Ah, I am oh so happy for December’s topic, glorious creatives! š How ’bout you? You happy?
This month is all about your relationship with happiness. We’re going in hot with a disturbing little question we never want to actually ask ourselves: “What if I get everything I say I want and I’m still not happy?”
Let’s put a pin in that question, now that I’ve put it out there. We’re gonna first dig in on happiness and why it’s a state that’s so tough to attain sometimes.
In general, we aren’t born into environments in which we’re taught things like how to be our fullest selves, how to live happily, and how to expect and enjoy bliss in our lives. That means — if these are states we’d like to experience — we have to teach ourselves all of this. So, there’s how we grew up and whether there was an expectation for happiness in our lives for starters. Worse, we’re actually *all* wired to fail at being happy for very long.
You’ll recall from orientation (Day 5, to be exact), that our evolutionary wiring for survival means we have five emotional categories and everything we feel fits within one of these: fear, anger, grief, shame, and joy.
Happiness, of course, is a subset of joy. Joy is something we’re wired to experience 1/5 as much of, alongside 4/5 of those more negative feelings. From the very way our brains are wired, we have little bandwidth for happiness. That means it’s a part of our work to increase the capacity to even *recognize* happiness, much less begin to have it feel natural to EXPERIENCE it.
So, let yourself off the hook when you find happiness to be a bit harder a thing to experience than you’d like. You are rebelling against your core physical makeup when you attempt to have more joy in your life. You are reprogramming yourself for happiness. It’s no wonder sometimes it feels as though happiness does not compute!
But the quest for happiness is worth it, since happiness blocks out cortisol (the stress hormone) and that creates room for more success, confidence, and productivity according to Robin Sharma, whose interview you might love to consume, here.
As we all know from acting, there’s the way of becoming the character by getting into costume, hair, makeup, surrounding yourself with the set pieces and props, and letting all of that outside stuff inform the way you feel about inhabiting this human who is NOT you. That’s outside-in. Then there’s inside-out, of course, which is when we just get into character because that’s our damn job and it shows up in our outer life for others to witness because we can make anyone feel ANY sort of way we want them to feel because that is what acting is, y’all.
(Damn, we’re powerful effin’ people!)
When we let outside conditions dictate our happiness, we’re giving away a lot of power. We’re also setting ourselves up to be held ransom by all the things that change in our lives over time, and our emotions will rise and fall and skyrocket and plummet and all the other ways I could describe the extreme ups and downs… just trying to keep up with what’s happening outside of ourselves.
“People wait their whole lives for something outside of them to change how they feel inside of them.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza
The good news is, when we let the enoughness-fortifying work (which is always an inside job, of course) lead us into those feel-good places whenever we want — just because we’ve decided to feel happy “for no reason” — we have overhauled our primal wiring and put our executive function in charge of how we will REACT to the things that happen all around us. Things that are totally out of our control will not jar us as much because we *know* how to get happy when we want to be happy.
By committing to being in charge of our reaction to emotions as they come and go, we have rewritten the rules for what it means to be human in the most powerful way possible.
That is why this is so hard to do sometimes. But, this is just a muscle like anything else. The more we practice using it, the stronger it gets.
Hopefully by now you’ve done a good job staying fully present and aware that there is no future you who gets a reward of FINALLY being happy if you’ve lived a life filled with misery on the road trying to get to some mythical “there”.
“For years, we’ve had a lot of experience being shitty to ourselves. It can take practice to learn to live a peaceful life.” — Bex Weller
If you do find you still believe you’ll be happy (or happier) when… (and the rest of that statement can be “when you have a million bucks,” or “when you lose 10 pounds,” or “when you meet the person of your dreams,” or “when you book a national,” or “when you move to LA,” or anything else, really), your homework starts now. EVERY time you catch yourself believing happiness is somewhere outside of you, outside of this moment, outside of this life experience you’re having… say (out loud, if possible), “I choose to be happy right now.”
Note: If “I choose to be happy right now” feels too far a stretch from where you are at any given time, try something like, “I choose to feel happiness right now,” since that makes it less about being a happy person and more about experiencing an emotion. Baby steps. Take ’em if you need ’em!
Saying, “I choose to be happy right now” reminds your brain that happiness is a choice, and it puts you squarely in the present, which is the only space we ever actually occupy anyway. š
Important: The muscle for both choosing happiness *and* remembering that happiness is something you can choose will get stronger the more you practice this.
“Let it be known to everyone who knows you that you are happy because you choose to be.” — Abraham-Hicks
Let me use myself as an example here: Y’all know I have a trip to Fiji coming up, wherein I’ll spend a week on a private island learning how to write with Liz Gilbert and a hundred other phenomenal ladybosses from all over the world. Okay, so this is on the schedule for out in the future and has been since August.
