You can choose your attitude

I found this story on the web, and just had to share!

“There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head.  ”Well,”  she said, ” I think I’ll braid my hair today.”  So she did, and she had a wonderful day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and saw that she had only two hairs on her head.  ”Hmmm,” she said, “I think I’ll part my hair in the middle today.”  So she did and she had a grand day.

When she woke up the next day, she looked in the mirror and noticed that she had only one hair on her head.  ”Well,” she said, “today I’m going to wear my hair in a pony tail.”  So she did and she had a fun, fun day.”

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that there wasn’t a single hair on her head.  ”Yeah!” she exclaimed. “I don’t have to fix my hair today.”

YOU have the POWER to control your attitude! What a wonderful power to own!

Happiness rebounds: In Memoriam, Kara W Smith

It was exactly four years ago — 10:10 AM on a Monday morning — that my world got knocked off its axis. That was the moment a police officer came knocking on my door to tell me that my daughter had been in an accident.

Later that morning we learned she had died of a cerebral hemorrhage — at age 22, on her way to classes, she died like she’d lived — moving fast, and ahead of schedule.  And that was so like her .

Watsana Soodsawat was born in Bangkok, Thailand and by the powers that flow thru the Universe grew up to join our family in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, literally on the other side of the globe, when she was eight years old.  It was here that Kara Watsana Angela Smith, born with a club foot, grew up to be one of the fastest girls on her soccer teams.  It was here that she completed our family as we embraced her.

Kara was ALWAYS early.  She got antsy if we weren’t walking into a building five minutes before an appointment.  She is the only child I know who ever got bonus points for turning in projects ahead of schedule.  And she was always moving fast — running, biking ahead, and once she got a car, with her foot to the floor.  It was, in retrospect, as if she needed to fit in everything life offered into a compressed schedule.

Maybe, she sensed something.  She died too soon.

In the wake of her death, Happiness was not the first word we used to describe our world.  But we did have our lives to live, and so we moved on and told stories about Kara to keep her memory alive even as we worked very hard to create our “new normal.”

New Normal became our mantra, our companion, our solution to every obstacle we encountered as we tried to put our lives back together.  Saying ‘New Normal’ meant that we accepted that things would never be back to normal, and we had permission to re-create normal in this new world.

After awhile, we noticed that living the principles of happiness for many years prior to Kara’s death had made us strong enough to bounce back.  Our practiced resilience enabled us to accept what we could not change and forge on ahead with optimism.

There will always be a hole in my heart.  There will always be a face missing in new family photos, and a deep sense of loss for what might have been.  Yet, we have our memories to savor, and we have the strength we draw from each other.

and we have, once more, Happiness.  Not happiness that ignores loss, but happiness that embraces loss –  accepts it as part of the complicated mess that life tosses at us — and happiness that is deeper and richer; because we’ve looked into the darkness and we know what is possible when happiness is tested.

Ours is stronger today than ever.  Happiness, you see, rebounds.

In memoriam, Kara Watsana Angela Smith, b 11-15-82 Chang Mai province, Thailand, d 9-28-08, Akron, Ohio.  May she be always happy.

Miracles do happen — the power of attraction

This is about a little miracle — in the midst of a bad economy.

My wife and I bought another house (a foreclosure) in our neightborhood a few years ago.  After rehabbing it we rented it out.  The tenants — who were decent sorts — recently moved, but after fixing all the problems they left behind, we decided that maybe we’re not cut out to be landlords.  So, we decided to sell the house.

“What are you thinking?!” you might ask.  This is, after all a very down market.  And yes, there are houses in our neighborhood that have been on the market for over a year.  Still, we decided to try.  This house, with a large fenced yard, is a perfect starter home for a family with one or two kids and a dog — and we are certain that a family like that is out there somewhere.  We decide to attract such a family.

Monday: we place a For Sale By Owner sign in the front yard, and list the house on Craigslist and Zillow (free is good!).

Tuesday: we post our maximum allotment of four pictures to the online ads

Wednesday: we are contacted by a broker who specializes in houses in our city.  Reluctantly, we agree to chat.  He impresses us.  He tours the house, affirms that we’ve got a nice, clean little property.  He makes a good case for himself, and we agree to give him a shot on a flat fee basis.  What the heck — it costs us nothing to let somebody else do some work for us, eh?!

Thursday, 1pm: Matt the Matchmaker (as I’m now calling him) says he’s showing the house at 3PM.  Cheryl and I head out to run some errands on the other side of town.

Thursday, 4:30pm: Matt calls Cheryl on her mobile, and a cryptic conversation ensues.  Cheryl hangs up, shakes her head, and says: “He sold the house!”

Unbelievably, we are signing papers tomorrow.  Family, with one kids and two small dogs.  They are pre-approved with a bank.  They are first-time homebuyers, and their current lease expires in six days, so they want to start moving in… in three days!

We will have sold the house and turned it over, in less than a week.  The power of attraction works!

And we are VERY happy! 

I believe in miracles.

Happiness is not a marathon (it’s more like strength training)

The Akron Marathon is this weekend, and I have two clients and several friends who are running.  Should be a gorgeous weekend!

Thinking about marathons reminded me of a recent discussion I was part of.  I was a guest on a local public radio station show two months ago.  The Sound of Ideas topic was Vacation and Relaxation Deprivation, so most of the show addressed stress in the workplace and our mindsets around not being able to relax. (who better to have on a show about stress than The Executive Happiness Coach!

I had such a great time! Lots of people called or emailed into the show, and we shared many ideas for how one can take a break from stress, take a mini-vacation, etc. If you’d like to hear the whole show (recording is about 50 mins long) you can pick it up at the WCPN archives, http://www.wcpn.org/index.php/WCPN/soi/12794/

One of the other panelists observed that many people see work as a marathon, an endurance race — “I must keep going, going, going.” In reality, it’s more like strength training; periods of intensity with time off in between for recharging and to allow the muscles to rebuild and strengthen.

As someone who spends regular time on fitness, this metaphor feels quite appropriate, and I believe it applies to many areas of our emotional life, too. If I pursue happiness ALL the time, constantly engaging in pleasurable activities and things that keep my excitement high, then pretty soon I will stop appreciating how great it feels, as it will be the norm — I’ll actually become numb to happiness!

A better approach, IMHO, is to ‘visit’ happiness on a regular basis, in between all the other stuff in my life — frustration, fear, upset, envy, impatience, etc. Then when I experience happiness, it will feel far more powerful and positive as a force of renewal, filling my tank back up.

Just as the body needs downtime for the physical muscles to build strength, the emotional self needs downtime (like meditation, quiet moments, periods of reflection) so we have a chance to actually build the emotional strength and awareness that we so desire.

Practice, rest, renewal.  Happiness is more like strength training, for sure!

We Gotta Make Our Own Happiness

I got up this morning feeling very unsettled. My week has been busy. I was a bit short on sleep and when my alarm went off all I could feel was bone-tiredness. So I turned off my alarm and skipped my workout (this is a big deal for me — I live in the assessment that I MUST exercise six days a week…).

Even with the catchup sleep, however, I still felt ‘on edge’ once I got up and functioning. I went in to my office to start work, and could not focus or sit still. I kept wandering around inside and outside the house, and eventually found myself out on my deck.

It took a while for me to realize that I’d been standing there — just standing in place — for a couple of minutes, just listening to the wind chimes.

That’s when I noticed that, for the first time in several hours, I felt calm. So, I sat down in a spot of sun on my deck and let go of needing to do anything else.

I sat there for… Oh, I don’t know; maybe ten minutes?

For ten minutes I sat in just that moment. I savored the symphony of wind chimes. I felt the cool breeze on my body. I drifted with the songs of chirping crickets as they waxed and waned. I reveled in the brilliant blue sky, cloudless and crystal clear. I watched two squirrels chasing each other up and down a fence and across the neighbor’s yard. I wondered at the beauty of the shasta daisies, crisply white and yellow against a sea of green, as they bobbed and swayed in the breeze (I even took this picture!)

