Transformation

Well, first let me say, Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the wooden horse, promising lots of freedom and success. Yes. More. Please. Thank you.

Now then, what’s this about happiness being “research?” Truthfully, I was reminded of how much I love research this week when Mayor Sue Fuchtman of Norfolk, Nebraska let me interview her about her experience running for and being mayor of a community about the size of Dare Valley, Colorado in my first series.

I used to interview people all the time for my old career, and no, I wasn’t a journalist, even though I am from a long line of them stretching back to my great-great grandpa winning our family newspaper in a poker game in 1892, the rebel. I used to rebuild war zones in my old job, anything from communities to political systems to the rule of law. When I visited these wild places, I interviewed a ton of people, anyone from a village woman to a Member of Parliament. I probably averaged about thirty interviews with people on my trips. And let me tell you, it was fascinating. I had forgotten how much I love it until this week…

When I interviewed Mayor Sue. 

This time I’m not rebuilding a warzone, but creating a fictional setting. Real information is still critical in making it come to life. Be real. Resonate with people. 

It finally hit me why research makes me so happy, or should I say interviewing. Because I get to connect with people and hear their story. It’s about listening. It’s about being heard. It’s about having a short peek into their life, their passions, their journey, their victories. And in the case of Mayor Sue, what a victory. She’s the first female mayor of Norfolk. Yeah for her and women everywhere!

What’s also wonderful is when the person you’re interviewing strikes a chord in you. As you probably have guessed, community, family, and connecting are all important values to me. And I could tell the same for Mayor Sue.

My novel, THE PARK OF SUNSET DREAMS, isn’t only going to be better because of this interview, it’s going to rock. Why? Because like with all my characters, there’s some spark of the true, the real, the higher vision–critical to what I believe my writing is all about.

So, next time you have a chance to research something, try interviewing someone. Or even when you meet someone new, think of it as “life” research. You might be surprised not only by how happy it makes you, but by how much you learn.

Spread the joy.

Ava

 

 Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

It’s taken some serious intention these last couple of years to receive help when I need it. But it makes me even happier when support comes without me even having to ask for it. 

This happened in a number of instances this week, most notably with my delightful neighbor shoveling my sidewalks for me, not once, but three times. 

I was raised to give more than I received, and like a lot of us women, I was uncomfortable asking for and receiving help when I needed it. Now, even though I have moments where I still want to do it all, I am exploring the new territory of receiving. And my heavens, does it make me happy.

What is your comfort zone? Are you more a giver or a receiver? I don’t think you have to be one more than the other now. I’m just calling in balance. When I need to give, I do. When I need to receive, I allow it. Mostly. I’m still a work in process.

Receiving support is inspiring to me because it helps me see I am walking my own talk. I was tired of being drained from giving all the time, and much of it wasn’t fun anymore. With the right balance between giving and receiving, I’m pretty happy doing both.

So, go on. Give receiving a chance. You might be surprised how much you like it after you undo all that conditioning not to. Come on. I’ll cheer you on.

 

 Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Well, the holidays are now behind us so we’re back to Friday posts at The Happiness Corner. Be regular from now until…another holiday perhaps. 🙂

I’m feeling really happy right now because I’ve just had one of those sticky conversations with a friend who’s in crisis, and I knew what to say–and not say. My books focus on sticky items in relationships sometimes, and so often in them (and in real life), we all wonder if we’re saying the right thing.  What do you say to someone who’s going through a divorce? What do you say when someone’s learned they have cancer? What do you say when someone’s kid keeps acting out time and time again?

And how do you know you’ve said the right thing? Because there’s peace. You haven’t told them what to do or how to feel. You’ve just listened and encouraged them, and told them you’re there for them. Maybe you’ve told them an anecdote about how something worked out for someone else when they don’t believe something good can happen to them.

We’re all here to support each other, and if we’re lucky enough, we’ll have a coterie of people who trust us enough to talk to us about their “stickiest” situations. And if we’re truly present to them and give them the freedom they need to be empowered in that situation and make the best decision for themselves, we are saying the right thing to them.