If ever I feel myself thinking about this trip and getting SUPER happy about it, I take a breath and smile about how happy I am *right now* for having booked this trip. It’s not future-me who is future-happy (although that’ll likely be true too); it’s now-me who is now-happy and even if I get hit by a bus the next time I walk outside, I’ll have enjoyed that I got to be happy!
If instead, I were miserable today and I spent time and energy dwelling upon how unhappy I feel, and then looked wistfully toward the calendar for this date out in the future when I can *finally* escape the torture that is my daily life here and now and get to go to the place where I will get to be happy once and for all… welp, that’s not me choosing to be happy right now. In fact, it’s probably me dredging up so much momentum for being a real sourpuss that there’s no way I’ll be happy while traveling or upon arrival or throughout the entire experience! Because I’ll be too dang practiced at feeling like shit about my life to EVER treat even a full week in paradise doing life-changing things as something that could make me even the tiniest bit happy for more than a heartbeat now and then.
I choose to be happy right now.
And that’s true even if I’m in not-ideal situations at the moment. Because I know my brain is evolutionarily wired to do a very good job at inventorying all the negative things (threats to my survival) going on around me, even if I’m having a very shitty day so far, I will stop myself, say, “I choose to be happy right now,” and then begin doing an inventory of everything that’s going RIGHT in my life. I’ll list off things I can sense all around me that are going well. I’ll get myself out of poopy thoughts so I can continue to build the muscle for being happy… from the inside-out.
Getting Real About Our Emotions
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent most of your life not being that aware of what emotions you’re feeling, when. When someone asks how you’re doing, the answer of course is FINE. When you feel sad, it’s usually because some outside condition did not meet your expectations and that’s created a reaction within. When you feel mad, someone did something that… ah, shit… didn’t meet your expectations in a different kind of way. And OMG, what are expectations doing in here?!?
Yeah. They’re everywhere. That’s why we spent a whole month diffusing them. And, lovely ones, it’s why we’ll do another month of your relationship with expectations in 2020. It’s time to go deeper with them. I’m sorry. But also not sorry, of course. Because this is the work.
But before you start charging in on all those flips, let’s be sure you’re doing a good job of dispassionately labeling your existing emotions as they visit.
Until 2018, when I started working with Dr. Stracks on my mind-body healing journey, I didn’t have a very clear connection with my emotions nor any really great tools for navigating them. Because I’m a Cancer (and we. feel. everything), I often just leaned into my superpower of compartmentalization to prevent myself from feeling all the things. Handy, but of course, the energy has to go somewhere.
One of the early a-ha moments in my mind-body healing journey was that I have always labeled my more traditionally masculine thoughts as thoughts and my more traditionally feminine thoughts as feelings. So if I were — for all good, logical reasons — disappointed in how someone else behaved, that was a feeling. Pretty sneaky, huh? Leaving aside all the things “wrong” with assigning masculine or feminine labels to thoughts, think about how clever I was to just DECIDE that if my thoughts about something *involved* a feeling, that meant I was having a feeling. Effin’ Cylon!
To be 47 years old and learning that I’d spent most of my life actively avoiding feeling my feelings was pretty… interesting, let’s call it. So, the next step in my homework — and now in yours — was to get really clear about when I was feeling what. WHY didn’t (and doesn’t) matter. It’s all about dispassionate labeling just to get clear on the feelings that visit now and then.
There are many ways to do this (I used the Mood Meter app several times a day ’til I got the hang of it), so I’ll leave you to determine which works best for you. But to get you started, I’m sharing seven links so you can save any of these various emotional lists that click for you, then start mapping out how much of the time you spend where, day to day.
Susan David’s simple emotions list.
The Mood Meter, analog version.
A crazy detailed but cool emotion wheel.
Byron Katie’s list of emotions (page 1; page 2).
CNVC’s two-page list of emotions to identify off expectations being met (or not).
And from The Emotion Code, a list of emotions that link to body parts, so we can get a little Louise Hay about this.
Speaking of Louise Hay…
You may recall from way back in beta that the goddess Louise Hay recommends something called mirror work. It can be… confronting. But boy is it life-changing.
Have you been doing this? Will you start now? I’d love to know. Sometimes emotions are inconvenient. Feel them anyway. Pushing them down thinking you’ll feel ’em when the timing is better is to train your brain to turn un-felt feelings into disease. One of the amazing things mirror work does is give space for us to feel those un-felt feelings fully while reminding ourselves of how ENOUGH we truly are. Right now. As we are. Today. “I choose to be happy right now.”
