photo credit: vieux bandit

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

— John Lubbock

Today I stumbled across The Happiness Project, a book that hasn’t even been released yet.  It is Gretchen Rubin’s account of how she tried to take all the wisdom that is out there about how to be happy and integrate it into her life.

It’s a little like the idea behind Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen only instead of food, the author focused on happiness (which some people would say is the same thing.)  In a recent post, Gretchen writes about choosing to let go of one of her resolutions – “entertain more” – after having struggled with it for several years.

What she found was that when she let go of her expectation to “entertain more,” she was able to invite people over and actually enjoy both the event and their company.  By not “entertaining” in the way she had been trained, she was able to let go of her unconscious but powerful expectations and just have fun.

What Do Those Words Really Mean?

As she explained it, the problem came not from having people over, but from the image created in her mind by the word “entertain.”  For her, entertaining was just a little bit short of hosting a state dinner at the White House.  You and I may not feel the same way about entertaining, but we probably have similar mis-alignments in our thinking that keep us stuck.

One of the results of these thinking patterns can be that we don’t give ourselves enough credit for what we’ve accomplished.  Before I got my wonderful dog, I was a confirmed cat person.  I still have cats, but now I love dogs also.  The reason that I had cats was I felt that they suited my nature.  I am a big reader and cats love to sleep on your lap while you read (or while you do pretty much anything that leaves them undisturbed).  While I was working in Corporate America, my idea of a great weekend was to stay at home, curled up with a good book and my cats.

When I got to be close to a certain significant birthday, I decided that I needed to walk every day in order to ensure that I didn’t get so big that I rivaled the iceberg that took out the Titanic.  Although I had struggled with walking every day for years, I felt that the responsibility to a dog would get me up off the couch and out the door, especially during the winter when sitting with my personal feline warming machines would keep me in doors rather than out.

My thought process was a success.  From the very beginning, I walked the dog every day, sometimes twice a day when she was a puppy.  I had succeeded in “exercising more.”  The only problem is that now that I go out every day, I judge it as not being enough.  I should be going to yoga class, or working with weights, or SOMETHING.  I still need to “exercise more.”

When Enough is Enough

Last year I watched The Biggest Loser for the first time.  Watching the contestants exercising so much and eating healthier, I wondered why I couldn’t do that.  The answer is obvious if I think about it – I have a life.  If being fit truly takes hours of exercise every day, then I guess I’m going to keep my Rubenesque physique.

The problem is that while I want to be more fit, I’m not a competitive athlete.  My expectations are appropriate for what I am willing to invest.  I don’t want to spend hours each day at the gym.  I enjoy walking the dog while listening to books – and then I enjoy coming home and getting to work.  What Gretchen Rubin pointed out was that part of being happy is knowing what action you’re willing to take and what you’ll get as a result of your action.  If the action and result seem balanced to you, call it good.  You’ve accomplished your goal.

Meeerrry Christmas!!!

The holidays are like that.  We need to figure out what we want to do to make the holidays what we want them to be.  When I was a kid, my mother always hosted the holidays.  It was her “job” to have all of the older generation over for dinner for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, First Communion and whatever else came up.  She HATED it.  I don’t know what her holidays were like when she was a kid, but by the time she was a freshman in high school, her mother had breast cancer.  She never had the chance to learn how to cook or keep house or entertain.

Because she was so unsure of herself, entertaining was a form of hell for her.  It was hard work on top of her job, caring for her family and attending the university.  Her expectation was that in order for the holidays to be good, all the kids had to look perfect, the house had to be perfect and dinner had to be fixed perfectly and served on the good china (which had to be hand washed).  Her expectations of herself weren’t reasonable, especially once she was working full time and going to school full time.  My role was to be her assistant and help as much as possible.  Even so, although the holidays looked good, for her they were nothing but stress and work.

Hopefully, you and I have gotten past the “perfect holidays” stage.  As life has become more “real” my siblings and I have developed our own way of celebrating the holidays.  It’s a far cry from the holidays of our childhood.  We all try and contribute something.  My brother-in-law makes mole, my sister shows off with her Spanish rice and I import chocolate Bundt cake from Corner Bakery.  It’s not my mother’s Christmas, but it’s reasonable for us — the action and result seem balanced and we call it good.  Meeerrry Christmas one and all!!!