We’ve all come through another holiday, surrounded by family and other people we sometimes have those “sticky” encounters with. How did you fare? Was there enough love and space to say what you needed to say or simply be peaceful about accepting where things are, knowing they can change?

Let’s all listen a little more to our inner wisdom and give ourselves a pat on the back when we truly feel, down to our deepest self, that we knew exactly what to say. And we did it.

 

Image courtesy of gubgib / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This week I had  to run an errand to a shop I frequent locally. I hadn’t been in a while, so it’s always nice to see the owner. Usually I’m in and out in about fifteen minutes, but I was guided to ask about her husband, whom she hadn’t said anything about. She ended up telling me his cancer was back severely and that he couldn’t work. He was at home right now, barely able to get out of bed. Things aren’t looking very positive, and no surprise, she’s worried about him. About her family. About being a  new small business owner on one income. About her kids.

We ended up talking another thirty minutes. She cried, and I held her. And for that moment, there was healing.  She felt lighter and was smiling when I left. Really smiling. Something she hadn’t been doing a lot of.

What normally had been a regular visit turned into a moment of grace. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

There is happiness in a moment of grace just like this one. What the secret? I looked at her and asked about how her life really was. Not the whole shallow exchange we experience so often in our interactions. “How are you doing?” we ask people we come into contact with all the time. The expected response, “fine,” just comes out, and we continue on our merry way none the wiser.

The truth is that there are a lot of people who aren’t fine. People who have husbands with Stage 4 cancer or spouses out of work. People who are desperately trying to get pregnant, and so far haven’t. People who have gotten divorced and are afraid to go out on that first date again like Meredith Hale in NORA ROBERTS LAND.

How often do we really look beyond the pat answer of “fine” and really give a person permission to truly tell us what’s really going on in their life?

I was raised to say “grace” before a meal, and to me grace is gratitude, but it’s also that special support we receive from something beyond ourselves to do something extraordinary. My blessing came with this woman. I don’t know her well, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. She needed someone to express her hurts and fears to–like we all do–and I gave her permission to do that. Haven’t we all been hurt and afraid?

So as we go about this upcoming holiday season of gratitude and giving, I’m going to go deeper. I’m going to be more open to these moments of grace, knowing it helps others and also makes me feel happy that for a moment I connected with someone in their deepest self and they felt heard, seen, understood.  And were able to smile easier because of it.

What about you? Are you ready to invite in more moments of grace?

 

Okay, I know you’re going to say, well, it’s a trap to attach our happiness to acknowledgement, and I agree. But we also live and work in community. Unless we’re off living in a cave, we have relationships. We’re on social media, exchanging snippets about our lives, what we value, how we have fun, what we’re about.

This week something rather spectacular happened. I didn’t seek it out. It just happened. What I call spontaneous abundance. My first two books in The Dare Valley series, NORA ROBERTS LAND and FRENCH ROAST, were included in an ad that Amazon put out with books by Nora Roberts, Susan Anderson, JoAnn Ross, and lastly Carly Phillips. Remember that last name. I’ll come back to her later.

Let me talk a little about one of the best lessons my mom ever imparted to us six kids about acknowledgement. She said over and over again that you acknowledge the person who’s cleaning the bathroom at school with the same grace and respect as the president of the United States (or someone else big; pick your person). Each of us is special in our own right. And for me and my house, this is a motto to embody. 

Consider the flip side for a moment. When I came to Washington DC out of graduate school, I experienced the opposite of being acknowledged as a person. DC, for all its positives, is an ambitious town, and lots of people only want to be around people who can “get them someplace.” This has never resonated with me, and thankfully I was able to be successful here because I went counter-culture, and people really liked that. It was like a light house in a foggy night.

