The "Happiness" Fallacy

If you think that you can simply avoid any person that does not make you happy, you may as well move to your own solar system and take your position as sun.  The chances of you being able to live your life productively and fully by simply avoiding or banning anyone that doesn’t meet your happy quotient are about the same as having your own set of planets revolving around you. 

~Angie Mozilo

Does this sound cynical?

It is not. In fact, it is not cynical at all. 

Happiness and contentment are available to all of us. It just can't  be found by simply avoiding and banning anyone who does not "make" you happy.  That puts the responsibility of happiness on those around you, not on you.  That is giving away your own control and power over a feeling and state of mind that is your own.  It is letting someone else be the steward of you. 

Thinking that you can be happy simply by staying away from unhappiness is a huge fallacy.  Here's why:

Understanding comes from what you see around you.  Those people that make you "unhappy" create a marker from which you understand what happiness is and is not - at least in the context of the happiness you receive from other people.  If you took every person out of your world that didn't make you happy, then your understanding of what happiness is would become skewed.  Because we are human, we are flawed and imperfect, we can't maintain happiness 24/7 for every single moment of our lives.  We would find a new "thing" that interrupted our emotion of  happy and would find new reasons to move away from relationships with others. Simply avoiding anyone that steps in your sunshine limits your knowledge and information about people, relationships, and what happiness is.

It becomes all about ME.  Yes, you need to nurture you, and be a good life-steward of you. You should set firm boundaries for the things that impact your life, your emotions, your character, your integrity,  your family, etc. But, there is a fine line between setting a boundary of who you will and will not allow to impact you, and placing yourself above others.  Casting away everyone and anyone that does not fit your happiness agenda is not only unrealistic, it is self-centric. By simply saying "I will not allow anyone who doesn't make me happy into my life!" (which by the way seems to be a very popular mantra these days) shows not only a lack of maturity, but also a lack of humanity.  Should you seek only those that bring the weight of the world to your shoulders? NO! But in the same breath, thinking outside of yourself and realizing that the person that makes you unhappy has some back-story that affects who they are (which, by the way you do too...) may help you to see that you may have more in common with that person than you realize. Their unhappy "vibe" may be just a temporary hiccup in an otherwise very nice person. Don't get so completely caught up in your narrow idea of happiness that you miss opportunities for connection and positive relationships.

It would get pretty darn lonely.  There is only one Sun in the solar system. It used to have 9 admirers and happy-makers rotating around it. But, apparently Pluto didn't make it happy.  So now it only has 8.  See where this is going? If you insist on being the sun that takes in only positive happy energy and casts off those that have a bit of a different orbit than you expect, your domain is going to be pretty sparse.  Eventually everyone will do something that has some sort of conflict for your happiness. It could  quickly dwindle down to nothing - it's pretty tough to find happiness there. For just a moment, put yourself in Pluto's place.  Think of how you would feel if you had been a long time part of a person's "system" and then all of a sudden they cast you out because you didn't meet their expectations. Both the sun and the planets in this system get the short end of the axis. 

Happiness itself is not a fallacy. Thinking that happiness comes by cutting anyone out of our lives that does not make us happy is. It is good to set healthy boundaries. It is a good thing to step away from relationships that are or remain unhealthy and destructive. It is good to know what you will and will not allow to impact your life. But, it is also good to know that happiness is not something that others give to us. It is not visited upon us.  It is an emotion that is within us and that we need to unselfishly own and steward.

Because we live in an imperfect world with imperfect people, because we are emotional beings that are created to be in connection with others, because we understand the world around us through the interaction with others, avoiding people that don't fill your happy tank is simply impossible.  Your responsibility is own your own happiness, and not give the power of its ownership to anyone else. It is to understand that happiness is an emotion that waxes and wanes. It is to have compassion and respect for you as well as the "unhappies".  It is to be mature enough to not expect the feeling of happiness every moment of every day, but to understand the mindset of contentment. Your responsibility, your good self-stewarding is to know that you are bright, dazzling, and shiny because of what dwells in you and from what ALL others around you have brought to your understanding. 

And... it is to know that you are not the sun.

When The Grass is Greener, The Crap Was the Fertilizer

Don't you just hate it when you look at someone who seems to have everything under control, everything going for them, and everything just right... and it seems as simple as breathing for them to be that put together? You look over their fence, and the proverbial grass is that beautiful shade of lush emerald green. It looks thick, healthy and welcoming.

You look at yours and it is a crunchy brown patch of straw. You get that little pang of jealousy when you look into someone's yard and their grass is greener than yours. You wonder why your yard - your life can't look like theirs.

No... we are not talking about  actual grass. We are talking about life.

