Pencilling in Happiness

For the majority of us conjuring up the to-do-list has become as routine as the morning coffee. These items usually include phone calls, emails, groceries, housework, and now that Spring has sprung, the laborious task of pulling the garden weeds. These activities are of noteworthy importance and do require time, however what about some time for the author? Are you on your to-do-list?

All of us have a duty to ourselves and to others to strive to be happy. Feeling guilty about putting yourself on your to-do-list is nonsensical when you consider that your happiness is linked to physical health, improved self-esteem, coping skills, improved resilience, work satisfaction, and improved relationships with colleagues, friends and family.

Those things that are not prioritised do not get done. Because happiness is such an elusive term, we are not apt to pencilling it in under our daily activities. Is happiness something that you try to cultivate in your daily life or is it something that you hope will surface in the even more elusive ‘someday’? Annie Dillard’s book The Writing Life contains a passage that might just as cleverly apply to happiness as it does to words:

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now... Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water....

Allow for happiness in the present tense. Do not sidestep happiness for today, waiting for something to materialise tomorrow. Play your favourite songs not with the fear that you will come to hate them. There will always be new songs.

So let’s look at some concrete ways to strive for our personal happiness. When you look at your past, what are some tried and true ways that you found to boost your mood? Perhaps it’s listening to some of your favourite upbeat music, watching a fun movie or TV show, surfing the net, or playing chopsticks. Or conceivably baking a cake, going for a walk around the block, or making a call to a cheery friend, works for you. Create a list of “mood-boosters” for yourself, and the next time you rhyme off your things-to-do for the day add one or two of these activities.

Altruistic activities are very beneficial to our levels of contentment and happiness. Including something in your week that moves the focus from within to without significantly impacts the ‘happy-neurotransmitters’ in the brain such as dopamine and serotonin. A compliment benefits both donor and receiver, so spot a well-written proposal by a colleague or a good colour on a friend, and articulate it. And if time or money allow, consider volunteering for a cause you support or donating to a charity you admire.

Developing ‘an attitude of gratitude’ is another effective strategy in the hunt for happiness. People who are grateful for the blessings in their lives reap more for which to be grateful. To be conscious of small but significant successes in your day—like joining the fast-moving line at airport check-in, or surprisingly programming the PVR first-time around—does wonders for dopamine levels. Scribbling the things you are grateful for in a journal at bedtime is a sure-fire way to elevate your morale. Or for the more tech-savvy, the Happy Tapper’s Gratitude app makes appreciation effortless.

A focused mind is a happier mind. Consider the last time you lost track of time while immersed in a good book, or doing something creative like tackling an enjoyable piece on the piano. ‘Flow’ is the term used to describe this positive, energised state in which we lose all self-consciousness and sense of time. Now consider the ‘multi-tasker’ who has a million and one things on their mind and to-do-list. No one thing is worthy of their full attention, not even spouses, children or the soup that is boiling over on the stove. While some people may be capable of multitasking, for the majority of us this should be cast out as an experiment of modern time that has proven itself ineffective. When stretched too thinly, our mental health suffers. So discard the belief that success and being busy are synonymous. So parents to a couple of toddlers aside, ask yourself what three things you would like to do, and do well, by bedtime each day, prioritise those activities and focus on them one at a time.

So, the next time you find yourself making your to-do-list carefully consider what is in fact important. Do the weeds need to be pulled today or might ‘picking the daisies’ prove more beneficial? 

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Mid-June, I am launching my first package for weight management and emotional eating. The packages involve interactive videos, interesting questionnaires, and action points that make you accountable. The investment varies depending on whether you want coaching and to what extent. There's the cheap and cheerful home-study program, through to the limited VIP membership programs, all with forums for you to interact with other clients, providing support and motivation. I am presently working on the modules and am very excited about the subjects, from improving body-image, to overcoming perfectionism, to setting a new benchmark. So whether you want to lose that stubborn ten pounds, or considerably more, remember that 80% of your success in weight management is psychology. Only 20% of your success comes down to the "how-to's" of fat-loss, such as exercise and food-intake.....I will keep you posted so stay tuned. ;-)

Inundated by your 'to-do-list'?