On one such night in DC early on, I had a rather humorous experience, and if I wasn’t more grounded, it might have hurt my feelings. I came to DC after winning a fellowship to work on international elections. Sometimes you don’t realize how big a deal something is until you arrive. Well, I arrived and am told they were going to honor me in a banquet. I was like, wow! Really? Okay. The banquet was set in a posh club even the TV show Scandal would use as a setting. I was 23 years old, mind you, and this was the biggest event I’d gone to.

I bought the best dress I could afford because I could make more money working at McDonalds than at this fellowship (as my accountant cousin pointed out). When I stepped into the swank club, my senses were awash. Honeyed wood. Tiffany glass. Thousand dollar suits. Silk ties in patriotic colors. And the smell of money and power thick in the air. People glanced at me as I mingled and then past me, dismissing me. I didn’t know a soul, but I’m pretty outgoing. I tried to engage people, but no one was biting.

Then the comedy began. The “important” people started handing me their coats since I was standing on the outside watching it all now, assuming I worked at the club or was an intern or something. In sum, they treated me poorly. When the president of the organization announced it was time for the sit-down dinner, I made my way in and was ushered to the head table by him. The man I sat next to had been the last prime minister of Canada, and he was just one luminary at the table. It was all of these “established” people and me. I was younger by thirty years easily and one of the only woman not a wife. I watched in total fascination as the people who’d handed me their coats winced and shifted in their seats, seeing me there. As the people who’d brushed me off when I’d tried to engage them in conversation had their mouths drop open slightly.

Well you know where this is going, right? After dinner, there was a stampede by those same people to meet me and joke about thinking I had been an intern.  I felt like few were genuinely sorry they had treated me poorly, and from that moment on in DC, I was always aware of this real negative in various circles.

I’m now in a new career, and even I can see how there’s a distinction between the published authors and not-yet-published authors; from the New York Times bestsellers and the published authors; and the traditionally published and the independently published authors. I’ve seen some of this “looking past people” at conferences, at publishing parties, even at local workshops. 

So this makes it even more special when I share my absolute joy over this Amazon ad (to me a divine blessing) on my Facebook page this week, and because someone on my page, links in Carly Phillips, she actually shows up and comments. Says “congrats.” That act is what my mom was talking about. That’s grace and class and human respect. And I’m grateful for it. It’s the way I live my life, and it’s always so wonderful to see it in other people. So thank you, Carly Phillips, for acknowledging me. For showing me there are people in this new career of mine–and in life–who feel and act the same as I do. For acknowledging me in this new career, and not just handing me your coat or ignoring me. 

You made me happy. Because I was seen. 

And isn’t that deep down what we all want in life?

 

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Have you ever wondered why we exhaust ourselves? Why we push ourselves so hard? We see this in so many characters in fiction. They have to reach burnout before they’re willing to make a change. 

Why can’t we rest? Why is it always go-go-go?

I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately. And trying to make changes. For some reason, I am less happy when I am tired. Shocking? Not really. 

One thing I have discovered about working for myself is that since it’s my bliss (and my dream), it’s easy to tell myself that I want to work more on it. Truthfully, when I first quit my old career, I had moments when I would be working at 11:30 pm and be like, wow, I’m working REAL late, but it’s my stuff. Happy dance. I told myself the same thing when I worked over the next weekend. And the next. And still another.

The truth is we can probably never get to a place where there’s no more to do. Isn’t there always something around the corner? Another person to tend to, another blog post (hah!), another errand, another dish that needs to be washed? 

So this week, I decided to stop. Rest. I hung up my beautiful hand-woven hammock that I lugged back from Guatemala and just hung out. I didn’t have the same view as the woman in the picture, but frankly, a view of my garden and my home and the sky was enough. 

I just rested. 

And I felt my happiness quickly restore. Soon it was easy to smile when I heard the kids in the adjoining yard yelling and playing. My mouth would tip up when I read a funny passage in the book I decided to indulge in. 

The body said, yes, thank you. And my spirit said, more of this. Please.

So if you’re feeling less than happy, ask yourself a simple question: do I feel rested?

The answer to your happiness might be as simple as that.