Face it... we all peek over fences and compare, even though we know we shouldn't. And we often want what we see on the other side - the "perfection" we see on the surface.

There are so many things that have made the grass of your life weary, dry and dead.  Perhaps you have had struggles and strive that kept you from tending to your own yard.  You work hard and just don't "feel" like you are getting ahead. You are tired.  Disappointments, betrayals, failures, struggles leave you in a drought of faith.  You feel so far gone, that you just don't know how you could have the vibrant, renewed, lush grass that you see over other peoples fences. The closest to green you may feel is the envy that is creeping into your heart.

You think that there is no way that the grass on the other side of the fence could have possibly endured the same crap in life that yours has.  If it had, it would be just as brown and dry as yours.

Step back from your pity party (yes... harsh... I know, but oh how we love to host those!). Their grass is greener for one of two reasons.

The first reason: It is fake grass.

Fake grass has no roots and does not grow.  The last thing you want is a life that does not grow, so stop comparing yourself to one that is stagnate and phony.  Build the fence higher and forget that it is there.

The second reason:  The person on the other side of the fence has used the crap of life as fertilizer.

The crap of life can pile up, stink and destroy your patch of green. If your grass is dry and dead - that might be what you have been doing. But, you can choose to steward it in a way that it enriches, teaches and strengthens you.  You can use it to green your own grass - like the grass over the fence.

How do you spread the crap so it brings growth and not destruction? How do you make it welcoming? How do you steward the challenges of life to spring forth growth and vibrancy? 

Start by doing these things:

• Refuse to let it hold you hostage.
• Recognize and take accountability for any part you played in bringing it into your life.
• Learn how to not repeat the same mistakes.
• Don't let the disappointment that happens in certain moments of life dictate your expectations of every moment of life. 
• Look at your own grass and choose to see the green blades among the brown.  You are more blessed than you realize. 
• Water it in faith of what can and will be, if you choose to let it grow. 

It is in human nature to compare our lives to others.  You know who you are, where you fit, how to be, and how to exist in the world through what is seen and compared to around you. But when you do compare, realize that when you peek over fences and see a beautiful lawn - it may be that your neighbor has had just as much crap in life as you have.  They have just done a better job of using it as fertilizer. 

Do you get caught is a cycle of comparing your life to others?

Have you ever been envious of someone else's yard and realized that they were going through struggles just like you?

Have you ever been jealous of what was over another person's fence and realized that the grass was fake? 

The Fine Art of Stewarding Failure

I got an F on a test.

I forgot the words to a speech in front of a crowd.

I missed a deadline.

I wasn't there for a friend.

I had a relationship go sour.

I didn't reach my fitness goal.

I opened my mouth at the wrong time and said the wrong thing.

I didn't get the job.

The above list... I've fallen short in every one of those things.  Some of them, multiple times.That makes that old saying "Failure is NOT and option!" feel like an awful lot of pressure.

The truth is that failure is inevitable.  It happens to all of us.  We fail at relationships, business ventures, goals... failure is a part of life.  It is not a matter of if you ever fail, but a matter of when you will fail at something.  It is a reality of existing.

If you have failed is not nearly as important as how you steward the failure. 

When failure comes, you have an equal responsibility to manage and use that experience as you would have if you had been successful in your actions.   It's easier to keep pride in check and use a victory as a launching point for good than it is to swallow your pride and use a failure as a ladder to redemption. Even though it is hard, it is your responsibility as a steward of your life.

There is a fine art to being a good steward of failure. I is an ART of Accountability, Revamping, and Taking a step.

Accountability- Take a good hard look at yourself and the situation.  A gut reaction (yes... I know this from personal experience) is to list all of the reasons outside of yourself for the failing.  If this person had done this...  I would have done that but... It wasn't my fault because...

Unclench your pointing hand and use your fingers to count the areas where your accountability lies. MOST of the time there is something you could have done differently in the situation.  You could have prepared, investigated, reacted, worked, communicated, or considered the situation differently - either during the event that failed, or after.  It may or may not have changed the outcome. But when you assess what you own it will also show you what you did right. Taking accountability for what you own in the situation both the good and the bad, gives you your power back over failure.

Revamping-  If your endeavor failed you already know that something needs to be revamped.  The way to revamp isn't always easy to apply because those things may have been caused by actions that are steeped in our habits. Habits are hard to break.  If you saw that communication was an issue in the challenge, but you naturally have a flare for snark and sarcasm, it might not be staring you in the face that your style of communication wasn't right for the situation - because it is your habit.  If it was a financial issue that was the challenge, you may need to change your attitudes about finances - rooted in your habits.

