awaited moments with exes as there is a touch of the shoulder and a “Goodbye, take care,” filled with the deep healing of old wounds. The rest of us feel the touch and the smile as they reverberate through the room. Some carry the moments of children dancing with unbounded joy. Others feel the special touching of spirits as the parents look into each other’s eyes during the parents’ dance. We all feel the grace of the parents’ love hug. We carry a memory and tear of the young couple’s vows as they mix with the memory of our own. We leave a wedding touched by the glue of these two mothers’ love, the watchful guiding love of the fathers, the blossoming hope filled love of the newlyweds, and God’s unconditional love for the unity of His family. We feel the Grace.

I am blessed with people, experiences and memories like this. I hope we all carry the love, unity and grace to help guide us into our futures. May you carry it in your hearts and memories forever.

Check Your Values
Sometimes our ebbs are indicative of a value to which we are not paying attention. What do you value that you are neglecting?

Evaluate Your Survival Needs
You might do an intensive search inside of you to see what needs you are not fulfilling. There are so many needs for you to look at. Are you meeting your physical needs? Do you have all your survival needs in place? Especially in these times of economic recession, you may have to evaluate and assess your financial position. With homeowners being upside down in their mortgages, do you need to do something in this area? Do you have six months cash set aside? You cannot address your higher-level needs well if you have something in this survival area to fulfill. Start taking action if you have any financial circumstances in bad shape. Be sure to look outside the box for different solutions. Brainstorm.

Pleasure Needs
Then move yourself into an investigation of some higher-level needs. Do you have lots of pleasure and fun you are participating in and creating? Do you have some form of recreation you love to do? Are you eating well, exercising, and playing? What do you do for fun? What makes you laugh? Do you have enough of this? If not, put some fun into your schedule each week or day. You cannot wait to laugh on Saturday. If you are having financial difficulties, it is especially important to add pleasurable activities to your life.

Need for Engagement with Life
Let’s take a look at what activities you do weekly that are really engaging for you. If you have a hobby or interest like quilting, needle pointing, playing bridge, baking pies, golfing, tennis, travel, antiquing, or sailing, you have many opportunities to feel some passion, contentment and fulfillment in doing something you love. Finding an activity in which you lose yourself brings a lot of happiness. If you find this in your work, you will be among a third of people and one of the wealthiest people alive. This is the concept of Zen and the art of “X”.  Find something you enjoy doing in which you become one with the activity – where you lose yourself in space and time. This optimal experience or “flow” as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has termed it is one of the key elements of happiness.

Be of Service
One of the most important things to do to get yourself fully “living” your life is to get beyond yourself. Think about someone else. Help someone. Help many others. Find a way to be of service to others. Donate your time and talent to improve the lives of others. Sometimes you keep your world so small you drown yourself in your own self-pity. Get beyond the walls of your house and your heart, to pay attention to others.

Make Your Relationships Magnificent
If you are still stuck, directionless, empty or bored, get involved with people. Call friends and suggest getting together. Join activities where you might meet people who share your interests and values. Reach out in friendship. Continue developing meaningful relationships and do things regularly together. You will be happier and live longer if you have friends to see and places to go every week.

Get out of your own little world and connect with others. There is a lot of love and happiness waiting for you to create.

Getting Started – Reflect and Daydream About All Areas of Life
Take the majority of a day or two to establish a plan for this decade. What are the most important things you would like to do? Spend a little time daydreaming and visualizing how you would like your life to be. Look into the specific areas of importance: health, love relationship, family, career, spirituality, interests and hobbies, finances, personal growth, service, etc.

Write Outcome Goals
Make a decision about what you would like each area of life to look like ten years from now.  Write what that looks and feels like. Express the specialness of that vision or goal in the present tense, as if it is NOW true: I am enjoying the excellence of my health; the fulfillment of eating organic and “clean” foods; the ease of movement I experience as I walk, dance, and do everything with my 130 pound feminine, fit and sensual body.

Benchmark
Now go backwards and benchmark the goals or milestones from that outcome goal to where you are now. That outlines the steps you take to get from where you are to where you want to be. It fills in the gap or the part to which we usually do not pay enough attention.

Small Steps
Next pay attention to all the small steps you will start with to attain the next goal. These are the attitudes, plan of action and support you need to accomplish the beginning of your journey. Write each step in detail.

What It Looks Like
You will have a paper, a wall, a notebook, something that shows your movement from left to right, present time to ten years in the future for your first goal. You’ll have lots of detail in present time and just sketchy milestones as you move through the ten years. As you get to the next milestone, or perhaps the next month or quarter, you’ll fill in the details of your steps.

Do the same thing with each area of your life: write the outcome goal, fill in the milestones, and complete the details of your next steps. You will have the next decade completed of your life plan. If the decade seems too long, try 5 years or a marker that makes sense for your life.

