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!