happiness

The Thankful Heart

/ James Browning

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It’s easy to become immune to, and much less grateful for, the small things in our lives. We allow our feelings of being overwhelmed and our yearning for achievement and material satisfaction to overshadow the precious little gems of life that are all around us.

In our quest to experience the more seductive and exciting “highs,” we have lost sight of the fact that most of life, indeed a vast majority of it, is made up of small things and moments, one right after the other.

Learning to appreciate these things and moments play a huge role in creating a peaceful and happy life. Although the things themselves may be small, failing to appreciate them has really big ramifications!

The failure to acknowledge and, indeed, appreciate the small things breeds an inability to be touched by life. The wonder and awe of life is diminished, the feelings associated with appreciation and gratitude are missed, and, perhaps more than anything, you’ll be sweating the small stuff all the time. The reason this happens is that when your attention isn’t on what’s right, beautiful, special and mysterious, it will be on what’s wrong, what’s irritating, and what’s missing. Your focus of attention will encourage you to be “on edge” and on the lookout for problems instead of the small things that bring you big joy and are right in front of you.

Unfortunately, this type of attention feeds on itself and becomes a way of seeing and experiencing the world. You’ll be too busy thinking about the condescending remark you over heard at lunch or the way your blouse doesn’t look quite right to notice the friendly smile of the checkout clerk or the beautiful art on the classroom wall.

On the other hand, when the bulk of your attention is on what’s right with your life, what’s precious and special, the payoff is enormous. You’ll re-experience the feeling that life is magical and every moment is to be treasured. Instead of complaining about the litter on the side of the road, you’ll notice the colors of the trees and plants. Again, your attention will feed on itself and, over time, you’ll notice more and more things to be grateful for. Your habit becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you talk to anyone who is very sick or who has had a near death experience, they will tell you that the things you usually think are “big” are, in fact, relatively insignificant; whereas the things you think are small are, in fact, what’s most important. Money, for example, or physical beauty, or an accomplishment, or a material possession can seem to be the end-all, feeling extremely important, even more than life and death issues. Yet, when looking back on your life, it’s very likely that these things that once were in clear focus have lost their luster. They will seem less important, maybe even superficial. On the other hand, the beauty of nature, the touch of newborn fingers wrapped around your own, a lovely smile, or the gift of friendship, will be precious and indeed priceless. From an online article by Kristine Carlson http://www.positivelypositive.com/2012/07/20/be-grateful-for-the-small-things/

Never will I be as grateful as I could be. Any reminder to focus on the meaningful things is always welcome. No matter how much I improve my practice of thankfulness there is ALWAYS room to grow my gratitude.

The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies;
but let the thankful heart sweep through the day
and, as the magnet finds the iron,
so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher

The Power of Hopeful Wisdom

/ James Browning

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*Voice 1: You have been given a second chance to start your life over.

Voice 2: How can that be? I’m late middle age… hell, I’m old.

Voice 1: You can’t throw this opportunity away. If you do you will be a colossal fool.

Voice 2: I’m tired and don’t believe in things like I once did. Leave me alone.

Voice 1: If you get the chance to do something and don’t do it then you’ll simply live with regret.

Voice 2: I have failed so many times I am tired of even thinking about starting new.

Voice 1: That’s a worse situation than trying something daring and maybe not succeeding. At least you tried. Dare to dream!

Voice 2: Why should I believe I still have the ability to make what I wish for come true?

*Voice 1: If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place.

Voice 2: But I am emotionally beat up and battle-scarred.

Voice 1: There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination.

Voice 2: So you’re saying if it is to be it’s up to me?

Voice 1: What you believe to be possible will always come to pass – to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.

The voice in my head was naively hopeful in my youth (Voice 1). In middle age, the experienced voice became wiser, but cynical (Voice 2). By fighting my tendencies and stirring both Voices together I was able to connect a measure of wisdom and hope. It took intention and a lot of effort to change my perceptions, but was worth the struggle.

