re-living through writing (happiness continued)

Ok, life has been coming at me fast for the last week or so. We have had lots of visitors (all of whom have had corona, or have had the vaccine, hallelujah!), and I have been relishing in togetherness.

I have SO MUCH to write here, but for today I just wanted to come here and talk about happiness for another minute, and also put up a gigantic picture of my missionary…

…(ha! I’m sure she’d LOVE that if she were to see it!) but hey, it exudes happiness, right?

Happy missionary, happy sisters, makes mama happy too.

I also wanted to write for a minute before the weekend because in re-listening to those podcasts from the last post (we are going to discuss for our sisters podcast zoom call next week), I realized that writing down (which actually be “re-living”) those things that impact your mind is one of the five ways to “get happier” that Oprah and Shawn Anchor talk about.

Man, that’s one of the things I love about this blog, I can come here and “re-live” so many thoughts before they vanish in my increasingly forgetful brain!

So if you’re done thinking about happiness, go ahead and skip this post, but for me, I want to transfer some of my notes from “part 1” here to re-live them for a minute.

Ok, so here are my notes from the end of that podcast:

First of all, are happiness and contentment the same thing?

Just an interesting question to ponder. I think they are in a way. He also talks about joy vs. happiness and are they the same? I tend to think not, just because to me, JOY is a very deep kind of happiness. Something that comes from a change of thought process.

Five ways to get happier:

Two-minute habit for twenty-one days. (I’m goin to incorporate this into my “Lent” practice this year to finish up the end of my 40 days…more thoughts on that soon.)

1) Every morning write down a thank you for three things

Gratitude changes your “vibration frequency” in the world and if we write down things we’re grateful for, they change our very vibration (I so believe this!)

2) Write down one meaningful thing that happened to you, get your brain to re-live that experience

Write things down (that’s why I’m here, right now, trying to re-live what moved me).

3) Send a thank you note to someone, 2-minute email, tweet, instagram. Social networking can be positive.

Often we bemoan how awful social media is, but we have the power to send out so much good…positive vibes of “thank you’s” off into the wide world of the Internet.

4) 15-minutes of fun mindful activity (exercise, etc.)

I so believe in this!! Especially since I got to do like 43 hikes with my sisters this last week. Ok, really maybe more like six, but I felt alive!!

5) Meditation

The more times you can spend in stillness the happier you are. I sure am trying on this! Still meditating each day and I totally “get” the reasoning, still trying to tweak it to help my mind calm down each day.

Three conclusions:

–Happiness is a choice (interesting to think about since I’ve been pondering this lately [HERE], but I think this is a different kind of choice).

–Happiness can spread

–Happiness gives us an advantage (better at making the world a better place)

There we go. Some thoughts for the weekend. Happy Friday!