 

 Image courtesy of savit keawtavee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Well, I’ve been talking a lot about what happiness is, and after this week, I want to talk about an essential ingredient to getting there.

Truth.

You HAVE to be honest about where you are and how you feel. About life. About yourself. About your friends. About your career.

Everything.

This week, one of my best friends found out that a serious medical issue is back for her. And I have to tell you that happiness has been the farthest thing from my mind these past days. I love her. I root for her. And she does the same for me. She’s embraced my new life and reads my books–even though she’s never read a romance–and just continues to be the shining light that she is.

So this news hurt. Bad. 

And I had to be honest with myself about it. I couldn’t talk myself into saying, “Oh, I feel happy today.” That wasn’t my truth. I had to admit it hurt and then work with what I was feeling in order to have the peace, faith, and hope that we can find in any situation if we search for it. 

I don’t want The Happiness Corner Blog to ever be a Pollyanna version of life. I do believe happiness is possible and a gift. But I also wanted to say today that sometimes life really throws us a curve ball, and it hurts like hell. And makes you mad. We’ve all been there.

Admit it. Be honest. Speak the truth.

If we don’t, we can’t move through it to the good stuff: the momentary happiness we can feel in the tough times. Like today when I held the one-month-old baby boy of a dear friend. Here’s this little guy all tucked up against me, looking at me with those big brown eyes, and I thought, yes, there is blessing everywhere. Everything is in order, even if I don’t understand it right now. 

So, when you aren’t happy, be truthful with yourself and others. Hopefully you know why. If you’re really aware, you’ll know what to do for yourself. If not, seek out the happy people in your life and ask them what they do when life throws them a curve ball. Some people play with their kids. Others eat ice cream (I’m not talking about a binge here). While still another might read a book. 

Be good to yourself in those moments. Your happiness is not lost. 

Your truth will always show you the way to it again. 

 

Image courtesy of winnond at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There’s change in the air. Can you feel it in the cooler air? See it in the slight change of leaves from green to gold and red? It’s just beginning. The darkness is covering the evening earlier than usual, cutting our evening walks short. 

Change.

For me, it’s happiness. Something new is coming about, even if I’ve experienced it before (like fall), it’s never quite the same. With change, we don’t always know where it will take us. Like the leaf in the photo, we cascade with the flow of our lives and are swept away to new shores. 

This can produce fear at times, right? We don’t always feel happy about change, but perhaps it would be useful to start feeling that way. The promise of something better is here. We aren’t in the same place anymore. We aren’t the same person anymore. 

Everything is changing. 

And with that, happiness abounds. 

We see this all the time in novels or films, right? Something has to change in order to make way for the happy ending. A resolution to what we’ve been grappling with can only occur when there’s a magical shift inside us or around us. 

I love the fall because it’s the sign of yet another change. Our bodies start craving comfort food like soups and stews. We want to huddle at home on the couch with our sweetheart or play with our kids. We come back to ourselves after all of the expansion of the spring and summer months. We come back to our center. 

And with it, our happiness abounds.

So let’s all allow the happiness of change to enliven us as we see the leaves change, bringing that brilliant fall color.

I am ready for brilliant color in my life–even when it comes from change. What about you?

 

Image courtesy of nirots at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

From our individual and collective wisdom, our happiness grows. One thing I’ve realized is that the wisdom I’ve accumulated from my life experience has become my guide to what makes me the happiest.

In NORA ROBERTS LAND, my heroine, Meredith Hale, has two sources of wisdom since she doesn’t trust her own instincts anymore after her divorce. Both aren’t always appreciated. Her alter ego, Divorcee Woman, who starts talking to her, is always making recommendations to her under the guide of what I’ll call wicked wisdom. I like to think of Divorcee Woman as the good angel on Meredith’s shoulder, rather like we used to see in old cartoons. She’s always suggesting Meredith get together with the hero, Tanner, and to stop resisting him because, heck, the guy’s her soulmate. The other is her grandpa, the totally lovable, Arthur Hale. He’s lived a full life and has a good perspective on people and life from being a journalist. And he’s the one to point out when Meredith’s not acting from a place of wisdom, what he’d call her crazy place. Okay, and I’m hearing that I’d better mention Meredith’s sister, Jill, as a source, or I’m going to get into trouble. While younger than Meredith, Jill does have “some” wisdom to offer her.