Ever feel inundated by your 'to-do-list'? As a part-time, wanna-be-writer, I have a plethora of ideas sparking off in my brain at any one point and what feels like no time to formulate these on paper. As a part-time weight-management coach, I hesitate to admit that I'm all too aware of the importance of goal setting, living in-the-moment, etc, etc, but a recent relocation to Toronto has my mind doing summersaults--it's especially prone to gymnastics in the early hours of the morning. Before you start making any judgments over my competence as a weight-management coach, do bare in mind that coaches are nevertheless mere mortals like everyone else. I often wish that I could give my brain a good Spring-clean. Maybe, give it a good shake, like I would a rug. Or put it in the wash on, 'Normal'. Or, if I could get my computer guy to come over and perform a defragmentation every six weeks. Conscious of the fact that these are not viable options, I must seek another solution.

So yesterday I headed to Indigo for some inspirational advise on how to manage time--and life--better. Scouring bookshelves, my mind fills with images of my future-self indulging in plentiful free-time. In the bubble above my head, I'm leisurely sipping a cup of dulce & banana herbal tea, while perched on my couch, legs folded beneath me, either suspended in Afghan fiction, some pretentious prose, spurting off Italian--whatever catches my attention for a brief interlude, on my way to the self-development section. 

Four hours later, I emerge--hope resurrected. But, this lasts all of half a block. On my way home, I wonder which of the four books I should read first. Should I hurriedly, speed read my way through each tonight, in search of some nuggets of advice? Might I feel more inundated with so much information? So I start by opening book number one, The Pledge, by Michael Masterson. I speed read through the first two chapters. I like his approach. It has a few new twists compared with so many others on creating an 'Abundant Life'. In part three, Masterson shares with me how I can save 589 hours per year, which is the equivalent of fourteen 40-hour workweeks. Now that would be impressive, but this does make me wonder about my quality of life. In this scenario, I'm now taking two-minute showers, so I hardly have time to wash out the shampoo, never mind condition. I'm eating at my desk, I have the bed-time of an eight-year-old, as such, I'm missing Grey's Anatomy, and it gets worse. My heart starts into palpitations as I read about the parts of my early morning routine. The bubble above my head now consists of a disheveled looking woman, wearing one shoe, eating tuna out of a can rested on the kitchen counter (high protein breakfast), attempting to prop up an impotent section of the The Globe and Mail.

Masterson hails the pre-dawn activities of other entrepreneurs, such as Ben Franklin and Donald Trump. Including Masterson, these three have collectively walked, jogged, stretched, meditated, thought positively, read poetry and philosophy, written poetry, fiction and non-fiction, journalled, assigned tasks to assistants, eaten a high-protein breakfast while reading a dozen newspapers, completed numerous objectives in their respective businesses, and all before noon. Although I may come across as being facetious, I do indeed commend anyone able to achieve all of this by noon. Truth be told, I am envious of their steadfast ability to prioritize as they do. In my world, the following quote seems more applicable:

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

--Natalie Goldberg

In comparison with Masterson and his team of high-achievers, I’m feeling not inspired, but a bit defeated, if not a tad inundated again. But, before I start highlighting the obvious differences of sex and turning this into a feminist blog, with Michael, Ben and Donald on one side, and Natalie and I on the other, I have to own up to the fact that I have no family hanging out of my apron strings, nor a conventional, full-time job. The usual scapegoats do not apply. My recent inability to structure my life, namely, complete my daily tasks and write, is entirely my own fault.

So in a further attempt to delay the inevitable, I promptly pull out book number two: Your Writing Coach, by Jurgen Wolff. The unavoidable first chapter is all about fear—the fear of rejection, the fear of success, the fear that it won’t be good enough, the fear of revealing too much, the fear that you will be overwhelmed by research. As a weight management coach and human being I know all about these fears. In my therapy training I analyzed all of these fears in relation to myself ‘till the cows came home, turning blue in the face. Whenever I want to make a change, resistance always raises its formidable head. Resistance is a strange phenomenon. As Peter F. Drucker aptly stated:

What you have to do and the way you have to do it are incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.

Wolff offers some advice about fear; “…put them aside now and focus your attention and your energy on what only you can write.” So I put my fears aside….oh, but I must develop a writing schedule, so onto book number three.

In Kelly L. Stone’s smart, little book, Time to Write, she offers many routines to chose from, such as the early-morning writer, to the after-hours writer, to the blitz-writer, to the mini-blocks-of-time writer, to the any-opportunity writer. Too many choices. Nike’s little checkmark appears in the bubble above my head. So I leave book number four. I just write.

When I feel inundated, I know that beneath all the indecision, there lies my intuition. It’s so simple that I sometimes doubt it. Should this not be more complicated? Whether you call it the inner-self, your essence, or your soul, allow yourself a moment to listen to that untapped source within, and then ‘Just do it’.