There is a rational explaination for everything?

Jack picked up this piece of iron the other day and when he flipped it over, the words, HAPPY THOUGHT, were there!

The other morning, I noticed that my front right tire looked partially flat. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to drive, so I asked Jack what he thought, and he assured me that it wasn’t totally flat, but also said that I should get it filled up after my morning appointments. I drove to my office, feeling somewhat concerned, and knew I had to clear that before I started my work day. It’s not possible to be present for someone else if I am feeling off or concerned about myself and my life.

As I drove along I thought, “I need to let this go. Give me a little help”, and turned on the radio. I do this fairly frequently while driving, and almost always get a message in a song that helps.

I turned the radio on and the words, “Take it easy, take it easy….don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy…” were being sung into my car. I started laughing out loud and felt a flood of relief, so much so that I forgot to fill my tire. When I got home that evening Jack looked at my car and said, “Did Chris (our mechanic) fill your tire?”. I said, “No, I forgot to do it!” to which he replied, “You did not!”…the long and short of it was that my tire did not appear to be flat and I didn’t put air into it.

There might be a scientific, rational explaination for this, but I don’t care about that. One day, when I was much younger, I was riding in the car with someone and looked up at the sky to see a full rainbow around the sun. I felt a flood of happiness and sense that it was an answer for me. I made the mistake of pointing this out to the man in the car who instantly said, “That is called a ‘sun dog’ and it occurs when the atmostphere………..” He was being “reasonable and rational” but his need to scientifically classify this beautiful sight, sort of sucked the life out of it for me.

I know that a little thing like my tire, is just the tip of a huge and magnificently mysterious universe. The more I notice and appreciate the out-of the-ordinary things that happen, the more I can feel myself expanding as well.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science“. Albert Einstein

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Saturday afternoon smile and give-away!

The pack of incense leaning up against very early flowers that I picked yesterday

It is Saturday afternoon here in upstate NY. I met my mother for breakfast today. At the end of our visit, I was telling her about an order of incense that had just been delivered. It is my favorite, and so I order at least 10 packs at a time, because I burn it both in my office and at home. I asked her if she would like a box and she said, “What do you do with it?” When I told her that you burned it, she said no thanks. I had to smile at this generation gap.

So, I thought why not have a little Saturday afternoon give-away?! If you would like this incense just send in a comment that has anything (at all) to do with incense: a memory, thought or just say that you would like it. Make your comments as long or as short as you like. It is light-weight, so I will ship it anywhere in the world, and will choose a random winner on Monday the 26th. Hope you are having a good weekend and if not, try to change your thoughts!

Always keep that happy attitude. Pretend that you are holding a beautiful fragrant bouquet.” Earl Nightingale

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A wake up call

Jack and I went to a party last night (which was a couple of hours away), and didn’t start for home until 10 pm, which is about 2 hrs past my bedtime! As we drove along, a natural silence fell over us, which wasn’t what we wanted or needed at that moment, so we played a little game that I knew would wake us up; we started talking about all of the things in our lives that we loved and appreciated. The more we talked, the more awake we felt. It’s hard to imagine, when you are tired, that a thought can wake you up, but it is true. Our bodies respond to our thoughts. Happy thoughts contain energy.

Thoughts can destroy or heal our cells, make us sadder or happier, make our bodies feel drained, tired and achy or energize and revitalize them.

“Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects…”Norman Cousins

Below is a link to a great bunch of kitty photographs (thanks so much Leslie)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/animals/awkward-cat-sleeping-positions

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Happy inside and out

A friend of mine has a rather bad habit of creating difficulties with people in her mind. She imagines that they are upset with her for some reason, and then starts either defending or explaining herself, so she feels “right” and the other person, of course, ends up being “wrong”. For instance, if someone hasn’t called her for a while, she will start thinking of possible reasons for this; did she say something that they didn’t like? Maybe they didn’t like the gift that she gave them? She returned their call, but could it be that their daughter, who she left the message with, didn’t tell them and now they are upset with her?

I’ve said to her, a number of times, “If you want to talk with (them), why don’t you call?” and she always replies with either, “Well, I don’t really care (which is obviously not true) or, If they don’t have the consideration to call me, then why should I bother? The truth is, whether she ever speaks with them again or not, she is in a relationship with them, and it is one that is unhappy, unpleasant, and is draining her energy. This is such a bad habit. I wish that I could say that I couldn’t identify with it.

So many times, we can imagine a difficult, unpleasant or unhappy scenario playing out in our minds, easier than we can see an easy, pleasant and happy one. The difficult one seems like “reality”, the happy, easy, one seems like fantasy. When we are under a lot of stress (like during the holidays maybe) it can be more difficult to lasso our wild, unruly minds that at times seem to gravitate toward the negative.

Last week, someone said something to me that, at the time, didn’t bother me. But as I thought about it, I became more uncomfortable, and then my mind started offering up other things that he had said to me that seemed slightly critical. Suddenly I was defending myself, in an imaginary conversation.

I caught this, and then used a tool that I absolutely love,  I replayed the conversation with him, in my mind but this time I was telling him how much I appreciated him, what I loved about our friendship and I imagined him saying the same things to me. I imagined the scenario that I wanted to happen, until it felt more real than the negative one. Several hours later, he called to say that he had been thinking about me, and  just wanted to let me know how much he appreciated me. This conversation mirrored almost to the word, the one I had played in my mind several hours earlier.

This is such a powerful tool. To use it requires nothing but your willingness to give it a try, and a bit of imagination. We can create happy lives, but we have to do it in our own minds first.

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