PadawanOfHappiness

I am cautiously optimistic about 2021 and I am looking forward to the year.  One thing that I learned in 2020 is that perspective and attitude can really help you navigate challenges.  It doesn't make them go away but it certainly can help your mental and emotional health stay on a more even keel even tending towards positivity and happiness, but it does take work. Keeping a positive attitude is work and can be compared to exercise, the more you do it the easier it is, mind you it isn't necessarily easy just easier.  With that in mind I had an epiphany this morning while staring at my coffee mug and realized it can pair with one of the songs I was listening to last night and thought it should be my theme song for the year. Last night during my dance party I was listening to 'Higher' by Gloria Estefan and thought this is a great song for 2021.  The chorus goes like this: Just understand, don't get me wrong You got to live your life, live it right Or you'll go bac...

I knew it would come eventually, I was optimistic based on the week that we have had that it would take longer than this to actually come.  That sense of being trapped. I cannot say this enough that my family has been great and I really could not ask for more we are all doing our best given the circumstances.  But here is the situation I am an introvert, I am used to working from home by myself, which means that I am used to being alone for roughly 7 hours a day Monday through Friday.  Now I have Mr. Padawan and 2 little Padawans with me ALL DAY LONG.  Ok, I do get a 20-minute walk for my #Walk20in20, most days but sometimes one or both little Padawans go with me.  Also one of my Padawans is a toucher and when he is anxious he gets even more touchy it brings him comfort, but it drives me nuts, I don't really like touch and most definitely not when I am stressed like now. But based on last night's dream and the thoughts in my head today, I know that I did a ...

I very much had a love hate relationship with the day. My kids had a lot of fun with it and I had some fun with it too.  The reason I did it was because I don't really enjoy the same stuff as my boys do and I am trying to foster a relationship with them and embrace some silly things in a way that we can both enjoy.  So since I am a huge Gretchen Rubin fan and if you are familiar with her you probably know that she advocates celebrating the minor holidays so I figured leap day qualified.   Frog pond jello  I knew that going into this that the sites I used for planning were fantastic and very inspiring, and I knew that my abilities and my patience level would not allow me to really re-create the picture perfect treats.  I was a bit frustrated by my own annoyance that my stuff was not quite as planned, even though logically I knew ahead of time things wouldn't go just as I planned.  I needed to keep reminding myself to cut myself some slack and focus ...

I have trouble re-reading books even when I want to re-read them. I just love to read so, of course, I have some books that I find worth re-reading but most of them I enjoy them and move on they served their purpose of entertaining me or giving me something to think about and then I move on.  It is fleeting but good. However, there are books that I want to re-read because they really helped me with something that was going on in my life and I still hold them dear to me.  And I want to re-read them as part of a tune-up if you will of my life.  However, that has been a problem for me and I wanted to solve it because it was actually making me unhappy that I didn't get around to reading them. As with anything you want to do you need to make time to do it, time won't just magically appear.  This meant I had to find something to motivate me to get it done.  I believe I have stumbled onto something that is working for me, book clubs.  I noticed on my town's...

One of the frustrating things about committing to an exercise program is the fact that I feel I never lose weight, which has always been my goal. I never liked exercise and never got the endorphin high that many do, so if I am not losing weight I become discouraged easily. So what was I getting out of exercise if I wasn't losing weight, which was my purpose?  As you can see with that line of thought it was very easy to stop the exercise program.  However, even as I stopped and started I knew logically that I needed to continue it was important for me to do this, so I needed to come up with a new motivation. I sat and thought about some truths and accept my reality. I am never going to have those endorphins I have to accept that and I need to stop working for that. I know that when I exercise consistently my overall mood and happiness is elevated over the long term this is not a short term play for me. I know that for my emotional health, how I deal with stress from ...

 I finished Outer Order Inner Calm today in a fit of yes creating Outer Order!  I have had the book for a while (since I went to see her on March 6th and go the book) and finally told myself that yes I did in fact have time to read it so I did just that. One of these days I am going to manage to wrangle all my clutter and stuff to make a more peaceful home.  I do make progress and then I backslide but knock on wood I have never complete regressed it is more like three steps forward one back.  I am doing my best to not be too harsh on myself and keep myself focused on my wins rather than the regression. This morning I just could not get myself out of a mental and physical fog.  Last week the little Padawans were home for school vacation week, and of course, Easter was just this weekend.  There was a lot going on that is exhausting to me both physically and mentally so it should not have been a big surprise but it was.  I knew I had to get a lot ...

March is the week that we focus on Work in the Happiness Project. I need to expand my business to make money, not huge money mind you but enough to supplement the family income so that I feel financially secure. What I need to do is move out of my comfort zone which means growth. William Butler Yeats, "Happiness, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing." I need to grow and personal and professional growth is combined really when you think about out, our lives are not siloed, they are not insular no matter how much we like to try to compartmentalize.  The whole idea of starting a business is crazy and there are so many ideas and things that need to be done but I am going follow the advice that an advisor to Gretchen gave her. "...keep it simple - you can add features later, as you figure out what you're doing." (pg 72 kindle location 1484) With that thought in mind, I am creating a lis...