To be wise to some extent and hopeful at the same time, now that’s a great life. I am grateful it is mine.

I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad.
I’ve had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.
I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.
The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.
I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad,
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.
I began to forget the “Me” and “I”
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but is better by far than “I” and “Me.
Meryl Gordon

*Voice 1 borrowed from the writings of Anthon St. Maarten and Lorena Bathey

Live Forever

/ James Browning

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A simple, but profound thought for a Sunday morning….

Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things,

just sit still and let the world exist in front of you,

sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes

and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second.

And if you somehow found a way to live

in that second, then you would live forever.
Lauren Oliver

When such captivating moments grasps me, the wonder of life swirls all around and I am overwhelmed with gratefulness.

The purpose of life is to live it,
to taste experience to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly
and without fear
for newer and richer experience.
Eleanor Roosevelt

In Doing, I Find My Way

/ James Browning

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“Everything I do is a step on a path to where I end up”. That’s an almost too obvious statement and maybe the reason most know the words but don’t grasp the full meaning. A million course changes, intentional and not, make up the route of this ship of life I ride in. Each happening, choice or splinter of destiny set me in the direction of exactly where I am today.

In retrospect, a lot of time slipped by before the wisdom of forward motion soaked in. Often I thought, “I’ll decide/make a choice/figure it out” tomorrow, next week or after so and so happens. The days came and went with no insight or inspiration arriving. Instead frustration grew.

Some of my best decisions have been rooted in the illogical notion Sir Richard Branson frames as “screw it, let’s do it”. When something feels right, it usually is, even if logic can’t reassure that. My breakthroughs come from making a choice and just getting on with it. Conversely, logic and reason have pushed me into a lot of decisions that in hindsight were mistakes.

More often than not waiting for inspiration has meant letting time expire without much to show for it. Revelation has usually come while I was busy implementing some uninspired choice. Insight has rarely come while sitting still and instead usually shows up while I am busy painting myself into a corner. Need is a rapid and prolific incubator of concepts, ideas and possibilities!

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case. Chuck Close

“In doing, I find my way”. That sums up one of the more insightful pieces of wisdom life has taught me. In movement, no matter how uninspired, purpose is found. Sitting motionless in one spot trying to decide is akin to being partially dead. I am grateful to realize living is always in the trying, even if I fail.

The only thing standing
between you and your goal
is the bullshit story
you keep telling yourself
as to why you can’t achieve it.
Jordan Belfort

As Simple and Difficult As That

/ James Browning

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A Search…
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within. Romana L. Anderson

A Hope…
Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person “the world today” or “life” or “reality” he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever. John Knowles

A Path…
One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you. Gregory David Roberts

A Gift…
She talked about wanting to be a part of something, wanting to be desired, to be ‘special’, craving to be loved. She talked about experiencing the kind of loneliness so immense it could swallow you up. She called it ‘loneliness that crowds couldn’t cure’. Cupcake Brown

This morning thumbing through quotes for inspiration, I found four that connected so well they spoke what I was wanting to say when I connected them. (Search) The hunt to be more fully connected to my truest self, (Hope) the desire to live more completely in the moment, (Path) the aspiration to feel the full breadth and scope of my emotions and (Gift) the dream of letting romantic love into my heart again.

An architect creates a plan to guide the builder. The builder uses the plan to direct construction. The foreman focuses the labor. And the title-holder receives the benefit. For my life, I am all four: Architect, Builder, Laborer and Title Holder. Only by taking ownership of all four and believing in the guidance of something bigger than me can my needs, hopes and dreams find reality. Create, build, work and believe. It’s as simple and difficult as that.

We dream to give ourselves hope.
To stop dreaming – well, that’s like
saying you can never change your fate.
From “The Hundred Secret Senses”
by Amy Tan

Wildly and Dangerously Free

/ James Browning

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On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach (boat) of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
“Beannacht” (Blessing)
from “Anna Cara:
A Book of Celtic Wisdom”
by John O’Dononue

Only recently have I discovered the writings of John O’Donohue and I thankful for the finding. He was a contemporary Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher who lived only fifty-three years. His eloquent words are akin to prayers, just the kind that touch me deepest.