And I breathed. Just breathed it all in. I sat in the middle of an absolutely spectacular moment on a perfect late summer day and… and nothing. I just sat and enjoyed being fully present.

My tank felt fully recharged after that.

Confession: I experienced a moment of guilt as I gathered my thoughts and came inside to my office. I’ve got so much to do, so many things on my desk. What was I doing?

I wasn’t Doing. I was Being. We gotta make our own happiness. This was one of my moments.

What Happiness and Guilt have in common

At the YMCA this morning two guys sitting at weight machines were having a conversation that went like this:

A: “Why do I do this? I come in here three days a week to beat myself up?”

B: “I agree. This is crazy, to come in here and pull and push and sweat. Why DO we do this?”

A: <after a short pause> “You know what it is? Guilt. If I don’t come in, I feel guilty.”

B: “Yeah, I know what you mean. If I don’t come in, I feel like I let myself down, ‘cuz I know how good I feel on the days I work out.”

A: “Guilt is a pretty good motivator.”

Listening to this exchange, I found myself chuckling. So many people I work with are driven by guilt into beating themselves up for not being perfect, for not “taking care of” everyone in the world, for not meeting impossible standards, and so on… and guilt in those circumstances has become negative and corrosive.

Yet, all guilt is essentially us telling ourselves that we’ve failed to meet some personal standard. So if my standard is that I work out three days a week, and I fail to get my butt out of bed on Monday morning, I feel a little guilt, which serves to motivate me.

Guilt, unchecked, can eat us alive.  Yet if we use it (in small quantities) to hold ourselves accountable when we fail to honor one of our own values or when we renege on a promise we made, guilt keeps us honorable.  And when I keep my promises, I feel happier.

So what guilt and happiness have in common is that they can each, in their own way, serve to motivate us and cause us to shift our behavior.

Thanks, Guilt, for keeping me honest, and supporting my happiness!

Happiness is just being alive and well

Wednesday I delivered two programs for employees at the Veterans Administration.  This was the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, and signs up and down the hallways at the center reminded people of a memorial service to be held the next morning.

During lunch and after the program I got to mingle with a number of disabled veterans who were hanging around the recreation hall where we held the programs.  Mostly it was older men in wheelchairs or using canes to get around, slowly.  They just wanted to chat, and a fresh face like mine meant they could tell some of their stories to a new audience!  I just listened…

At the end of the day, after the staff departed and I was left to pack up my stuff, the old guys returned to reclaim their rec hall.  I chatted with a couple of them as I shut down the sound system and stowed my laptop.  I noticed a group of young kids jostling down the hall, and a couple of them spun off and into the hall.  They started moving some chairs around, and I assumed they must be maintenance guys coming in to tear down and reset the room for the next event.

Then, I notice that one of them was missing an arm.

And another carried a significant limp — he was walking on a prosthesis.

I looked again.  These guys were young.  VERY young, by my standards.  Younger than a couple of my own kids.  They were also veterans, here to use the hall.  They were just rearranging the chairs to clear some space near the pool tables.

In that moment, I felt awash in a number of powerful, and wildly different, emotions:

Gratitude for their service (Iraq War veterans).

Sadness for their injuries.

Anger at a system of world government that uses young children to fight old men’s battles.

Hope for their future (they were just being goofy guys… no more, no less)

Happiness for my own health and for the well being and safety of my family.

Don’t just think about it.  FEEL it.  Today, take some Happiness from the fact that you are alive and well and have all your faculties about you, and you can feel safe in your own home.

Happiness is cool nites and dinner on the deck!

As my wife and I were preparing dinner last evening she looked at me and asked, “when was the last time we ate dinner at the kitchen table?”