Keys For Success
It is up to you to work on these goals daily and weekly so you establish new behaviors and habits. Savor your successes. Celebrate the accomplishments of milestones. Get someone to be your accountability partner or a group of people who are doing the same thing so you can support each other. I have a group of friends who have been doing this together for eight years. We meet on the phone at least once a quarter to review our progress and get help with anything we need. We add additional meetings to learn or address specific items, such as organizational systems, educational/business systems, etc. We also set up special calls with each other for coaching when we need the on-going support of a coach. (We are all coaches by profession…) We have written books, started new businesses, expanded businesses, been hired as consultants, secured corporate contracts and speaking engagements, supported each other through deaths, births, marriages, divorces, relocations, second homes, awards, and many other highs and lows of life. The support and accountability make this life-planning enjoyable and worthwhile.

Take Action
You have one week left in January. Do you want to get started on your life-planning journey? If you read this during another month, well, you can still get started!

First, there are our own thoughts. These are negative thoughts that just seem to come up in our minds like pop-ups. These can be self critical or they can be about other people or situations. It is our job to refrain from interacting with these thoughts. In other words, don’t follow a negative thought with another thought as if in conversation with the first. Do everything to not enlarge or enhance the negative thought. That way you will avoid rumination and reinforcing your own negative beliefs.

Ask others the end their verbal negativity

There are negative comments we hear from others in the form of gossip and sarcasm. Right along with these is the continuous flow of negative comments that others make. They might be about other people, maybe their own victim type stories, or about situations that evoke their criticism. We can choose to not listen to these. We can attempt to have the other person change by encouraging him to speak more positively or to not share gossip with us.

Deal with others’ negativity by changing something in oneself

More importantly we can change the situation by changing something in ourselves.
         

• We can inject more understanding, acceptance and compassion into our attitude.

• We might also rid ourselves of judgment and strive to be more open.

• We can take action that involves doing something different so we create a different result.

• We might also try focusing our attention on something more positive. We might think about the people or situations differently or find appreciation in them. What we attune to is what we see and experience. We have a choice of where we place our focus.

• In addition we can put another meaning on the situation or interpret it differently.

Distance oneself or end relationships with negative people

Our last resort might be to choose to end the relationship with negative people or to reduce our involvement. It is very important to rid ourselves of negative influences if we cannot deal with negative people and situations.

Reduce or end other negative influences

It is easier to be positive if we reduce or eliminate as much negativity as possible from our lives. We could stop much of the violent television we watch. Turn off the negative news. Stop the newspaper. End the negative music, movies and video games. What might life be like if we didn’t feed our minds and souls with such negativity? There would be so much room for positivity. I suspect it would be a mental muscle we’d all have to get used to exercising!

Dispute negative thoughts

When you experience your own or others’ negative thoughts, you will want to work hard at disputing them. Examine the facts and prove the positive is true. Argue with yourself as if you are the best attorney. Prove the thoughts to be incorrect.

Be mindful

One of the most important skills to control your negativity is mindfulness. Mindfulness means to pay attention to your thoughts and responses in an aware, objective and detached manner. You eventually learn to detach or create distance in watching your reactions and responses to things that happen. You are trying to not have an emotional action or reaction. This allows you to create neutrality or more positive emotions while you simply allow the negative thoughts and emotions to pass through you. It’s like watching them but not building on them. You want to build on the positive but not the negative. Mindfulness reduces stress, pain, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive experiences, and self-injury, improves immune functioning, and changes metabolism in brain circuits known to underlie emotional responding. It even increases a certain part of the brain. You can learn to meditate by taking a workshop, reading a book, or just sitting and relaxing

Exercise

Take a look at your negativity this week to see how you can refrain from interacting with your own negative thoughts, change your behaviors or thinking in relation to others, don’t participate in or listen to gossip and sarcasm, turn down the amount of negative media in your home, dispute your negative thoughts, and begin to meditate, even if you are only quiet and slow down your breathing for 5 minutes a day. You might want to make a chart to help you keep track daily of reducing your negativity.

What have you done this summer to add experiences in all of these areas of your life? Consider writing things down in all 4 categories and see which ones you may have scored an A+ and which areas you could pay more attention to.

PLEASURE
In terms of pleasure, I have attended and watched many movies this summer. Julie/Julia hit the top of my list. I’ve had lots of laughs thanks to the movies. And I finally started Netflix so I can see many of the independent films I’ve missed or that didn’t make it to Las Vegas. Jersey Boys was filled with great music from the past, as was Love, and the other Vegas shows provided me with plenty of summer pleasure! Water for Elephants, Best Friends Forever, and The Reader have been great pleasurable summer reads.