It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body,
to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.
It is an immense privilege… We are here.
We are wildly and dangerously free.
John O’Donohue

Make as Many Mistakes as You Can

/ James Browning

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Graduating is not something I have forgotten or better stated, I remember well how I felt at graduation. The title of my feelings could have been “Now What?”. Having spent years growing up and getting an education I was then standing on the threshold of a life I had yet to experience. Hopes and dreams were plenty, but what road to take toward them was fuzzy at best.

And so it is today, my third day into retirement from a long successful professional life. I am lucky and able to do this younger than most and am grateful for the opportunity. However, it feels like I am just past graduation again asking “Now What?”. There’s the same sense of things as when younger: lots I plan and imagine doing but uncertain where to begin.

In a book called “Hold Fast Your Dreams” Carrie Boyko and Kimberly Colen published twenty commencement speeches. Thumbing through it this morning I was touched by an address by Ken Burns at Georgetown University in 2006. Here’s a few highlights that stuck me as pertinent to my most recent “graduation”:

As you pursue your goals in life, that is to say your future, pursue your past. Let it be your guide. Insist on having a past and then you will have a future.

Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism.

Don’t confuse success with excellence.

Insist on heroes. And be one.

Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all — not the car, not the TV, not the computer.

Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, “God in us”.

Here at late morning I am off into my day with new inspiration borrowed from the past words of a man I know only through his documentaries and speeches. I am grateful the cosmos choose today for me to pull the book off my shelf that contained Ken Burns 2006 speech. Over and over and over… what I need arrives. All I have to do is believe and let things come to me in their own time. As long as I keep an open heart and mind they always seem to…

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up.
Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case… princess.
When we were ten, they asked again and we answered –
rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist.
But now that we’ve grown up, they want a serious answer.
Well, how ’bout this: who the hell knows?!
This isn’t the time to make hard and fast decisions,
its time to make mistakes.
Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love – a lot.
Major in philosophy ’cause there’s no way to make a career out of that.
Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent.
So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday,
when they ask again what we want to be… we won’t have to guess.
We’ll know.
Stephenie Meyer

A Baker’s Dozen

/ James Browning

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Here’s my list of thirteen thoughts to start another wondrous day filled with adventure, intrigue, reward and struggle.

~ We are always too busy!

~ Kindness multiplies back to the giver.

~ Being allowed to often get dirty makes a child grow up more healthy.

~ You have to get hurt. That’s how you learn.

~ To truly appreciate what you’ve got, at some point you need to have had nothing.

~ The average person hasn’t smelled a flower in months or noticed the moon for weeks.

~ The longer you carry a worry, the heavier it gets.

~ The future is an illusion; the past a delusion. Neither is even close to reality.

~ The kindest people have fought the toughest personal battles.

~ Running in sprinklers or playing in water makes a sad child feel better (adults too!).

~ We’re usually most creative near 18 months old. By twenty-one 90% of that is gone.

~ People who usually arrive very early or quite late are often the controlling type.

~ Within every person are many questions and even more answers.

And there you have it; a random baker’s dozen of simple wisdom I have chosen for my day; extras for my mental ‘toolkit’ for living. All won’t stick well and some will not fit today’s situations encountered. However, I am grateful my day will be better by filing these thoughts away. Sooner or later all will be useful, if not today, then before long.

“We’ve got facts,” they say.
But facts aren’t everything;
at least half the battle consists
in how one makes use of them!
Fydor Dostoyevsky

Flourishing

/ James Browning

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A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.
Martin Seligman

To most it sounds almost trite to say “you find what you do looking for”. But simple as the statement is, it’s true! I’m not talking about winning the lottery or wishing you could have been a professional ball player or award-winning ballerina. Instead, I’m referring to the general attitude one has toward life.

