Living Happiness

Last week I happened onto a site that I immediately fell in love with. The site, Graceful Creative, is a blog dedicated to self-discovery and personal growth. It’s positive, life-affirming and, most importantly, real.

Many of the posts by Graceful Creative resonate with me. Perhaps because we are of similar age … or perhaps just because we seem to be on similar parts of the path that is our life journey.

Last week, Graceful Creative posted her answers to a set of interview questions: questions posed to her by a fellow blogger in an attempt to introduce Graceful Creative to the blogging world and also to expand her network of fellow bloggers.

Graceful Creative’s answers were honest and refreshing, so when she asked if anyone else was interested in being interviewed I thought, “Sure! Why not?!” Which leads us up to today’s post.

Just today she notified me that I, too, had been picked to Blog It Forward. YAY!!! She sent me a series of interview questions (below) and asked that I please answer honestly, post them and link them back to her, as well.

So without further ado …

~The Interview~

How do you nourish yourself? What things do you do (big and small) that tell yourself that you are worth it?

This blog is one of the biggest ways I’m nourishing myself right now. I have wanted to begin one for a while … in fact, I started to begin this one over a year ago, but life demands and pressures stepped in the way and I didn’t give it priority. I feel very much lately the need to be creative and to connect. This blog is the biggest way I am trying to do that. I love to write, and I love to hear other people’s stories. I also like sharing a few of my own. So … this is definitely a nourishment for me ~ and I do feel a bit decadent sometimes in doing it.

Other small ways I nourish myself are by taking time away for myself. My favorite way to get this time lately is to head into town in the evening to my favorite café with a book or my journal. I also get up 2 hours earlier than I need to every day to enjoy my favorite time of day (morning) in peace and quiet. This is when I think my thoughts and do my blogging and wake up SLOOOOWLY.

If you had a whole day to yourself, how would you spend it? (Not hour by hour, but in general)

This doesn’t happen often. But when it does, I do all of the things that I usually have to negotiate with G … only with no negotiation. This varies but has included: watching movies all day on the couch (chick flicks, of course) and ordering in a weekend’s worth of Chinese food so that I don’t have to do any cooking; booking myself a mani-pedi at the local day spa; heading to Hondo’s Center for an hour of looking at (and buying) new make-up; sitting on the port with a book and a big, fat margarita while I read, sip, and watch the world go by.

When I get time to myself, I like for it to be unstructured. So much of my daily life is built around routines that I prefer this time alone to have no boundaries or limitations. What I would do with a whole day to myself would be to let the day dictate what I do, and do absolutely nothing I don’t want to do. Just see what happens next … go with the flow.

What three things would you like to do/see/learn before you die?

I feel so lucky that a few years ago I decided to start doing the things on my Daisy List, Bucket List, whatever-you-want-to-call-it list. I decided then that I wanted to live my life and was going to start immediately. That’s how I ended up in Greece and was able to check off one of these things: Stand on the steps of the Acropolis. The first time I did this, the feeling was indescribable … and I boo-hooed.

Three other things on this list …

1. See the pyramids of Egypt
2. Be a published author
3. Dish the dirt on Oprah’s couch

When do you feel cherished?

I just recently read Graceful Creative’s post about the 5 Love Languages and went over to the link she provided from The Striving Wife to find out mine. It ends up that I have two co-languages: Words of Affirmation and Gifts. I was surprised about the gifts because I’m not a very material person, but it made sense when I read the description. The Words of Affirmation didn’t surprise me, though. When I am complimented and told I am loved and appreciated, I am like a flower receiving water: I drink it up. I need to hear that I am cherished, and I need to hear it often. I try to tell myself these words, too: my own affirmations.

If you were to choose 5 physical artifacts that represent who you are, what would you choose? (They can be jewelry, photos, books, clothing, food products, found objects,…anything physical.)

Book: Beauty and the Beast. It was my favorite fairy-tale as a child, and I still love Robin McKinley’s retelling of it in her book Beauty. As my mom used to say, “Beauty is as beauty does.” This is how I try to live.