I’ve eaten at several new restaurants, had great Thai and Italian dishes. I have made several great salads and many seafood dishes. I actually had a Whoopee Pie on vacation. I thank my friend Kathryn for telling me about them – wow! I’ve even allowed myself to have chocolate and vanilla shakes whenever I wanted them this summer.

ENGAGEMENT
I ate eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and lots of herbs from my garden. I spend a number of hours finding all the 5-leaved rose markers for clipping. And when I want to space out a bit or be totally engaged, I water my struggling, new lawn. It is easy to spend 30 minutes getting every little space filled with water so it grows in thick. It is also fun chasing the pigeons away with the jet spray from the hose.

Books such as Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Love as the Way to Live, Creating Your Best Life, The How of Happiness, and Positivity have provided me with my reading for engagement. I have had many days of being in flow writing for my blog, Happiness Talk. I also felt quite engaged when I read the chapter I wrote which will be published this fall.

Much of my flow or engagement comes from cooking. I’ve tried several recipes from the new chefs which allowed me to spend weekends in flow while also having good food for entertaining friends. The conversations with friends always provide me with great engagement. Meeting and getting to know a few new friends this summer was most engaging and pleasurable.

MEANING
I think a lot of my work with clients is pure engagement. Separating it from meaningfulness is sometimes difficult. Helping others is always meaningful. But helping while engaged can be a purely spiritual experience. I have both couples I see for relationship coaching and individuals I talk with virtually and in person for life and business coaching. At times we are running through the daffodils or smelling the roses, riding the waves, going down the tongue of the river or floating in the clouds on our way towards their dreams. It is the most blessed experience to be asked into the journey of someone else’s life and have the pleasure and reward to traveling to new and adventuresome places. I’m honored to help access and provide meaning for them as it is reflected right back to me. Every day I receive magnificent gifts of this nature.

Another most meaningful part of my week is when I call my beloved 83 year old friend. She has hospice care but is otherwise alone and lonely. She was meant to be with people but at this age and with her condition, she spends her time, as so many older people do, isolated. She has an active mind which is always thinking and processing the political scene, DNA and now the meaning of life. It is special to listen to her and resonate with her, bringing joy to both of us. To spend an hour on the phone laughing with Bev is the food of angels. Seeing her this summer was also meaningful in the discussing of her death and the joy of her life.

RELATIONSHIPS
Going to the beach with a friend who has had several heart attacks this year was also quite a special time of engagement and meaning. The connection we felt as he went into the Pacific for possibly his last time was like waltzing the tango. Time was suspended as we talked and soaked up the vitamin D. Watching him swim was such a joy, the smile on his face too precious for words. I have to admit it felt like we were about 20.

Being at Priest Lake on the boat with Stephen, Barrister and Jewell was pleasurable and engaging because of the beauty of nature. Watching Jewell fly at the picnic site was a pleasurable experience without bounds. A week of personal connection with the bonds of friendship with Stephen and his family added deep meaning to my life.

I redid my trust and will – writing some of it was engaging, but it has much meaning when I think of how right it feels. Cleaning out my closet and giving things to Sis was engaging and meaningful. Spending time on the lake with her and Cy was too. Enjoying a family breakfast with a sorority sister I have not seen for 43 years was a beautiful connective experience. Beyond words. Spending time with my great granddaughter was filled with the laughter and love of the generations. Being with my kids and best friends and feeling the loving safety of those relationships topped off my summer. The joy of a phone call from Paul my step son, a beautiful note from him, the “I love you” at the end of calls with him, Sis and friends, are such indescribably delicious relationship moments. Hanging out with girlfriends, old and new always goes through all four of these categories. Enjoyable conversations with my ex, the same. Being at the hospital with my dearest friend and having him be alive, was again a loving connective experience. It feels like something without time that endures for eternity.

The relationships in our lives are precious. I hope you are having pleasure, engagement and meaning in the most important ones in your life! I hope your summer was filled with as many moments creating happiness as mine!

For those of you who are reading this who are not in therapy and who do not wish at this time to begin such an adventure, I’d like to offer you some things which you can do on your own which will give you insight into your core beliefs and help you clear unfinished business of childhood and early adulthood. I also want to help you stop your excuses and start being successful in the areas you have avoided. I also want to help you forgive yourself and others and get onto the business of loving – loving yourself and loving others.

If you are in therapy, this will help you in working with your therapist. It may give you an outline for self-help work or you may pick and choose what you and your therapist think will help you with your particular issues and patterns. If you are in coaching, it will also help you to work with your coach on what you do to excuse and sabotage your success.

Where to start?