Be willing to move outside of your box (but not outside your ethics or character) to revamp.  Rethink the event from a different perspective and from a different routine. If it involved another person, put yourself in the other party's shoes with their ears and expectations and think of what you would have expected if you were them.  If it is a personal failure, think of the successful you as the other party. Instead of focussing on the limitations of the boundaries, look at all of the possibilities inside of them, and be willing to consider if the boundaries can be rearranged.  Change up how you rerun the failure in your head.  It's sort of like proofreading backwards - you catch, revamp and apply solutions more easily when you don't automatically process what comes next in the  text of the situation.

Take A Step- This is often the scariest part. It's tough to go back into the ring when you were knocked down.  You don't want a repeat.  That punch to the gut hurt and you don't want  your pride hurt. You don't want to feel embarrassed. You think it's easier to keep it out of sight and out of mind.

But, if you don't step back into it, you don't move forward. You don't grow. You don't know what could be and what you are capable of.   The lessons learned from the failure stay as knowledge in your head, but don't become the wisdom of the experienced until you take a step and apply them. Use the lessons as safety padding and take the step. The best that can happen is that you will be successful.  The worst is that you will not succeed again - but you have the the protective gear the second time around.

Falling short is never a fun thing.  But, it is part of life and often can be a good thing - when it is stewarded well.  Stewarding it is a fine art of Accountability, Revamping, and Taking a Step. Failure may not be an option you choose. But it is a reality you face, and you have an equal responsibility to be a good steward of the failures as you do of the successes.

Do you play the blame game when you fail?
Is there a failure that you are keeping out of sight and out of mind? 

VLOG: Your Spark is Worth the Search

Your spark is worth searching for.  Embrace it, own it.  Your spark can ignite countless fires! You've got this!

Drop the Sand, Grasp the Diamonds.

Do you remember playing in the sand as a child and trying to keep a hand full of the tiny grains in your palm? It had to be gripped so tightly to keep any of it. One loosening of the palm and the sand would all fall out.

Your fears, angers, hurts, are like those grains of sand. When you first encounter them, they are huge like a stone. But eventually the stone disappears and what is left behind is sand. You don't feel the stone anymore, but you still grip the grains of sand in your palms, refusing to release them from your hold. 

The grains aren't easily seen by the rest of the world. An outsider would be none the wiser to the specks of stones that you cling so tightly too, protecting your ownership of them.  They are hidden away for you and only you to know, understand, rely on and hold. 

Even though the sand is gritty, you clench it.  It scratches, irritates and distracts.  Not in a way that shows from the outside - no the grains are covered too well in your hand.  But, on the inside the rough grains wear on you. Perhaps your palm as become calloused from the friction, but you hold them even tighter, ensuring that they won't escape.  You don't want to let go.

There's angst in letting them go. It's often easier to hold on to them because they are something you can go back to, something you can deflect blame to, something you can use as your scape goat when you are not shining your brightest.  It's easier to hold on to something rather than to risk letting them go and have nothing. It's easier than having the responsibility and accountability of searching for something better to replace it. 

But, if you ever want to hold the diamonds of life in your hand, you have to loosen your grip and let the sand fall away. What you will then see in the palm of your hand where the fear, anger and hurt used to be, is brilliance, shine, beauty and the multifaceted creature that you are. When you cling too tightly to the sand, there is room for nothing else.  How incredibly sad would it be to go through life with the only the thing that scratched you in your hand?

Women Enough (and Men Enough): You know there is better, happier, more joyful, more fulfilling, things to grasp to. Things that shine and empower - things that allow you to soar, rather than hold you tethered. All you have to do is drop the sand.

What do you need to let fall away today?
As soon as you have done it, can you see the space left to fill with diamonds? 

Excuses or Opportunities - It's Your Choice

Today I will not make excuses.  Instead I will make opportunities.

It is so easy to find a reason not to do something.  Especially when that something is hard, takes you out of your comfort zone, is not something you really want to do, involves change, requires us to stretch...

You get it - It's easy to find excuses to not do the things that are hard work.

There is no doubt that there are interruptions in life that cause you to place things on hold or rearrange plans.  They shake you out of your normal existence and forced you into theirs.  Emergencies happen, people get sick, trauma happens, and you can't control every single thing that is tossed into your path. Those types of things are reasons to take a step back or a detour until that event in life is under control.

The type of thing I am writing about is the excuses you make for not taking action, not making change, not moving forward, not making a hard decision, not moving out of a bad situation - the ones that you do have control in. You have encountered the kind I'm talking about; staying in a bad relationship, not making the changes to be the healthiest you, choosing to not take a chance, deciding to settle for less than you know you want and need.  These things all required an excuse to not take action.

By excuse, I mean CHOICE.

Some of the justification you use for your choice might be:

It's too hard.

It's a lot of work.

I don't think I can.

I won't because I'll probably fail anyway.

I won't be good at it.

I don't like "change".

I'll start tomorrow.

I tried it before and didn't like it.

I'm happy right where I am.

I might make the wrong move.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

The list goes on and on and on.  I know this. Because I've lived this. I've used these excuses - made these choices to not take action.  It took a lot of work, a lot of thought, and a lot of time to come up with them in many situations.  I worried countless hours, debated back and forth in my head, had out and out arguments between my mind and my heart,  and exhausted myself emotionally - which translates to physically about why I should not do something.

I put a lot of effort in and found tons of excuses - choices to take no action. I bet you have too.

Think of how sweet life would be if you put the same, or even a portion of the effort in to finding an opportunity that you put into making excuses! If you are willing to put effort into making choices to not do something, then why are you so hesitant to take just one step toward the action? It could be fear, doubt, denial, stubbornness, or even your own addiction to your unhappiness that keeps you making excuses.

But just, what if... that one opportunity found and explored opened up greatness in your life? Even if it didn't, what harm is done by investigating it?

Women Enough: I know what it is to stay stuck because of my own choice to not take action.  Life is so sweet when you take back your power to choose your action and find opportunity.  Sometimes situations change right away and sometimes they don't.  Either way,  there is growth, strength, and empowerment with choosing opportunity instead of choosing an excuse.

So what's it going to be?

Will you make excuses or find opportunity?

New Year, New Accountability!

As the new year comes around, the world looks forward to what will come in the next 365 days of the year.  Media fodder and commercial organizations are more than willing to share how you can be better in the next year.  Whether the improvements are financial, spiritual, or health centered, there is a company with a quick fix just waiting for you to purchase their product, program or potion that promises to get you to your resolution and goals.  The answer to your issue is easy and easy at hand via a one click purchase or digital book.

In essence, the pressure is off. Someone else can pick up for you where you need improvement.  The answer to your happiness is in just a book away. Where you have failed, a program will make you right.

Wouldn't it be nice if a pill, a plan, or a program could fix you? How fantastic it would be to have something other than you to hold accountable to whether you reach a goal or not.  At the end of the 365, if you are not where you want to be you could claim the program failed you or the product didn't work. Yes... that would be nice indeed.... to be able to hold someone else accountable for your own missed marks.

Women Enough: Here is the hard truth...

The only one accountable to you reaching your goals is YOU!

If you are not happy where you end up at the end of the next 12 months, it sits squarely on your shoulders. No pill or program will be the fix you need.  It may be a temporary solution to a finish line, but certainly not what will take you past the finish line and on to success.

If you use a program to reach a goal but then stop the program do you slip back to where you were and say the program didn't work? That is much easier than looking yourself in the mirror and saying "I didn't make the changes I needed to make to not slip back." Maybe the program wasn't made for long term sustainability of your goal. But the reality is that you didn't make the changes in you, your habits, or in your outlook to sustain it long term. You didn't accept your own responsibility in the equation.

Yeah... that hurts a bit. I know. I've been there and done that more times than I can count.

But Women Enough... Here's the fantastic thing about holding yourself accountable.  It's tough to get honest with yourself about your own part in your missed mark.  But when you do, it changes your perspective.  When you look at your own accountability in your goals, you see that you truly do have power over whatever it is you are trying to reach.  You are NOT dependent upon a product or program nor is the product or program responsible to get you there. Yes, they may be a tool, but the biggest component of your success is your willingness to accept and MAKE changes that you need to.

• If you reach a weight loss goal on a program, but immediately upon reaching it go off of the program and back to your old eating habits? What happens? Unless you've made true change in your lifestyle, you gain it back. 
• If you use a program to get your finances under control but as soon as you have a balanced budget, go back to your old spending habits, you end right back in the financial straights you were before. 
• If you use self help programs to make your life "feel" better  and change how you see yourself but don't change how you see the world, it becomes more of a self hinderance. 

Do you see the accountable for change theme here? You - and no one else is accountable for your success or your happiness. You and no one else is accountable to make the changes you need to make to reach your happiness and goals.  YOU ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR OWN CHANGE!

Women Enough: I challenge you not to simply state a resolution, but to truly take accountability and make change. There is no sugar coating here; it's often very hard to change habits in lifestyle, spending, thinking, or what ever it is that needs change.  It is habit because it is an easy default way of doing things.  You don't want to work hard - You don't like it.  You are tired in life, and you don't want to have to think, struggle or battle your inner monsters over the change.  You like the comforts that you have and it would be really crappy to give some of those up.  I get it.

But suck it up, put on your big girl pants and just do it. NO ONE WILL DO IT FOR YOU!

Women Enough! I challenge you to a New Year New Accountability!