If you’re new to this transformational work by Louise Hay, here is the affirmation script most commonly used for mirror work. Feel free to adapt it to your own needs.
Oh, I know. You could revolutionize who you are in the world for everyone who knows and loves you. You could rewrite the story about who you’re meant to be in life. You could destabilize the culture of your family and friendgroup altogether.
And you could also be really, truly happy perhaps for the first time in life… irrespective of conditions.
Do I need to go too deep into how very much happiness is an inside-out project? Do I need to underscore that the inner work is what builds the muscle for making happiness feel safe in a primal brain that may be fighting VERY HARD against that state? Because until we can make ourselves feel safe being happy — right now, as we are, today — there’s nothing we can get in life that’s suddenly going to make us happy.
Keith and I don’t even say things like, “You make me happy.” We say things like, “I love using you as my excuse for being happy right now.” That’s an Abraham-Hicks reframing of a very simple thing that lovers often say to one another, but it’s an important one. There is nothing Keith brings to my life that MAKES me happy. I am happy and it is really fun to be happy while observing Keith do lots of things that I enjoy celebrating in life.
But if you’ve ever known someone who is miserable despite having all the money in the world or all the beauty that could possibly surround them and all the good health a body could enjoy or all the achievements they’ve always said would make them happy… you know happiness happens from the inside-out. Cool thing is, once we’re happy where we are in this very moment, we vibrate higher and begin attracting more of the things that couldn’t get to us when we were receiving at a level more aligned for UNHAPPY manifestations.
There’s a line in the last day of the Get in Gear for the Next Tier curriculum I’d like to remind you about: “You will get what you want when you are no longer attached to HOW it gets to you.”
Set your Baseline Criteria for each day, each meeting, each social exchange, each segment of life you want to chunk out into a unit for this purpose. Make sure you’re honest with yourself about what feelings are floating in now and then. Don’t feel the need to attach meaning to them; just observe them floating in and out of your space like visitors in Rumi’s guesthouse. Say aloud whenever you can, “I choose to be happy right now.” Do your mirror work. Once your Baseline Criteria is met, enjoy the bonus points from there. And notice how much more space and ease there is in your life from this worldview.
What to do with all that room. Ah… enjoy your happiness. And stay in receiving mode for the riches that come in to meet with it.
Aligned Hustle Calendar
Best GSD days of December are the 2nd (even though it’s a void moon) thanks to the Aquarius moon and 8 numerology, the 4th, the 6th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 15th, early on the 16th, 17th, 18th, possibly the 19th, definitely the 20th, the 24th could be very creative and fun, if you can focus on business on the 26th it’ll be fun energy, the 29th, and even the 31st! That’s a lot of GSD energy so make the most of it!
As for big planetary goodness, we’ve got Jupiter moving into Capricorn on the 3rd and this makes us lucky in quite pragmatic ways. A great time to reach career goals with the spark of magic Jupiter brings to everything. When Mercury moves into Sagittarius on the 9th, we’re in a 6 day and we’ll be grabbing a void moon that afternoon, so the effects of Mercury in Sag will start to settle in as we head into the 10th. Expect communication to be free-flowing and filled with trust (especially when compared to how it felt to have Mercury in suspicious Scorpio for so long).
For our full moon in Gemini on the 11th, release anything from intentions you set six months ago that haven’t come together. You’ll feel your confidence and gratitude increase and probably want to express yourself in more festive ways than usual. Forgive anything that has been miscommunicated this year. It’s over. Let it go.
When Venus moves into Aquarius on the 20th, you’ll find love, romance, and friendships have way more space and communication in them. Diversity, differences, and how we make each other more balanced by not all being exactly alike will be celebrated.
We end fiery Sag season on the 21st — the winter solstice. I recommend you do an intention-setting ceremony at sunset if possible. Light a candle. Write out and speak out your intentions for 2020 and fire them up on this powerful evening. If you can do this with other people, all the better! Because it’s a 9 day, focus especially on what you can release and move onward from.
On the 22nd, we kick off Capricorn season and this is when career focus and hard work come together — but probably not in earnest ’til after the first of the year (because: holidays). Don’t be surprised if you feel yourself jonesin’ to do some career stuff instead of bonding with the fam. Don’t fight that feeling! Involve them in your career plans — especially on the 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th!
We have our new moon in Capricorn on the 25th. Load on the self-care, enjoy the solar eclipse, and be sure to set those intentions for the next six months — specifically involving your creative career! Plant those seeds!!
Mercury leave Sagittarius and heads on over into Capricorn on the 28th and this means communication will feel less flowy and optimistic, more practical and logical. Good news, this starts up on Aquarius moon, so it’s a nice easing-in of the gear-shift (because the moon in an air sign helps the transition of Mercury from a fire sign to earth sign less jarring).
We end the year under Pisces moon and you know what that means: All the dreaming! All the basking in big ideas! All the bubble baths and naps and journaling! All the feeling the feelings and having some vivid dreams. Enjoy!! š Be sure to write up what you’d like to invite into your new year before you go to bed on the 31st.
All right, m’loves, this is so delicious! Can’t wait to jam with you about all things happiness-related and of course for those of you in Aligned Advantage, we’ll be hanging out soon to go over the January calendar in deep-dive fashion. Woo HOO!
Stay happy, y’all!
All my love,
Wanna join us for our monthly LIVE interactive mastermind meeting? Register here ASAP! This month’s meeting will take place via Zoom on Sunday, December 15th, at 1pm PST. Translate that to your time zone here.
After you register, you will receive an email with information on how to connect. You are welcome to go on camera for this mastermind session, or simply unmute yourself to participate live audio-only. Yes, we will be recording the meeting and putting its replay here for you to consume. Hooray!
Please post questions *here* (even though the robot email from Zoom includes an email address for questions). Thank you. š
If you’ve never Zoomed before, we recommend you get all set up *before* our meeting. Zoom is free, and there’s info on how to get going here.
And of course, any questions for us, pop ’em in below! This is where the magic IN YOU happens in ways that we can help guide you to even more magic. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us… and the whole damn world! They’re important and so are you. So excited for your happiness-boosting work this month!
Click here to download a PDF of our wee chat from the live meeting.
Post-Zoom, here’s your homework.
Homework:
- Ask yourself whether it’s safe to have your happy look unlike others’ happy. Journal about the role of expectations in what happiness “is supposed to look like” in your life.
- Revisit Tony Robbins’ six human needs — especially if your happy isn’t looking “right” to those in your inner circle somehow — and share below (or in your journal) any shifts you’d like to make in your top two.
- Consider these two quotes: “The brain doesn’t distinguish between real and imaginary. Research shows that it changes as we do something and changes by about the same amount if we imaging doing the thing instead” (Dr. David Hamilton) and, “A cell adjusts its genetics and its activity to conform to the environment. How does a cell know what’s going on in the environment? My mind is interpreting the environment and then sending not the real information about the environment but my interpretation of the environment” (Dr. Bruce Lipton). Now… from this perspective, what adjustments can you make to incrementally make happiness feel more safe in your life?
- Remember that the greatest gift you can give someone else is letting them know they are NOT responsible for your happiness.
- Extract expectations from your happiness. Expectations about what happiness should look and feel like, whether it’s possible to have happiness irrespective of results, what any given situation looks and feels like from another’s POV. Play with experiencing happiness in the micro (because if you can’t find bliss in the little things, you’ll never find it in the big things).
I so adore these convos and I look forward to seeing how the happiness topic continues to play itself out in the comments area of the dojo. Stay aware of those secondary and tertiary feelings. Do some dispassionate labeling without rushing to figure out the WHY behind the feelings you’re having at any given time. And do some *splitting* (rather than lumping) to help your brain unlearn the habit of creating patterns out of everything in the name of keeping us safe.
Those of you in Aligned Advantage, I’ll be going deeper on the January calendar with y’all on December 20th, as well as sharing more from the astrology masterclass I just had (with some *other* Bettina)! Everyone, look for the January calendar on the Expansive Capacity welcome page later this week. Our January Zoom (on Your Relationship with Daily Practices) will be on the 17th.
IMPORTANT!! Grads of Get in Gear for the Next Tier, you have until the end of the month to secure legacy status in the membership! If you have no idea what I’m talking about and cannot find your emails (we’ve sent 4 of them so far), shoot us a note at help@bonniegillespie.com so we can get you up to speed for making your decision before it’s too late to make a change! š Thank you for joining us in celebrating all this growth!
Happy glorious end to 2019, beauties! Until our next meeting, connect in the comments and ENJOY the intention-setting process ahead for the 21st, 25th, and 31st! My intention is to continue getting to do these deep-dives with you in meaningful ways because the work is — and you are — SO important to the world. I love you all so much!
Need to marinate on this topic but came across a quote that helped shift some paradigms for me so want to share it for anyone else who can resonate with it.
Unfortunately, the post didn’t credit the source.
“Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law” – the idea that the more you pursue the feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you become…”
Exactly! Love that. I’ll check some of my sources to see if I can find attribution somewhere. Thank you for sharing this, Bianca (BTW, if your ears were burning yesterday, that was me, bragging on you to Keith). XO
Thanks for the source, Bon!(:
Also, honored to be bragged about!
Very aligned as always, after a particularly emotionally-challenging year Iām finally rebuilding my day-to-day, leaning into my enoughness. Iām breaking through blocks, particularly with visibility by sharing my thoughts more & actually taking up space online & in person. I released a song after sitting on it for months, I woke up with the impulse to create youtube video discussing self-care in mental health, specifically with bipolar as thatās what I live with, I received an invitation to interview as a speaker for a TEDx event. Iām feeling all of these beautiful ways the universe is opening up for me in response to the inner work Iāve been doing. & yet, I hear that voice in my brain telling me to ābe careful because at any moment, my energy level could drop & I wonāt be able to be productive for months.ā Or āmy headspace wonāt be in a good place when I have that interview so even though I know Iām capable, I wonāt be able to represent that well & lose this opportunity.ā (Which didnāt happen btw, did very well with the interview & didnāt die!!)
Iāve been letting these fears & doubts float to the surface because Iāve been doing this enoughness work long enough to know my brain will try to do this to keep me safe. Iām currently in a headspace where my paranoia is low so Iām able to differentiate myself from my brain with ease. I can see what its trying to do & Iām not going along with it but I wonāt stifle it either. Iāve been making space for the discomfort & letting it encourage me that Iām expanding. Of course Iām terrified of things Iāve never done before. But doing something new for the first time is also one of my favorite experiences. So Iāll let my brain do its worrying (sheās got a strong muscle in that) but rather than feeling like I need to fix the concerns my brain comes up with I can appreciate the awareness without holding on to the worry long enough to turn it into an emotional response.
Similar to what you were saying about your Fiji trip, Bonnie, if good things are happening in response to my feeling good – I wonāt identify that as representative of my enoughness. I canāt look at the events or opportunities in my life as quantifiers, that is not a way to measure life. I am still enough even when I donāt feel good. & yes, we can build a muscle to hang out there less but Iām not bad or intrinsically inviting negativity into my life because Iām sad or tired. It is safe for good things to come to me even if I donāt feel like my best self. Whoa, a year ago me couldnāt even grasp that. I noticed even when good things did happen, I wouldnāt appreciate them bc I was still so caught up in not feeling good. I think thatās why I resonated with the quote I shared so much. I also realized this is an ULP I have – anytime I level up somehow, I wonder if Iāll be able to remain consistent enough to maintain this new level of success. Wrote about that in my journal this evening & even though I won’t be surprised if variations of this ULP continue to pop up, I’m releasing that with the full moon tonight. āØ
Love that you’ve released all of this with the full moon! Fantastic! And WHOA at the self-awareness and grace here, Bianca. Wow!!! Impressive and inspiring.
Oh, and this line?
It’s totally going into my heavy rotation of mantras. LOVE it. And YOU!
OMG I SO needed this:
It is safe for good things to come to me even if I donāt feel like my best self.
Wow! Thank you so much!
Thank you for sharing your process, Bianca. This was so helpful: āif good things are happening in response to my feeling good ā I wonāt identify that as representative of my enoughness. I canāt look at the events or opportunities in my life as quantifiers.ā
And finding your voice, taking up space? I sooo hear you! I didnāt realize how much of myself Iād been suppressing for whatever reason. But to allow myself and my creativity to be VISIBLE? Wow! Talk about a feeling of expansion! š
Oh, that was easy!
https://markmanson.net/feedback-loop-from-hell
It’s Mark Manson. š
hey y’all!
i’m sure i mentioned this book before. still want to mention it again because so much of what Neil researched & wrote here is in line with Bon’s explorations & our comments, especially in terms of reassessing our happiness based upon attachments to outcomes.
happy new year, y’all!!
https://globalhappiness.org/books/the-happiness-equation-want-nothing-do-nothing-have-everything/
Oh I love this! Thank you!
Wow…..
YES! I came across that quote recently as well. Great paradigm shift.
I really love the way you include so much supplemental info & resources, Bon! Thanks for that. Loved the 15min Abraham-Hicks mp3! And revisiting the mirror exercise. It’s interesting to observe how the same concepts hit me differently as my relationship with myself and my enoughness develops.
I was hoping to be able to tune in live to the call this month, but we’ve had a family tragedy and I will be on a plane returning from 3 funerals. Oddly, it feels like the perfect time to work on my relationship with happiness – so I look forward to watching the replay.
Oh wow, hon. Sending you so much love and healing vibes for something that jarring to the fam. {{{hugs}}} Stay present and keep your self-care intact during this travel and the services. Breathe. And yes, we’ll catch up in the comments after the replay.
Oh geez, Sarah,Iām so sorry to hear about the family tragedies. Know that youāve got a lot of ninja support going with you.
I loved this so much and totally resonate with: āItās interesting to observe how the same concepts hit me differently as my relationship with myself and my enoughness develops.ā Totally!
i love all the incredibly detailed lists of emotions . So much here to get into and think about and feel.Thank you, I will be back, I’m away from home with different time zone, will be late, so hoping to find a quiet place with wifi, so I can be there, will do my best.
Safe travels! Enjoy all the emotions to play with. š
thanks Bonnie š i am,.
I have also been seeing how much I fluctuate dramatically between when my needs are being satisfied and when they are not being satisfied, re mood meter. from feeling fear and confusion to being excited and inspired,
see also how many moments of happiness there are in the small things, the new the fresh, the choosing, the sparkle in someones eye, eating, smells , senses,
hope i manage to get the zoom call to work tonight, if not i will see and listen to the replay,.
Just that awareness is so good! Micro adjustments are possible when we’re that aware of where our feelings are at any given time.
OMG Bonnie, the Abe Hicks mp3. OMG!!!
I wish I wouldāve visited this monthās lesson sooner because it came at me in a BIG way, and I have this part of me saying NOW, āHow delicious is that? I now have all this great data!ā But I allowed myself to get spun off into the weeds, as Abe Hicks says.
Hereās the scenario in case anyone else needs it: Iāve been simmering with this topic, mainly because Iāve realized how much Iāve entwined my happiness with others, specifically my husband. Itās his birthday month, and I surprised him with an outing to the play, Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, but heās been so miserable and angry with his job that he brought that energy to the theatre with him, and no matter how much magic was happening onstage, he couldnāt experience it. He just sat in his dark cloud, and I couldnāt get him out of it. I kept saying to myself, āI am not responsible for his emotional state, and I choose happiness,ā so I found my way into enjoying the show, but geez it was hard! And I felt really down for several days afterwards, and thatās when I realized I had some Expectations going on, and I have to let go of the notion that I can make others happy. I really have to let that go. Itās not real, itās an attempt to control another person, and thatās all kinds of messed up. Iām a little sensitive right now anyway, so I need to take extra good care of my emotional state, but it was jarring to me to not be on the same page of joy with my husband. But then I realized, The Theatre gives ME joy whereas my guy is really picky and will only go to a show he REALLY wants to see, so for me to expect him to like it because our friends all liked it and I loved it… that still didnāt mean he would enjoy it.
Listening to the Abe Hicks mp3, I get what the Universe was snowing me now. Him being happy or unhappy is a condition I cannot control. I can only control MY vibration.
So if I keep focusing on my choice to be happy, and I release the need to judge others for where they are…. I can keep cultivating my vibration. I canāt dip down to lift them up. By focusing on my vibration, by being the lighthouse and shining the light, I hope others will join me in the light but I canāt force them to do so. Man that feels hard because I feel so sad for them they they want to stay in their misery! But thatās me dipping and thatās me making an assumption. I can only control where I am.
When I say, āI choose to be happy right now,ā my vibe Lifts, and thatās all I can control. Truly. Itās an interesting lesson because my Inner Child is trying so hard to lift/heal others because that was my core belief as a child: āIf I make them feel better, Iāll feel better,ā but itās not the truth. Wow. If I make myself feel better, IāLL feel better. I am reeling from this information!
OMG thank you so much, Bonnie! Wow! I am so excited to take on my day! Love you!
LOVE that this excites you and you’re going to be digging in on it so fully! Hooray! š Spectacular, Laura. And keep playing that Abe! It’s such an important message.
Laura, this is very big stuff! I love the active way you implemented this realization in real time – it can be so hard to still have fun when the special person you want to delight is not. I was just reading a chapter from Kyle Ceaseās older book where h talks about the need to make others happy first is a more insidious addiction than chemical because it has invisible roots into everything we do. Before we see it or know it, weāre doing it. So your quick awareness and reframe are amazing. Lighthouse, not raft, as Bonnie says. ā¤ļø
It’s also a very selfish addiction! Because the reason we want to take care of others/people please/etc., is so we don’t have to sit with the discomfort of what it feels like to allow others to have their own disappointment or whatever. So big, isn’t it?
Itās so big! I remember when I was coaching yoga teachers earlier this year, I talked to my master teacher about how painful it was to let them have their struggles and not try to ease them. She looked me in the eye and she said, āsometimes you just have to leave the cone on the dog.ā. I was like, BOOM.
WOW! Thanks for that, Rhianna.
Yup yup yup
“Invisible roots in everything we do.” TOTALLY.
I think the big realization for me was that it all came out of trying to survive my childhood. If I could try to figure out what might make my parents happy, that might create a happier existence for me, so it was selfish but it was also survival, because I thought they might leave if they were unhappy. I was terrified of that, because my mother had one foot out the door emotionally/mentally. She left when I was 23, so I was already gone, but my brother was 13 so he suffered terribly as well.
This whole year has felt like a big wake-up call, and it’s been fascinating to try to figure out what makes me happy. And can I detach from the addiction of trying to make others happy? YES, I CAN.
The goal is confirm and create MY safe space in which I can be happy without needing the condition of THEIR happiness.
LOTS of WORK. DAILY.
Love seeing you put in the work. That showing up for yourself alone is massively healing. Love you!
Bonnie, what a focus you have given us this month! My first impulse when I read the theme was āHappinessā was feeling pretty good about that. But having taken the time to really dig deep into your text (and soon supplementary materials – thank you and hooray!), I see really it is about being present with myself and feeling my damn feelings. Amen!
So I have a little bit of a different challenge than you share here, which is that I am the queen of feeling my feelings, I am just not the Queen of sharing them. I am very aware of all the feelings that shift within me (and their surprising intensity from moment to moment) and I keep them close to my heart as Iāve learned they can overwhelm and intimidate people with their quicksilver blazes. Fire sign with Cancer moon much?
So this meant I kept them to be felt later, when I was alone, in my private space. It means I am very good about not putting my feelings on other people but often people are not clear what is going on with me. In unhealthy periods, they feel disconnected, in more healthy periods, they arenāt aware of whatās going on with me really because I donāt share. But it also means that a huge amount of my downtime has always (since childhood) been about processing those build up of feelings. At times this meant a good weekly cry until an exhausted nap from which I woke up good as new. I have learned not to judge these emotional spells but it sure is confusing for the men in my life who I allow to see it.
But that emotional processing. Takes. So. Much. Time. I got shit to do! So as I come into my own as to the true nature of my personal power, I am less interested in having these feelings spells. Self care, yes, but pent up emotions, no. I am experimenting with letting more of those emotional colors show in the moment. Still an INFJ so that means in very bureaucratic, still contained ways, but not withholding that energy for later, letting it color the interaction or communication. Turns out thereās a lot more anger than I anticipated. The sorrow I often felt before was because I felt my boundaries were being transgressed thoughtlessly. Now I hold my ground sooner even though it still makes me very uncomfortable to do so…..and I find I have less sorrow to process at the end of the week. I am learning to process my anger socially as women and anger is still so very taboo. But I am surrounded by so many powerful women who just donāt give a crap if they come of as angry if they are. When it comes to professional situation, this is a very strong flavor and must be used with extreme care. I am finding holding my ground in subtle ways means I have to flare up in self defense much less often. Verrry interesting.
So I find my feelings derail my energy less and my downtime can be more inspirational or creative, which, sakes alive!, does make me more happy in general.
But then – dunh dunh! – my inner leader shows up with expectations. All the things that must be done at the level of perfection. I am so appreciative of the reminder of baseline expectations here because with holiday stuff and events and social time, I find my thinking can spiral to atmospheric in expectations of how things will go. Then I exhaust myself working to meet the expectations I set for myself. I am in a period in my thrival job where I feel taken for granted because they know I am the person who solves the problems before anyone else knows there is a problem. This quality has really served me in my life but recognition is rarely part of the rewards for this behavior. Most of the time, no one else saw the problem from 40 yards but me so how could they see my Hail Mary pass? (I hope those metaphors are right). I am asking for what I need to be so amazing at my job more but the excuses I get back for why I canāt have what I want indicate I trained them well to think I could do anything effortlessly. Setting a baseline expectation on this position (and inviting what will happen next whatever it might be) is the only active thing I can do right now to change how I feel about the situation. I have run my analytical mind into the ground trying to outmaneuver the personalities in play so they will see my side but thatās more life force than I really want to devote to this job. The good stuff is for my creative career and my LIFE. A gentle return to baseline expectations when my brain starts to get those expectations spinning is a very good muscle for me to build right now.
Also, itās very interesting to me that the more I allow my feelings to be present in the conversation (whether or not I allow them to color the moment), the more charismatic I feel. I have always enjoyed the benefits of showing up and feeling people are drawn to me but lately itās on a whole new level that I truly believe comes from being so open hearted emotionally. Itās pretty transformative. (Also scary at times but those are thoughts for another post). ā¤ļø Love that we have these conversations here. I donāt get to share them too many other places and I do appreciate it! Happy holidays, you guys!
