Below is a Daily OM article I received, perfectly timed, yesterday. I was laying in bed with Sally and Jaime after taking yoga and going to lunch with Jess Fuller. Later I would get up and teach 2 yoga classes before going to meet Tucker and Dana for dinner. I have been in Upstate New York since Tuesday and it was Tuesday where I was offered a yoga teaching job on LI. I'm certainly riding the wave and it's at the crest now for sure. For the majority of my friends, and me, 2017 was FULL of ups and downs, crests and troughs, and for some reason it's much easier, more common, to talk about the downs. I haven't sat to think of a resolve for the new year or an intention, but as this email arrived I was DEEP in the happiness feels and it gave me the reminder to recognize it!!! And, doing so, felt SO GOOD. Life is not always rainbows and butterflies and THANK GOODNESS for that. The spectrum of experience and emotions we have make us more human, and hopefully more compassionate humans. We need the downs, we welcome the downs as they teach and guide us, but I think I'm going to really absorb the words below and start recognizing my UPs more. Also, this has nothing to do with donuts, but when I typed in rainbow for a picture the one above was the first on the list so I went with it. Happy Friday, love you, LP.
Recognizing Happiness Analyzing the Path by Madisyn Taylor When we take the time to recognize when we are happy and what that feels like, it becomes easier to recreate. Those of us on the path of personal and spiritual growth have a tendency to analyze our unhappiness in order to find the causes and make improvements. But it is just as important, if not more so, to analyze our happiness. Since we have the ability to rise above and observe our emotions, we can recognize when we are feeling joyful and content. Then we can harness the power of the moment by savoring our feelings and taking time to be grateful for them. Recognition is the first step in creating change, therefore recognizing what it feels like to be happy is the first step toward sustaining happiness in our lives. We can examine how joy feels in our bodies and what thoughts run through our minds in times of bliss. Without diminishing its power, we can retrace our steps to discover what may have put us in this frame of mind, and then we can take note of the choices we've made while there. We might realize that we are generally more giving and forgiving when there's a smile on our face, or that we are more likely to laugh off small annoyances and the actions of others when they don't resonate with our light mood. Once we know what it feels like and can identify some of the triggers and are aware of our actions, we can recreate that happiness when we are feeling low. Knowing that like attracts like, we can pull ourselves out of a blue mood by focusing on joy. We might find that forcing ourselves to be giving and forgiving, even when it doesn't seem to come naturally, helps us to reconnect with the joy that usually precedes it. If we can identify a song, a picture, or a pet as a happiness trigger, we can use them as tools to recapture joy if we are having trouble finding it. By focusing our energy on analyzing happiness and all that it encompasses, we feed, nurture, and attract more of it into our lives, eventually making a habit of happiness.
