How Are You?

Hello Beautiful Peaple!!  First thing is first, I want to Ask you an question.... Get a piece of paper and answer a question for me. 

So, is today OK…Or Good… Or is today fantastic?  First I guess you need to asses what your personal level of ‘Ok’ and ‘Fantastic’ are.  If being OK means that you feel happy, content, joyful and have noting to complain about, then your in pretty good shape there.  Fantastic to you would be a truly wonderful experience.  Or maybe to you, OK equates to “Well, I’m not dying I suppose.”

It’s pretty important you figure out what your level of OK actually is.  Do you even know?  When a dear friend asks how you are and you respond with the customary “OK”, do you even know how you are?  Also equally important, do they know what OK means to you?  After all, their level of OK might be “I love my life”, and if your level of ok is closer to “Shoot me now”, there’s big a miscommunication going on. 

The dictionary defines OK (Okay) as passable, satisfactory… basically, nothing spectacular.  It’s a more or less universal word.  Yet everyone has a different definition of what is ‘OK’ for them.  Me, I’m with the dictionary.

Here is a little exercise for you ;0)

 

1) Get a piece of A4 paper and divide it into 3 sections lengthways.  I always find using coloured pens and pencils helps with stuff like this too =).  In the first section, take a moment to think about the word ‘OK’ and jot down some notes; 

·         What does ‘OK’ mean to you when you hear it or say it? 

·         What does ok feel like to you as an emotion and/or physical feeling? 

·         What needs to happen to you, in your life and around you in order for you to be OK? 

Got it?  Great stuff!

2) Now do the same for the word ‘Fantastic’ in the third section on your paper.

Done?

Congratulations, you now have two opposite ends of your very own happiness scale!!  I’m imagining blank looks, but humour me until the end =)

3) So, the middle section is where you explore the word ‘Good’.  This should be a whole heap easier because it is effectively smack bang in the middle of ‘OK’ and ‘Fantastic’.  Spend a little time filling out your good section now.

*Note: I haven’t put sad on your happiness scale… I choose to believe that ‘Sad’ hasn’t got a place on a happiness scale.  In order to change your thoughts, you need to stop thinking the ones that drag you down...  So we are eliminating the word sad.   Not to say that sad doesn’t exist, it does and it is an inevitable part of life that at some point we feel sad… but the more time we allow ourselves to think about being sad, the more time we spend being sad.  So, following on from my last blog… drop the rocks and give them no more time.

Lovely, your happiness scale is complete!!  What do you do with it now right?

Well, you have just outlined not only your definitions of 3 descriptors you use in everyday life, but you have also given them values based on your beliefs of them.  You are now more aware of what these words mean to you.

Why is this important?  This is important because you have identified what you feel when you are at the ‘OK’ end of the scale, what you feel when you’re ’Good’, and what you think ‘Fantastic‘ is.  You have also, if you’ve answered all the questions, written down what is going on with you and around you when you are at each point of the scale.

4) Turn your paper over and quickly note the answers to these questions;

·         Going back to that question I asked you at the start of the blog, how did you answer and where do you think your response landed on the happiness scale? 

·         Are you in a comfortable place on you happiness scale or do you need to advance from OK to Good, or Good to fantastic? 

·         What needs to happen/change in order for you to advance on your happiness scale?

·         Write one small thing you can do in the next 24Hrs to step closer to that next stage of happiness.

5) To review, hopefully, you now have a clear idea of how you view your own world.  So think about it, what do you know? 

·         You know that ‘Sad’ exists but doesn’t have a place in your everyday happiness scale.

·         You know what it means to you to be ‘OK’, ‘Good’ and ‘Fantastic’. 

·         You know how you feel right now. 

·         You know where you want to be. 

·         You know what needs to be going on in and around you when you are there. 

To be honest, you know quite a lot, so what are you going to do with that knowledge… well, you just wrote down one thing to do in the next 24Hrs.  All in all, that’s pretty fantastic work on anyone’s scale =)

And do you know what’s so beautiful about this exercise?  It is personal, it’s unique to you, and it changes as you change.  Repeat it as often as you need to. Share it with friends if you feel comfortable.  It can also be looked back on to review how far you have come.

