Surprises

Why do we laugh at streakers? Delight in big, red bow adorned packages left at our doorsteps? Find amusement in punch lines that we don’t expect? And rave about the little, run-down, dingy, mom & pop diner that has the most incredible tiramisu in all the land? I think it’s because, deep down, we find that joy bubbles up easily through surprises. As I get older, I think I enjoy them even more than I did when I was a child. Maybe that’s because when I was a child, everything was new, and now, experiencing something I don’t expect is rare. That, in itself, makes a surprise even more surprising, doesn’t it?

I know people who say they don’t like surprises. Maybe it’s because their experience with surprises is something like, “I didn’t expect my wife to cheat on me,” or “My father died so suddenly…” or “I assumed I’d retire from this plant, and they announced today that they are closing the doors.” These are not the surprises that inspire joy at all, of course, but should we allow these things to prejudice us against all surprises?

Perhaps it’s a question of ratios. Maybe people who still delight in surprises have experienced more good than bad surprises, and those who hate surprises have experienced the opposite. I wonder if we could make a point of stacking the deck in favor of surprises. What if we concentrated on surprising one person each day. Maybe we send a greeting card to someone who hasn’t heard from us in awhile. Or, answer our personal phone with, “Thank you, so much, for calling! I’m feeling fabulous, today, how are you feeling?”

It really doesn’t matter how we do it. I just think it might be more fun to think about surprises if most of them were of this joy-inspiring variety. If the fun surprises start to outnumber the not-so-fun ones, maybe we could remove that little bit of apprehension and dread that some of us feel when we think of being surprised.

Plus, you, the surprise-er, would get to hear, “Oooo, what a nice surprise!”

And then: Oh, LOOK! There is joy! Bubbling up for both of you from right in the middle of a surprise.

    

Jumping

Well, this was the week of the first Living in Joy Seminar and Workshop. Of course, I have to take a minute in my blog to thank everyone who came, and everyone who, though they were not able to attend, wished me well in my first attempt to live one of my life-visions. I am truly overwhelmed at the support and encouragement that I received throughout the entire process! You are all such a blessing to me, it's no wonder I live a life in touch with my joy!

I have to admit, though, that completing this workshop it wasn't easy for me. In fact, there were a couple of times that I wished I had not given myself so much time between when I announced the seminar and the actual date of the event. I was trying to be a very thoughtful planner, but during that time span, I nearly cancelled three times, thinking that I would reschedule the date for a time when I would be more prepared. The truth is I was never going to be more prepared than I was on Wednesday. Not because I was so perfectly ready, or because I had every resource I thought I might need, or even because I had so many people attending. I would never be more prepared, because I am a Jumper.

There are people who are Waders, and people who are Jumpers. Waders walk toward the water, assessing, preparing, taking off their shoes and rolling up their pant legs. They are looking for stingrays and jellyfish, and anything else that might be a threat. They have a towel with them and have secured their valuables on land. When they put their toes in the water, they are fairly well assured that they will be able to play and splash and enjoy in peace. They are brilliant, in my estimation, and very often have the most pleasant wading experiences. I sometimes wish I was a Wader.

But I am not. I have the most difficult time making it into the water using this method. I get distracted by the idea of stopping for ice cream, or imagining there are sharks just out of my line of site. I think maybe I should wait until I'm wearing shorts... or better yet, a swim suit. I might touch my toes to the water and decide it’s too cold, or worry about what to do after my feet are wet and I’m walking to the car, sand sticking to them all the way. Given the chance to think, there are so many reasons to quit! If I expect to make it into the water, I have to run as fast as I can and jump off the end of the pier. I’ll figure out the rest once I’m in the water.  

I don't think there is anything wrong with being either a Wader or a Jumper, and none of us are able to assess for another which method is best. The world is full of Waders who have been talked into jumping. Had they planned, they might have been very successful and happy in the journey. Instead, they nearly drown, because Waders who jump don't adapt well and never really recover. On the other hand, there are also plenty of Jumpers who have been cautioned to wade. Jumpers who wade, get stuck in the planning, in all the reasons not to do something, virtually paralyzed by fears, and never move forward.