Flower: A gerbera daisy. I love these flowers because they are so bright and cheery. I love that they are beautiful without being overly showy. When I see one of these flowers, I break into a wide smile. I can’t not smile when I see them. Just their simple presence brightens a room. They make me glad. [A few days ago I read Carrie & Danielle's post on "What Your Flower Says About You" which states that your feelings toward your favorite flower are often your feelings toward yourself; how you describe it is often how you (and others) might describe you. So … the gerbera daisy].

Stone: A pebble from the rocky stream bed of the Samaria Gorge here in Crete. I picked it up as a remembrance of how far I’d come. The pebble is made of rock, which shows strength, and I am strong. It is also a pebble, which means it is a smaller part of a larger whole, which is what I am. It has also been rounded, softened, and polished by water, wind, and time. I, too, am being shaped by the forces around me. I can become even more beautiful in this way … if I let myself be.

Journal: I need pen and paper to make sense of my world. I like the scratch of pen on new paper, the shaping of the words under my hand. I like the privacy of my own space in which to do this. My journal is sacred, and it is mine. I love it.

Now, it’s your turn.

Would you like to be interviewed too?

If you do, just send me a note or leave me a comment that says, “Yes, interview me.” I will then send you five questions of my choice, and you can update your blog with your answers and a link to me. Sound good?

Oh! And if you have not checked out Graceful Creative’s blog yet, there’s no better time than the present.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you.

Good morning and good Monday to all of you. It has been a pleasure to see so many new faces stopping by my blog over the last couple of days, and it is good to see you here again. Hopefully you are enjoying what you’re reading here and are finding here another positive “space” in your day.

It’s Easter Monday morning here in Greece and in a couple of hours G and I will be visiting our new place again to go over the contracts and make a few last-minute changes, and then this will all be real. We’ve been like two kids the day before summer holidays: we simply cannot wait for the big day (Moving Day) to arrive. We find ourselves waking early every morning, unable to sleep, excited about “what happens next.” It is a grand feeling, even if it is robbing us of a bit of glorious shut-eye.

But what I want to say this morning has to do with something else: intentionality and dreams.

In all of the hubbub of the past few days, I still found the time to pull down an old notebook from last year. In it I had written all of the things that I had wanted to see happen (or manifest themselves) in my life … on no given time frame really, I had just wanted to give voice to the desires of my heart. You see, I had read Sonia Choquette’s book Your Heart’s Desire and had set out to try to listen to myself and what I thought I heard there. And for each of the ten categories she gave (Spiritual, Creative, Possessions, Finances, etc.) I had listed what my heart visualized, things that I would like to become actualities.

For a while last year, I isolated two of these dreams and focused intently on them. But it didn’t seem as if they were going to pan out after all, and I quickly got caught up in the everyday concerns of my life, and the notebook with these dreams got put on a shelf and forgotten. It’s not that I began to disbelieve in intentionality or disbelieve the validity of my dreams, per se, I just thought maybe I’d gotten things a bit wrong. Maybe my timing was off. Maybe I hadn’t heard my heart right. So … I moved on.

One of the first things that struck me this weekend, as I flipped through the pages of this notebook again and read my heart’s desires of a year ago, is how many of them had actually still come true. Despite my remarkable lack of intentionality, the most important items on that Wish List of the Heart had nonetheless come to pass. Perhaps not immediately, but they had. And the number one thing–a home with all of the trappings I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs this week–is in the process of becoming a reality now.

I was amazed. And humbled. How had this happened?

The only answer I have alighted upon is this: Just because we are not consciously aware we are focusing on something doesn’t mean that we are not still centering around lives around it, moving toward it. We pursue our dreams (or, conversely, our fears) whether we realize this or not. Our actions on a daily basis still move in a direction of our heart ’s focus and so, ultimately, we receive that which we progress toward.

Whether I knew it or not, whether I was conscious of it or not, over the past year I was still moving toward the manifestation of the desires of my heart. They were still there, and my decisions were shaped by the hope and passion that were moving toward their fulfillment.

How powerful is this? What more can we say?

The implications are shocking. For inasmuch as we may unconsciously manifest the good desires of our heart, it also tells me that we may also unconsciously manifest the fears, the uncertainties, the disappointments. How powerful is our thinking? How powerful is our thinking?!

We truly are responsible for our own happiness.

Over the next few weeks, it is my intention to share with you a bit more from Sonia Choquette’s book and the principles she highlights there. Stay tuned.

But … I leave you with this today.

Blessings to all of you.