 

So how are you?  I'm.....

 

I hope that you found that helpful, and thanks for reading today!!

Namaste!

Drop Rocks - Let Go!

I feel the need to talk about letting go and moving on…. Not in the sad sense, but the sense of setting yourself free.

I remember as a child I was obsessed with rocks.  One year in the South of France whilst on a school trip, I was swimming life jacket clad in a lake.  I remember finding a rock, that for some reason I wanted more than anything.  Only problem being, it was as big as my head, extremely heavy and I had to get it from where I was in the lake back to the shore.  In my infinite childlike wisdom I decided it was an awesome idea to stuff it in my life jacket and swim with it across the lake to reach the shore. 

Needless to say, I very nearly drowned myself through my insistence that this rock come home with me.  I struggled and struggled before I was eventually rescued by a flabbergasted teacher who proceeded to lecture me for the last 3 days of the trip.  My beautiful rock plunged to the depths of the lake never to be seen by me again.  However…   I found swimming much easier and lived to write about it, so I’d say that story ends well  =)

Why am I telling you this?  I am sharing this weird little tale because it is a classic example of why we should let go, metaphorically speaking.  Imagine those things that you are refusing to let go of are rocks in your ‘Life Jacket’ and you are swimming from one side of your life to the other.  The weight of those rocks will either make that journey both difficult and uncomfortable, or they will overcome you completely and make it impossible.

Drop the rocks, your buoyancy improves and swimming becomes pleasurable and uninhibited.  I urge you to drop the rocks.

The feeling of being stuck in a rut, going round and round, living the same boring story every day… this is the result of our minds clinging to something in the past.  It could be a singular event or a whole period of time, even a person we have loved and lost.  Whatever it is, our reluctance to let go of this ‘thing’ or ‘things’, is the very reason we are trapped where we are, unable to move on and be free.

So it seems simple enough doesn’t it?  Just let go of whatever it is that holds you back and move on.  It is a perfectly simple solution that seems to stump the vast majority of us.  A simple act that just feels so difficult for us to actually complete.  Why?

I’m starting to believe that this is down to those little things called thoughts again; created by that crafty little brain of ours.  Our thoughts advise us that that these memories are useful and help us in our journey onwards.  They tell us that nothing is as simple as just deciding to move on.  That cunning little ego compounds all this by reminding you of the past every time you hit a similar situation again, it triumphs in saying “I told you so!”  Even your emotions and physical reactions respond to those thoughts, making you feel exactly as you felt in the past; making you feel like the pain, fear, anxiety is still relevant. 

Isn’t it?? 

The answer is that no, it’s really not relevant at all.  More rocks in your life jacket.  Dump them and swim for it.

So far I have made this seem like we are only ever clinging to the bad, but this is not the case, often the things we cling too are the beautiful things in our lives we had to say goodbye to, lost, or left through choice but still remember fondly.  Things we think we have had once and will never be lucky enough to have again.   Many people long for a past period of time where everything felt right, or a person they loved who is no longer around…. Heck, some even wish they were children again when things were simple.

If you sit and cling to these things and refuse to let go then you are absolutely right, your life will not magically morph into something spectacular.   Because you are anchored where you are.  In fact there is a distinct possibility that your are already sinking.

Drop the rocks.  Swim. 

Earlier this year I decided to perform a mini letting go ceremony.  I won’t go into too much detail, however it involved soul searching, a Chinese sky lantern, burning of items I no-longer want in my positive space…. And a lot of self love.  That night I felt like I had lost 50lbs and could fly off after my lantern.  I designed my letting go ceremony so it meant something to me.  I poured every ounce of resolve into letting go of those issues I had identified, so that when that lantern floated away and the smoke from the fire rose…. I was saying goodbye.

 

 

If you are honest with yourself, you know what holds you back.  Your crafty little brain is actually quite stupid…. If you ask it, molly coddle it and make it feel important, it will tell you what holds you back.  Trick it, and when you have the answer, design your ceremony, and then go drop rocks!  What have you got to loose?

Namaste