Hmm.  Great question.  We traveled back on our calendar and realized that we started eating dinner on our deck when we returned from our vacation, which was 56 days ago.  Wow!  AND we live in Cleveland, Ohio, which is not exactly San Diego, weather-wise.  Fact is, while there’s been a near drought and my lawn is long ago brown, there’ve only been four days in the past two months when we did not go outside at dinner time to eat on our uncovered deck.  Once we decided to do “dinner and a movie” in our living room, and the other three times we went out to eat at restaurants where — you guessed it — we always sat on the patio.

I am sometimes sad about the state of my lawn… yet the optimist in my always looks for some good in every situation.  This run of mostly dry weather allowed Cheryl and I to use our beautiful deck as an extension of the house for most of the summer.  It pulled us out of the house to socialize with the neighbors (who were often dining on their own deck) and enjoy the sights and sounds of our neighborhood at play.  It’s been really lovely.

At this point, however, I am ready to move back indoors.  The remnants of Hurricane Gustav, colliding with spinoff weather from the many other tropical storms attacking the east coast, caused temperatures to drop back into the 50s at nite, and eating on the deck in a sweatshirt isn’t as much fun.

Ah, but guess what?!  Those 50-degree nites are FABULOUS for sleeping with the windows open and the crickets chirping.

Sometimes, the universe makes being an optimist so easy!

Happiness is cool nites, and dinner on the deck…

Don’t Watch TV! (well, maybe a little…)

Sometimes the statistics on advertising make me sad. The other day I read an article that reminded me that the average kid, by the time they enter school, will have already viewed 30,000 commercials. A typical working adult who listens to the radio as they commute by car on a freeway and who watches a hour of television daily can be subjected to between 300 and 1000 marketing messages daily.

One message, over and again: “Don’t be satisfied with what you have.”

Who can be happy when every minute of your day someone is telling you you can’t be happy unless you have their product? Unless you have a sexier car? The body of a supermodel! A bigger house! Nicer stuff!

Marketers live in mortal fear of satisfied people. Why? Because people who are satisfied are no longer consumers. They stop buying ’stuff.’

~average hour of TV = 40 mins program, 20 mins commercials. Avg commercial 30 secs, that’s 40 per hour, not including product placement on TV shows and movies.

You’re exposed to such messages all over the place, of course. TV is the champion because so many people spend so much time in front of it.

I’m not REALLY saying you should stop watching TV. It does provide entertainment. Still, 33% of your viewing time is spent absorbing messages that say, “don’t be happy! don’t be satisfied!” And then you wonder why you can’t experience more happiness.

BE AWARE of the messages. Turn them off for awhile. Turn off the TV for one week, and let your system rest. Then when you go back to it, notice what happens to your contentment.

Happiness is in the air

It was a spectacular Labor Day weekend here in Cleveland.  The temperatures were moderate, the sky was clear and blue, and the sun shone on us for three straight days.  Thus, everywhere I drove it was with the windows down and the music upbeat.  What a wonderful long weekend to say goodbye to the summer of 2008!

I had to make several trips to and from other parts of town over the weekend, and with the windows down the breeze brought in the smells of greater Cleveland.

I passed twice thru the lower west side and experienced the nasty odor of rotten eggs that permeates the neighborhoods around the steel mills– it’s not sweet, but it always smells to me of the economy at work!  I took in deep lungfuls of the chlorine-tinged air around the city pool, which always takes me back to my high school and college years of swim competition.

I drank in the smell of hot asphalt, which for strange reasons always reminds me of summer vacations at the beach with my family.  At my cousin’s house for her annual Oktoberfest event, I reveled in the sweet smell of the whole roasted pig stuffed with brown sugar.

When we went for homemade ice cream at East Coast Original, I stood near the open window and sucked in the cool scent of chocolate and sugar and butter pecan.  And at the Cleveland Indians’ game on Saturday evening I sat happily in an aroma cloud of popcorn, peanuts, and good old Stadium Mustard.

But the best of all was when we drove back and forth past the curve on Route 176 just north of the I-480 bypass.  There is a bakery just on the other side of the tree line, and when the wind is just right… Ahhhhh!  There is nothing like the smell of fresh baked bread on the breeze.  Yum!  My mouth still waters just writing about it.

Happiness is in the air, indeed!