So, I ask you, today...  Are you a Wader or a Jumper? There’s nothing wrong with planning every detail, provided you continue to move forward. If you get stuck in the planning, however, that’s a sure sign you are a Jumper who is trying to be a Wader. The only cure for that is to set aside your excuses, which you’ve cleverly disguised as reasons why you can’t, and just go for it. Don’t worry. Jumpers are experts at adjusting.

To all of my first-ever seminar attendees: thank you for letting me, the Jumper, finally quit talking about what I want to do, wading around in the ideas and planning stages, and just jump.

 And to all Jumpers trying to be Waders: just jump in, the water’s fine!

Air Conditioners

The Law of Attraction states that positive thoughts and words bring about positive results, and negative thoughts and words bring about negative results. I am not entirely convinced of this Law, in that I don’t believe that I can cause a plane to crash by imagining it in a fiery ball falling out of the sky. Still, I have noticed that when I focus my own attitude on positive outcomes and what I want to achieve instead of negative outcomes and what I fear might happen, I have better results.  

Case in point… My air conditioner was not keeping up last week. In the 100 degree Tennessee heat, my apartment would not cool below 80, and the air conditioner was running 24/7. Unaware that it is, apparently, unreasonable to expect an AC unit to cool inside air more than 20 degrees below outside temperature, I was convinced my AC was broken. My maintenance man assured me the unit was fine, which only served to frustrate me.

“I might as well go home and roast,” I would say. “My air conditioner is broken.” Sure enough, I was too hot, and my air conditioner seemed to not work. Even in the early morning hours, when the outside temperature was cooler, I would get up and look at my thermostat thinking, “I don’t care what my maintenance man says. This thing is broken.” And my thermostat would say the house was 78, instead of the 74 I was trying to achieve. I was so negative, and irritated, and frustrated, that I couldn’t even be nice to my maintenance man, though he had been quick to check my AC for anything he could fix.

Want to know what happened, next? My water heater broke.  

It made me laugh. “Of course my water heater broke,” I thought. “I’ve been doing nothing but complaining about how things around here don’t work. My focus on the negative couldn’t help but bring more negativity.”

I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t found my sense of humor. Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to fix the water heater the very next day, or maybe the temperature outside wouldn’t have cooled enough to allow my AC to work, again, or maybe I would have gone out to find that my car wouldn’t start, because “when it rains, it pours.” Or, maybe everything would have been fixed the next day, just like it was. What I do know is that finding my sense of humor allowed me to sleep more peacefully than when I was aggravated, and that I felt better the next day chuckling at the irony of a hot house and a cold shower than I had felt the day before, grumbling at the ineptitude of my AC condenser.

Whether thinking positively actually has an effect on the world around me, or just on my own perspective, I can definitely say that thinking positively brings about more positive results for me than being negative. If that’s the essence of the Law of Attraction at work, then I believe it. And just in case it also works to “bring about what we talk about,” the way the metaphysicists say it does, I’m going to quit complaining about looking old and getting fat.   

     

Tell Me I'm Right

I have a friend who says that people would rather be right than happy.

Think about that. It’s a big assertion. What does it mean?

I remember talking to some of the girls that work with me. I asked, “Why is it that people always anticipate the worst possible outcome, instead of focusing on the best that could happen?”

Answer: “Because people don’t want to be disappointed. If they anticipate the worst, and get the worst, they aren’t let down. But if they anticipate the best, and get the worst, they look stupid.” So, anticipating the worst doesn’t feel good (i.e. makes you unhappy), but it’s better than being wrong.

Honestly! What is so important about being right? Are our egos so fragile that we think being wrong will crush us? Would we rather make a list of cons before we make a list of pros, just to protect ourselves? From what, exactly?

It seems to me that, if we live expecting the best, we are in joy as we anticipate the coming of that best.  Whereas, if we live expecting the worst, we are in dread as we anticipate the coming of the worst. Of the two mindsets, regardless of the actual outcome, I think I’d rather live happily anticipating the best. Then, if the worst happens and I am surprised by it, at least I have had a period of time prior to that wherein I was joyful.    

I am reminded, also, of some of the irrelevant spats I used to have with my ex. We would fight about some of the least important details, until one of us would prove the other wrong. Oh, perfect. So the relationship takes a beating for the sake of “I told you so?” Again, right, but not happy.

I am going to start looking for this. I wonder how often I fight to be right at the expense of my own joy or the joy of those around me. I think that’s why they say, “Ignorance is bliss.” I think not having the burden to be right all the time could truly be the road to happiness.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Blank Pages

“Blank stares at blank pages…” is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite songs. Sara Bareilles captures perfectly, in my estimation, that feeling I have all too often in my self-chosen writer’s world. Yes, I have chosen to write… blogs, books, seminars… but I would think, as it is something I’ve chosen to do, something I love, something I want to do, that it should come easy for me. It doesn’t always. In fact, more often than not, it’s a struggle. There are days in a row that I sit in front of my computer, trying and trying. I write a paragraph, or half a page, and delete it all. I start again, but it’s still not really what I want to say. Delete. Then, hours go by. Maybe I’ve searched quotes, or called my friends, or checked my email account for the 100^th time. Maybe I take a walk. Maybe I do my dishes or scrub my bathroom. Still, the page remains blank.  

I remember when I used to try to write songs with a co-writer. It was the same thing. I would show up with an idea or two, and before we even finished with the chorus, the critic in me would say, “Nope. That’s stupid. Start over.” Until one day, my co-writer said, “Shelly, I don’t know why we think it has to be a number one song. Let’s just finish one. No matter how silly, or stupid, or bad it turns out, let’s just write something.”

That was brilliant. It is a statement I come back to, again and again.

I don’t think this only applies to writers, though. I think we are, very often, completely paralyzed by the demand we place on ourselves to do something perfectly. “Where do you want to eat?” is met with, “I don’t know,” and what both people are really saying is, “I don’t want to choose, because if the meal is not exactly what you want, or the service is not entirely exceptional, I don’t want to have failed.”

We look for friendships to be perfect and jump out of them if they don’t bring out only our best qualities. We don’t go back to school, because we don’t have time (to get straight A’s). We don’t invest in a house, because we might not make money on it, or worse, we might lose money. We don’t have children, because we might not be model parents…

Some of these things may only be specific to my own neuroses, but looking around, I don’t really think so. And I’m not advocating that we become lackadaisical about results, because trying to do the best we can do is really the only respectable way to tackle any problem, as far as I’m concerned. But when did we determine that we had to be absolutely perfect, or better than perfect… life altering? And failing that, we might as well not bother to make any effort at all?

You know, my blogs probably aren’t brilliant. They will probably never change anyone’s life, or solve even one of the world’s problems. I need to be ok with that. I like to think out loud, on paper, and that has to be enough. And if I can remember my own advice, that life is for experiencing it, and that it can be a perfect life for me, even if it is a jumbled, incoherent mess, then I can give myself permission to fill my world with ideas, and thoughts, and plans, even if those ideas and thoughts and plans go horribly awry and turn into ridiculous mistakes.

That will be much more fun than blank pages, won’t it?   

Reminders

Reminders

I was working on my book, “7 Things You Should Know,” awhile back. I had been suffering with writer’s block, somewhere between the first draft edit and wherever it is I imagined a “real writer” would begin. I wasn’t happy with the first draft, and I kept thinking, “This stuff is so talked-to-death. Who wants to hear this? I’m not good enough to do this. Will some kind of magical inspiration ever hit and give me something worth saying?” The self-recrimination was so deafening that I thought I might scrap the entire project. I had, however, already made a commitment to finish the book, and the book was driving my blogs and my seminar work, which people seemed to appreciate. I felt like I had to finish what I had started, but I was suffering. So, I did what I always do when I’m stuck and feeling less than joyful. I complained to a friend.

“The book is dull,” I said. “And redundant. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

 My friend told me to make an outline for the book. An outline! I was insulted.

“I know about outlines,” I thought. “I can write an outline. Everyone knows I need an outline. That’s stupid. Why are you giving me this simple advice? What makes you think I don’t already have an outline? What do you know about it? I am an adult, not some sixth grader trying to learn to write!”

Then I thought, more humbly, “Oh. Yeah. I guess an outline might help. Maybe I’ll try that,” because although I really do know about outlines, how helpful they are, how to write them, the truth is that I hadn’t written one. Not really. And I needed to be reminded of that strategy.

Do you know what that taught me? Sometimes reminders of what may seem to be the most basic information are exactly what we need. So, I’ve finished the book. Because even if it is the most basic of information, even if it is just strategies that everyone already knows, maybe someone needs a reminder.

Oh, and by the way, if you have any thoughts on the subject, please send me, from time to time, some reminders of the things you do to keep yourself feeling joyful. You never know what I might have forgotten.

Living In Joy Challenge: Try to keep things simple for the week. Ask simple questions, listen for simple answers. Refer to simple strategies and basic information. Not everything has to be a long, drawn-out discussion. Not everything has to be a debate. Appreciate the basics…eating  fresh fruits and vegetables, walking after dinner, choosing water instead of soda, for example. And by all means, if someone offers you the simplest of advice, take it, even if, no… especially if it sounds too simple to really work. I’d love to hear if it makes a difference for you. J      

Happy Independence Day

Most of us are familiar with the battle for independence that our country waged in the 1700’s. We wanted the right to speak our minds. We wanted our interests to be represented, without it costing us everything we owned. We wanted to be able to defend ourselves, without fear of recrimination…

I sometimes think about how difficult it must have been to make the decision to travel across an entire ocean, to a piece of land that was unsettled, unfamiliar, and foreign, and make a new life. The new world was wide-open, in every sense. New land, new laws, new challenges, new habits, …new everything! As exciting and full of potential as it was, it must have also been frightening, because independence has a price. And not just for the colonists. In fact, one of the greatest challenges of independence, whether you are a new country trying to set-up a legal system, a young adult heading off to college, or any person just recognizing a personal right to choose how to live your dreams, lies in determining what to do when anything can be done.

Marianne Williamson, author of “A Return to Love,” said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

 As much as we want independence, the freedom to do, have or be anything at all, we also know that our limitlessness comes with a responsibility to achieve greatness. And that responsibility scares us. If we are, indeed, powerful beyond measure, then we are powerful enough to live our own dreams. We are powerful enough to have the families, the jobs, and the homes that we want. And if we are powerful enough to, but are not living out our dreams, then why aren’t we?

Our countries independence came with a price: the abandonment of the familiarity of one way of life, the leaving of the safety (however precarious) of the homeland, the trade of what was “known,” for the “unknown.” This is the same cost we endure when we exercise our independence in our lives, today. Because of this, we become afraid to exercise our independence, to choose what we want, to speak of our dreams, to share our thoughts and ideas, to excel. We are afraid of the cost.

What if we weren’t? What would each of our lives look like if we exercised our independence and just had faith that our richest lives could be ours and that the cost would be worth it? What if we recognized that we really do have the power to make our own choices, that we are not victims, and that we are free to chase our dreams? We are not subjects to any king… not our jobs, not our spouses, not our children, not our financial circumstances... We choose. We are independent to guide our own lives across deep waters and enter into a new world.

I hope for you this holiday that you are able to celebrate your own independence and your freedom to choose to live the life of your dreams. Happy Independence Day!