What makes you mad? What can’t you stand? What drains you or zaps your energy? What causes you pain? What are your guilty about? What would you like to change in your life? These questions about negative influences in your life or negative reactions should shed some light on where you can begin. Start journaling about these questions. You might separate them into items or issues or people or situations. When you are writing about them, just let your thoughts flow and your feelings get expressed. Be sure to indicate what happened, who did what (including yourself), who had less than respectable behavior? What did you do that was a mistake or wrong in some way? What did others do that was a mistake or wrong in your opinion? How did you feel or how were you affected by what happened? How do you think the other people involved may have felt? What good came from this? What good could come from this if you determined that it would? What action do you have to take to compost this experience and make it a learning experience in your life rather than a drain because of negative emotions? How will you take this action? When will you do it? Who will know about it? Who can give you recognition or praise about correcting this lesson in life?

Whenever you have a negative experience or something that has affected you in a negative way, try to identify your errors, the others’ errors and what you can do to correct it. Also identify the lesson in it for you. Find a way to become grateful for the experience and feel and express your gratitude. It might take you a couple months to get over the anger or hurt. It is important to get over it. It’s important for you to move past this place to a place of acceptance, understanding and even gratitude for having an opportunity to learn and grow.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

Establish a daily habit of recalling and writing ordinary events that happened to you today, the valuable people in your life and what they contribute to you. Spend the day looking for people, incidents, events, and qualities that you enjoy and that support your life. Look for the gifts, grace, benefits and good things in your life.     

    1. Think and recall throughout the day the good things happening…
    2. Write at least three things of gratitude toward the end of the day.

Share Gratitude with your Family

    1. Have your family share at dinner three things that happened to each of you that were good or things for which you are grateful
    2. Have our children recall and speak gratitude when going to bed
    3. Share gratitude blessings with your spouse at the end of the day
    4. Make Thanksgiving a holiday of super big thanks all around the table

Write letters of gratitude

    1. Write thank you notes for gifts, events and special thoughtful acts
    2. Write letters of gratitude to people who have improved or touched your life – teachers, friends, family members, old friends, former spouses, etc.
    3. Write birthday letters sharing about the person’s qualities and good acts

Think of ways you can see the challenges of life as a gift and then how you can express your gratitude.

It is a good thing to forgive people who have done things that have been hurtful to you. It allows you to move on past that incident or wrong and be in present time without bitterness or anger in your heart. Forgiveness is for you, not the other person.

This is a simple exercise. Either take out your journal or sit at your computer and start writing:
1. These are things I have thought, said or done for which I want forgiveness or for which I want to forgive myself.
2. These are things others have said or done that I want to forgive, clearing me of all negative feelings.

After writing the items, say aloud you forgive yourself and you forgive others. Ask for forgiveness and imagine being your perfect spiritual or higher self, understanding, accepting and loving yourself. Imagine your parents doing the same. And sense the forgiveness of God or the creative force of the universe. Then again say aloud your forgive yourself and you forgive others who harmed you.

Sometimes it is important to share these things with your clergy, a therapist or a trusted friend. Receiving acceptance and feeling the caring or love of another makes it easier to move into forgiveness and let go of the negative feelings.

Life gets better and well being is strengthened when you regularly clear and forgive these actions of yours and others. Feeling gratitude after forgiveness helps solidify the release of negative emotions.

I have a dear friend who has wanted to write a story about his aunt for a couple of decades or so. After enough avoidance and busyness, focusing on other business ideas and even start-ups, he decided he had enough failure and wanted to see some success. He had to dig down to find his motivation - the joy of having his children and best friends think highly of him. Then he had to get his awareness up to his mind in 2009. He had failed at enough great ideas - just thinking and talking about them. Now he wanted to put a great idea into action. Finally finding enough self esteem and confidence, he started to write. And what a beautiful writer he is! Now it’s time for the discipline. Every weekend he is creating the time to write.

He finally got down to his negative core beliefs and worked trough the stages of change to take action. You’ll hear about the book when it is finished! Check back in about a year.

Look at some of the negative beliefs you have that are self-limiting or that sabotage your ability to be your very best. Sometimes we refer to these beliefs as negative self-talk or negative tapes in our heads. They are “gremlins”. These are the things we believe that hold us back or prevent us from being authentic and healthy. Some examples might be: I have to be perfect; I can’t make a mistake; I am not smart enough; I can’t do it; If I am successful I will have to be accountable; Money is the root of all evil; etc.

Find some of your self-defeating beliefs and write them. Using all the enthusiasm you have, write the opposite, motivating, positive belief about yourself. Spend the day thinking about and repeating inside your head these lovely affirmations of your authentic self. If you find the negative beliefs winning, keep working to prove the positive is true. Find the evidence and convince yourself of your greatness!

If you still have difficulties succeeding at your goals, do they line up with your values? If they do, read James Prochaska’s book, “Changing for Good” and get into the action stage to make your dreams come true.