Life's Pleasures

Happy Day

 

Find Your Playful Place

Everyone needs to learn how to escape and take a break. Regardless of your love of life and how motivated you feel, finding a refuge helps.

Choosing to find a place of playfulness instead of using coping techniques replenishes your strength, stamina, and inspiration.

Find a fun space to retreat for self-renewal.

Bring along a writing pad and pen. Free write about the adventure

A run or walk by the sea or a pond invigorates.

Observe the colors and scents. Feel textures.

Discover bugs and creatures that inhabit the area. 

Listen for birdsong. 

Research has revealed that gardening releases tension and reduces stress hormones in the body. Working in the garden and digging in the earth soothes. 

Let go of judgments and opinions.

Allow each moment to provide invigoration.

Discover your Playful Place. Fill it with smiles, laughter and words.

Energize the Day

Wonder Instead of Worry

Why do we practice worrying? Psychologists indicate that worry gains its hold on us by ritualized reassurance. All negative scenarios that can possibly occur, race through the mind. We search for ways to survive them, to calm ourselves down. Situations we worry about 94 percent of the time never happen. What results is usually something never worried about.

Next time the worry bug bites, try new approaches.

Take a break from dancing or jousting with the worry bug. Rather than change the way you think, change your relationship to your thoughts.

Learn to watch your thoughts, rather than engage with them.

When a negative thought distracts, stop the runaway train. Notice sights, sounds, scents, a taste of air. Engage with a feeling.

Notice what’s going on in the moment. Find words of admiration to discover the rightness of things.

Create your own metaphor for struggle Consider your greatest accomplishment and how you achieved it.

Bring in all the senses to recall it in detail.

Avoid always thinking in fix-it mode.

Sing La La La and launch into a favorite melody.

Keep a journal for positive ideas and gratitude comments and write in it just before bed.

Try humor to design a defense against your bug.

Turn worry into Wonder!

The Vitality of Spontaneity

Thomas Jefferson wrote the pursuit of happiness into the Declaration of Independence yet today’s researchers studying mind/body health do not like to pursue the term, “‘happiness.” They claim that its pursuit turns into a challenge to define or measure. As a result, expectations may get in the way of its capture.

John Monterosso, a researcher at the University of Southern California’s “Brain and Creativity Institute,” says today’s Americans feel happiness is, “something we should be able to control and pursue.”  He encourages students to consider far-reaching goals rather than immediate success. Monterosso provides examples of learning a musical instrument or appreciating art which can open possibilities for future potential.

Defining the term, “subjective well-being,” Arthur Stone, USC professor of psychology, indicates it contains three components: how satisfied you are with your life, (so-called hedonic experience, feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, stress and pain), and how meaningful your life feels.

In USC’s Emotion and Cognition laboratory, Mara Mather studies the “positivity effect.” She finds, “Young people still are seeking out information to improve their future well-being, while older people are focusing on the present moment and trying to optimize their emotional experience. They’re priming themselves to feel good about life.”

Using the word, “flourishing” rather than happiness, Varun Soni, vice provost for USC campus wellness, claims,”happiness can come and go, but flourishing endures.” It acknowledges suffering and cultivates resiliency.

Consider what gives you a wisdom of well-being. Investigate feelings of contentment and joy mingled with concerns and considerations for future choices.

Sensory awareness bridges the gap between our moments and life’s ever-changing nature.

Use a kaleidoscopic approach to find a life balance. Acknowledge the peaks and low points and develop an understanding of their necessity in life.

Discover the vitality of spontaneity.

Learn nature’s nurture by immersion in outdoor settings.

Add slides of gratitude, loving relationships, and creativity.

Spin and twirl with appreciation, mindfulness, humor, fun, resilience, and determination.

When frustrations or anxiety appear, use positive views to glide over them.

Let your experiences become the best teacher of well-being.

Laughter will energize all the body and mind muscles.

Find your kaleidoscope of words for well-being. Create them: Aroo. Blee. Crue.

Write around, in and through ideas to assist with balance.

Write with a Funtain Pen

 

With a fountain pen, the hand moves to energize the brain’s logical side. Letters form words in artful flow from the right side’s intuitive cells. Integration of both sides occurs as a result. The physical process of writing connects the writer on a sensual level.  

Technology requires the fingers to push keys on computers, cell phones, ATMs and other needy. A world of total keyboard input might work for everyone but writers. A pen gripped by fingers stimulates creativity and lets out the magic of words. 

When writing with a fountain pen, the wetness of the ink drying on the page reflects a scent of its own. Feeling the elegance of writing and seeing the splash of color adds to the creative flow. Mindful moments with a pen slow and focus thoughts. 

 As fingers blend with swirls, loops, and angles of letters, relaxation of the mind occurs. The rhythm moves the writer away from the rapidity of life’s requests that bombard the psyche. 

Return to your emotional core and connect by thinking and writing with a pen. Without a fountain pen, try any pen that flows. Avoid the use of a pencil.

Experience a free write for ten minutes. Find self-reflection in ink with your funtain pen. Prance the fellow across the pages.