There has been a slow positive change for me that has accelerated over the last ten years. Living did not suddenly get easier, nor did nirvana take me over. What is different about my outlook is I expect good things. And when difficult things happen, I count on the positive lesson that will come as a result.

Close to ten years ago one of my heroes, psychologist Martin Seligman, wrote a book titled “Authentic Happiness”. In it he said, “… scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don’t become lastingly happy, and happy people don’t become lastingly sad.”

What a huge bummer when I read that the first time. I had just begun to earnestly focus on improving my attitude toward living and the statement took the wind out of my sails for a week or two. Dr. Seligman’s book “Flourish” released in 2012 set this right.

Dictionary meanings of the word flourish are: grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way; thrive: to be successful; prosper. Sometimes to flourish looks a lot like happiness, but much of the time it doesn’t.

We have this notion of happiness being filled with smiles, giddy delirium and a state of perpetual bliss. Real life does not look like that way. Often one flourishing is intensely focused, deadly serious and appears to be driven by some unseen force.

An inspired artist creating what pleases him or her rarely shows a face we’d label as happy. Being in the groove and creating good work can bring an inward satisfaction for the artist that is very difficult to outwardly judge by anyone else.

In “Flourish” Dr. Seligman offers a take on well-being he summarizes with the acronym PERMA: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Each of these elements, he believes, is crucial to a full, well-lived life, even if it sometimes involves struggle and leads, in the short-term, to unhappiness.

Outwardly I don’t appear as a blissed out happy freak, yet I am quite content. When I look at Dr. Seligman’s PERMA list (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relation¬ships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) I can easily see why I feel as good about life as I do. I have a more than adequate supply of every one. Certainly there are a lot of things that are not as I wish, but that really doesn’t matter. I choose instead to anticipate all the good coming my way, live each day well and be grateful to be ‘flourishing’.

People who believe they cause good things
tend to like themselves better than people
who believe good things come from
other people or circumstances.
Martin Seligman

Wait and Hope

/ James Browning

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Grief dares us to love once more.
Terry Tempest Williams

I cry over the pain of my past, but feel great joy and hope for the my future. She is out there somewhere in this big world, I just don’t know where she could be. She is the one my path has moved me toward my whole life. All the pain and heartache I have experienced has been to appreciate her when I find her; to be able to love her with all my being when she is before me. She might be anywhere, any country, any town, but I know she’s out there. The greatest love of my life is somewhere on this Earth, I am certain of it. But I won’t find her here in comfort wallowing in money and comfort. I must give up much of what has been in order to find what could be. I have to go search the world to find her before I run out of time. James Browning 10 29 2012

I wrote that eight months ago and found it again last night. While the thinking rings clear and true, I can’t remember specifically what was the catalyst. Maybe it was just a wanting thought thrown out to the cosmos hoping for its echo back to me.

The only worry that flies around me once in a while like a determined mosquito is a concern that I won’t recognize “her” should she appear. What if “she” is already around and I am missing it? Most such quandaries have been freed in the spirit of ‘what will be, will be’. All I can do is my best to let go, live in the moment and embrace life as it unfolds. Living ‘now’ well is the surest path to a recent past I am pleased with and a future that more closely matches my hopes and dreams.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must of felt what it is to die… that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope”. Alexandre Duman

Whether my destiny is to only know searching or to walk through true love’s gate again, I am grateful for the contentment the possibility alone brings: a dream; a real dream that could become true. I am grateful to have the courage to free myself and seek what I hope for. Hallelujah!

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist,
there are still those that lie beyond our capacity
and our imagination. From time to time,
when a piece of music no one has ever written
or a painting no one has ever painted,
or something else impossible to predict,
fathom or yet describe takes place,
a new feeling enters the world. And then,
for the millionth time in the history of feeling,
the heart surges and absorbs the impact.
From “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss