Serendipitous inspiration and moxie.
Sometimes my thoughts are like cute, fluffy cotton candy floating through the sky.
Sometimes my thoughts are dark storm clouds that hide the sky altogether.
Sometimes my thoughts feel like a crazy shrieking alien stuck to my face that just won’t let go no matter how hard I tug and pull.
Every time, they’re only just thoughts. No more weighty or permanent than a cloud.
There’s one thing you could start doing today that will transform your life. It’s so simple, yet many of us rarely do it.
Every day, do something that brings you joy.
Every day, do something fun, relaxing, peaceful, exciting, intense, loving, interesting, kind – whatever works for you. The only requirement is that you really enjoy it.
To begin, you might start a never-ending list of Things I Love to Do. Add some easy 5-minute things and some huge things too. Then, do one of the things every single day.
Amazing things will happen.
Your mood will lift and open.
You’ll feel more joy.
You’ll spread more joy.
You’ll feel more satisfied.
You’ll be more plugged into your inner wisdom.
You’ll solve problems with greater creativity and ease.
Life will feel easier.
You’ll feel more fulfilled.
Don’t have time?
Start with five minutes, or one minute if five seems undoable.
Don’t have any idea what to do?
When I started doing this a few years ago, I actually googled “What is fun?” because I couldn’t remember. I was so disconnected from joy and fun that the only way I knew to start was with research. My list was blank for a while. Slowly it grew.
Don’t think it will work?
Try it every day for two weeks. Every day for two weeks, do something that genuinely feels joyful in that moment. I can tell you right now what will happen: you’ll feel more joy.
♥ Anna
We have even a stranger idea: that we will finally fall in love with ourselves only when we have become the totally efficient organized organism we have always wanted to be and left all of our bumbling ineptness behind.
– from Crossing an Unknown Sea by David Whyte
We’ll love ourselves only when.
What we’ve forgotten is that we’re already and will always be a totally efficient organized organism. We are already and always creative, resourceful, and whole.
A tree doesn’t spend hours and years and lifetimes examining and analyzing its leaves, picking at the ones that have strange shapes or browned before fall.
We don’t look at a tree and decide it’s unlovable because some of its leaves are strangely shaped. A tree isn’t any less tree if its bark isn’t perfectly bark or its shape isn’t some specific shape. A tree is a tree, a totally efficient organized organism, precisely because of its infinite potential variations.
You’re already the totally efficient organized organism you have always wanted to be.
You’re already creative, resourceful, and whole.
You’re already in love with yourself, you just forgot for a moment. You can fall into that feeling again.
Years ago I knew a couple who changed my perspective on the importance of truth.
I met them in the summer, through mutual friends, at a picnic in the park. John was wonderfully kind, Jane was brilliant and funny. I spent an hour engrossed in stories of Jane’s unusually interesting life. She had three graduate degrees, could fly a helicopter, had beat lung cancer, and was doing contract work for the government she couldn’t really discuss.
I mentioned to my and John’s mutual friend that he had really found an amazing lady. Anger flashed across my friend’s face as she told me in a low voice that nothing Jane had told me was true. Everyone was concerned for John, she said, and some of them had even tried an intervention of sorts the previous year. John knew that Jane was a compulsive liar, and stayed with her anyway.
My friends believed Jane was taking advantage of John. I agreed. I considered truth to be unconditionally essential in a healthy relationship. Absolute honesty, I believed, was the path to an authentic intimate bond.
I’ve thought about John and Jane many times over the years. Even when I first learned of Jane’s exquisite penchant for storytelling, so certain it was hurting John, something in me wondered about their connection. John seemed to be happy with her. She was happy with him. They loved each other. They still do, from what I hear – they’re still happy fifteen years later. And she still tells her stories.
I no longer think truth is more important than happiness. Our concept of truth was created in service to our human experience, to the way we feel. Truth is made up of thoughts. Thoughts create our experience. If John and Jane can have a wonderful experience with each other, regardless of the level of truth in their conversations, good on them.
Would you rather have truth without happiness? Or would you rather feel truly happy?
Have you ever seen an apparition in the dark, something that looks exactly like a weird animal or ominous intruder? As soon as you turn on a light you realize the shadowy visage was created by a tree branch just outside your window, or maybe a hanging lamp in the hallway.
Our feelings are also shadows. Fear, anxiety, depression, sorrow, joy, gratitude, exuberance, yearning are all the shadows of our thoughts.
Emotions don’t happen to us. They are created by our thoughts, by our in-the-moment predictions.
Learning that emotions are the shadows of thought has changed my experience of life.
I lived with often debilitating depression and anxiety for over thirty years. I thought depression and anxiety were real, that they were actual entities living in my brain and mind. I spent so much time thinking about and talking about and worrying about shadow monsters. Knowing they are just shadows created by thoughts has changed everything.
Now, when I feel a wave of anxiety, I acknowledge the shadow monster in whatever form it appears. Then I turn on the lights.
Occasionally I’m able to pinpoint exactly what thoughts conjured up the monsters, though it turns out identifying them doesn’t matter. It’s enough to remember the anxiety is caused by random thoughts floating through my mind.
All it takes to turn on the lights is remembering the anxiety is caused by thought. Thoughts aren’t real, they float by just as quickly as they came, and there will always be new ones. I can choose which ones to follow.
The shadow monsters aren’t so scary anymore because I know they’re not real. Now I can appreciate their dark, momentary beauty.