Self-Help Happiness Blog

A paragraph in National Geographic Adventure caught my attention.  This is a tale of leaving the Big Apple to carve out a life in very rural – and isolated – Vermont.

At night, lying in bed with the windows open and ticking off our list of problems, we’d hear a barred owl hooting –”Who cooks for you?”–and be struck by the small scale of our worries. Were we to fade away, Cathy said, that owl would be here anyway, keeping someone else awake with its questioning call, questioning nothing.

Yes, our problems are pretty small.  They just seem big because they are happening to us.  Sometimes it takes the big wide world to put our challenges into perspective.

What do you think of those slick posters and coffee mugs with motivational messages on them? Good tools? Too commercial?

What about spirit bottles, filled with nothing but air and a small paper with a simple sentiment, such as “love deeply” or “hang in there”? They are less slick, more down-to-earth and less inspiring perhaps. There is a debate on this over at this self confidence blog.

I have a better suggestion. The best motivational message is the one you write to yourself. I am not saying you can’t buy motivation – every sports team, every movie set, every major company knows you can. But outsourcing your motivational messages is not as effective as writing yourself a personal note and placing it where it is most relevant. Depending on the note, that might be in your car, beside your bathroom mirror or even in your toolshed.

No need to spend $20 on a slick motivational message laser targeted to just you and 100,000 people who are obviously exact replicas of you. Write your own messages and place them where they count.

I came across this over at Live Life Abundantly, so I thought I would share it with you.

He who knows not,

and knows not that he knows not,

is a fool;

shun him.

He who knows not,

and knows that he knows not,

is a child,

teach him.

He who knows,

and knows not that he knows,

is asleep;

wake him.

He who knows,

and knows that he knows,

is wise;

follow him.

~Persian Proverb~
 

The following story is published with permission of Dick Warn.

With two runners on base, Sara Tucholsky (playing for Western Oregon University) hit her first home run ever. However, she passed first base without even touching it. When she realized her error she stopped, turned, and her knee gave out. Painfully she crawled back to first base.

If any coach, trainer or fellow team member were to touch her while she lay there she would be called out. When the umpire arrived, he said a pinch runner could be called in, but her homer would count as only a single, with two runs batted in.

Hearing what the umpire said, Central Washington’s first baseman asked, “Would it be okay if we (as she pointed to a team member) carried her and she touched each of the bags?”

Nothing in the rule book said that opposing players couldn’t. So, two of Central Washington’s players lifted Sara and carried her to second, third and home, allowing her to touch each base.

As they reached home plate, the odd looking trio was laughing, everyone in the stands was on their feet clapping, and the entire Western Oregon team was in tears.

Sara’s home run helped end Central Washington’s trip to their conference finals and their season was over.

Thinking back on what they had done, Liz Wallace, Central’s shortstop, said, “We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run.”

And, Mallory Holtman, record-setting first baseman in her final year with Central’s team, said, “In the end, it is not about winning or losing. It is about this girl. She hit it over the fence and she was lying there in extreme pain. She deserved that home run.”

The May / June edition of No Limits Magazine features a story by somebody I know well…me!  It came as a surprise, but it was arranged by my Australian publisher, where you can pick up a copy of 9 Habits of Happiness if you live in Australia or in New Zealand.

The story, by the way, is one of my favorites from a few years back, when we ran into some unexpected adversity on what should have been a highlight of our honeymoon…and how we turned things around (so it ended up being a highlight of our honeymoon, despite the Wicked Witch Stella!).

The story is just one of many tales I weaved into the book. 

A couple weeks back, I wrote about aging gracefully.  Today I was reading an interview with William Shatner, and some of what he says resonates, so I thought I would share these three Q&As from the interview.

Q: Do you ever see yourself retiring?

A: Yes, as I slowly draw my last breath–not the shallow ones, where you’re panting and unconscious, but the deep one, where you say, “My God, I’m dying”–I’ll retire.

Q:It was your 77th birthday a few weeks ago.  How did you celebrate?

A: I took one jump in the air and realized I could still do it.

Q: What’s the best thing about getting older?

A: Marveling that the passion’s still there.  And the worst is discovering that on occasion, it’s not.

So keep that passion burning, and you need never grow old…at least not until it’s time to retire.

Good news? Bad news? It all depends on how you look at things.

Consider the following factual news that could send a pessimist around the bend and over the edge:

POVERTY: Almost half of the world’s population earns a below-average income.

ILLITERACY: If current trends continue, by 2022 almost every child born will be illiterate.

DISEASE: Fully 98 percent of people are at risk of getting cancer.

DEATH: By 2060, at current mortality rates, two out of every three people in the world will be dead.

See? It pays to be optimisitc, no matter how bleak the news might seem.

What on earth is this rubbish?

A role model for ordinary women? No, Miss England finalist is fat, lazy and a poster girl for ill health

So Chloe Marshall, a plus-size model, has been named Miss England. And the debate rages on. Is she fat? Well, she has a little extra fat on her body and she could use to lose it. How much extra you need to be labeled fat, I don’t know, but would you write it out about somebody in big letters in the newspaper. Shame on the Daily Mail and on writer Monica Grenfell.

Is Chloe lazy? You can bet your bottom dollar she is not. Nobody gets to be Miss England without putting in a lot of effort…especially after failing the mandatory anorexia test!

Is she a poster girl for ill health? I’ll buy that one from a fitness/nutrition perspective, because she is overweight (with a BMI clearly exceeding healthy proportions), but only if her detractors concede that she is no more a poster girl for ill health than 99% of models who show young girls how glamorous it is to be anorexic. The fact is that both anorexia and obesity are dangers women face and both are worrisome. And the modeling industry vigorously promotes anorexia. So taken in isolation, Chloe might be a poster girl for ill health, but taken in the context of the modeling industry, she actually represents a faint glimmer of balance.

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What short-sited observers like Monica Grenfell fail to recognize is that nutrition is not everything – that self-esteem and a healthy body image are also important. I do not think Chloe sends a message to young girls (or old girls, for that matter) that they should eat too much. No risk of that.

But in a world whose subtext is be skinny to get ahead, Chloe is the poster girl for “even if you fail at what everyone else says you have to be, you can still go out and do what you want and even succeed!”

So whether you happen to be born too short or too tall, with wide bones or narrow. Whether you happen to have challenges keeping weight off or pimples off. Whatever physical traits you might have, beyond your control or simply challenging to control, do not let them stand in your way of pursuing your dreams and reaching your goals.  You are more than your packaging.

Go for it!

Let me share a little story with you.  I have two daughters.  Little Lady is a little overweight.  Not surprising, as she loves to eat.  As a result, we try to curtail her eating somewhat.  You might describe our message to her as, “Thou shalt measure thyself when eating.”

Little sister was hard to feed as a baby, and although she is no longer underweight, we still put an effort into ensuring she eats enough, especially of fruits and vegetables.  You might describe our message to her as, “Thou shalt eat in abundance.”

These are two different messages directed at two different children for two different reasons.  Often, Little Sister will leave food on her plate, and we try to coax her to eat a little more.  Little Lady, having scraped her own plate clean, wants to eat up what Little Sister leaves behind.  But our message for Little Sister to eat it is not a message for Little Lady to eat it.

Our children receive different messages for a reason, even though neither of them fully understands the reasons or wants to understand the reasons.

This brings me to some feedback I received recently from my Daily Dose of Happiness:

Happy guy  I want to ask you something are you a christian . DO you believe in Jesus. I really like your help but I ‘m learie 

My reply was:

It just so happens that I am a Christian.  Like most people, I was born into my faith, and I am most comfortable with it.  My words, however, are for all God’s children, regardless of how God has chosen to communicate with them.  I hope he is communicating to some of them, however they practice their spirituality, through me.  :-) 

Sometimes people get so wrapped up in their faith, that they become blind to all of God’s other messages.  Sometimes they forget that what their faith is about is God, and God is not confined to any faith system.  Sometimes they forget that people of other faiths might also be brothers and sisters with the same parents, but receiving different messages through other faith systems.

Let us all embrace each other and revel in the miracle of life that we have been given, however we receive God’s message.

What makes you “younique”?  Sure, you have a unique retina and a unique finger print.  And your dental records are all your own.  You might even have your own personal file at the CIA, the KGB or Interpol.

But what makes you most unique is your experiences, thousands even millions of moments that nobody else has shared.  So many moments that have shaped who you are.  So many reactions that have programmed you how to process information and react now to any situation in your own special way.  So many lessons you have learned, even without realizing, that inspire you to achieve, to share, to act, to think and to do everything you do.

Keep those younique experiences coming.