What is it about wisdom anyway? To me, it’s like wisdom is the shortcut to happiness. When we listen and follow it, our life goes a lot better. It’s when we buck against it when we get into trouble.

This isn’t to say that we should break out of a collective wisdom that doesn’t serve us. I’m thinking the airplane would never have been invented if the Wright brothers had listened to people saying it had never been done, so couldn’t be done. Who doesn’t like the challenge of the impossible?

We all have to follow our inner compass, and like Meredith finds, Divorcee Woman and her grandpa pretty much give her some words of wisdom until she trusts her own compass again. They’re only telling her what she already knows about herself and life, deep down.

Sometimes we just forget. Or maybe we weren’t taught how to listen to ourselves.

Wisdom has this cloak of reverence around it. Sometimes, it deserves to be revered. The poet, Rumi, comes to mind in the way he strings together flowery phrases that tell us about living life from a higher place. But sometimes, wisdom is just common sense. Like don’t put a bunch of hair spray on and then go flambé some cherries jubilee. Trust me, this is not a good idea.

When our actions flow out of our wisdom, our happiness is great. We’re living our best life, the one we’ve always wanted to live.

So, what is the wisdom that you are acting from in your life? More importantly, is it serving you? If you’re not happy, then I’d bet the farm you’re not living from wisdom, but something else. And if you’re like Meredith and have forgotten what it feels like to know your own wisdom, do what she did, and look to the people you respect in your life who seem to be happy and have a happy life. What are they doing differently than you? What can they offer to you in the form of wisdom?

Don’t let the W-word put you off. You already know what it is. Even if you’ve forgotten for the moment.   

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are you surprised that the word “no” has power? Would it amaze you to know that using the word “no” can sometimes be positive? 

I wasn’t raised to think that way, but it’s something I have learned over time.  I heard Oprah say recently on one of her programs that she only does what she intends to do now. That implies saying no to things she doesn’t want to do. This is hard for some of us, especially women since we want to get along with people and not raise too many waves. As humans, we all want to be liked and included. And “no” can sometimes surprise people. 

Some time back, a wise woman told me that I should remove all of the “I shoulds” in my life.  When I tallied up all of the things I thought I should do in my life, I was pretty amazed. I was spending a lot of time doing things that I did not want to do. I was afraid to say no. It took some time, but slowly I cut out all of the “I shoulds” in my life, and something miraculous happened. I became happier.

This incredible secret can be seen in young children. What is a common first word in kids? “No.” That’s right. Kids know when someone is trying to make them do something they don’t want to do or stopping them from doing what they truly want to do. That’s why they say “no.” They know who they are and what they need. At that age, they feel loved enough by parents and teachers and classmates in daycare to say it without hesitation. They don’t question being loved and accepted.  And yet, over time, that changes. We grow up. We’re told what “the rules are,” and we stop saying “no” as much as we used to. We start doing things to confirm, and lower our happiness ratio.

The power of no is a key ingredient to happiness. From its highest place–from our internal truth–it can serve as a change agent in ourselves and our relationships. There might be some initial surprise from all of the people expecting and benefiting from our “I shoulds,” but it’s worth the process. And sometimes it takes a while, so be patient with yourself and others.

Cultivating the power of no is a maturation process. It’s actualizing the knowledge of what we truly need and not being afraid to say it, even when it may not be received well. You know you have the full Power of No when you have total peace saying it. It takes some time to have that power, but it’s worth the process.

So be nice to yourself. Cut out all of the “I shoulds” and do only what you intend to do. Say no to the rest. I promise you will find a happiness you might have never expected. 

 Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net