I think that’s one of my favorite things about this membership — you glorious people who comprise it AND the work itself of course — it’s safe to have these deep dives and really dig in on things that we’re otherwise likely to have spring up on us at the most inopportune times otherwise. So good.
Love you. Thank you for sharing all of this!
Itās truly the best. After posting yesterday, I had an experience where I made a mistake based on not having the bandwidth to process all of the information within the request I agreed to accept. I let some people down because of the mistake (scheduling) and truly felt ~ feel ~ terrible. I have that feeling. Luckily the impulse to jump out of my feelings was forefront in my mind because of participating here yesterday morning. I let myself sit and breathe and feel guilt (and even a little shame). I felt the crest of it peak and while I still feel guilty for letting people down, I know the lesson is a powerful one and a timely reminder not to overcommit when the world starts whirling. This gift will help me set myself up for a reasonable holiday schedule and for planning my 2020 goals so in some ways, that snafu was a bigger gift than doing it perfectly while in distress would have been. It had a distinct bite so I would honor the lesson but it is not damaging in the long term so I can stay vigilant without feeling remorse. Thank you, Universe. ā¤ļø
That universe is so good to us! <3
This is all so awesome, Rhianna. I used to bottle emotions too, only to have them explode out in some way later. I love that you are āexperimenting with letting more of those emotional colors show in the momentā and that you are feeling more empowered and charismatic because of it. I can almost FEEL you expanding from here! š
That’s lovely.
This month has been a challenge with my Dad in the ICU after having an allergic reaction to his medication. He’s totally fine and back to normal now, but during the times of unknowing just leaning into, “I choose to feel happiness right now.” helped. I also leaned into it’s totally ok to feel what I’m feeling and that will evolve throughout the day during this process.
The Louise Hay mirror work is a part of my morning routine and it really helps me to connect deeply within before starting out my day. I even do it in the car in a parking lot if I need an extra boost throughout the day.
Bon, could we untangle a little more during our zoom on when we are feeling a certain way and the why doesn’t matter? Sometimes my analytical mind/Questioner tries to justify everything. I’m working on this.
Absolutely, sweetheart. Let’s dive in on that together. And of course I’m sending your dad (and the whole fam, especially you) all the best vibes during this challenging time.
Hope your dad is feeling better, Aaron!
I’m a pretty happy person, my default is set pretty high for happiness, which made me all the more interested to get in there and look around my relationship to happiness. Not just so I can move that default higher, and make it more unfuckablewith but also so I can apply that state of high vibe to other areas that maybe aren’t so, err, solid. While I don’t tend to play the “I’ll be happy when” game, I realized I sometimes attach my my happiness to a thing or happening. I play the ” I’m happy because” game. I’m happy because I have an audition, I’m happy because I got a compliment, I’m happy because it’s a nice day out, etc. As though I need an excuse to be happy, that being happy isn’t an okay thing to be all on it’s own but needs justification. *facepalm*. ( And yes, I can see where my well intentioned but typically midwesternly protective, non-emotional family is rubbed all over this need to have a REASON for happy and not just be some sort of smiling lunatic).
So I now remind myself ” I’m happy because I’m happy” whenever I feel like I need a justification for it.
When people ask me why I’m happy all the time, I’m saying “because I choose to be”. Which is also creates a little bit of fun watching them try to work that out.
Then, just in time for the deep dive, I started having trouble sleeping and had been wandering around just plain tired and I realized when I’m tired, I have no protection against other peoples feelings and negativity. I become a sponge for it, just soaking up all that black, cranky, feel bad, judgmental goo. I give over control of my own happiness at the drop of the proverbial hat. Obviously, sleeping is helpful, but now I’m figuring out ways to shore up my boundaries, create an unshakable and completely selfish happy even in less than ideal circumstances.
Love love love “I’m happy because I’m happy” and the brain puzzle that is the CHOICE to be happy. š Yes. So good!
And I adore that the sleeplessness is giving you the opportunity to learn ways to keep your happy tank full and keep your life sponge from being TOO porous for others’ energies. That’s a lovely next step with this.
Faboo all the way around!! Love all of this… and you!
From the Live – Oh Debs, your versions of happiness are so beautiful. Just gorgeous.
From the woo woo sunday mail, throwing the rocks out for me , straight away made me think how i often dither around , giving too much information to people , when its not necessary, it can be annoying to people, it just clouds the issues, instead of just deciding, , negotiating things in an easier straighter way, as very often i know whether i want or don’t want to do something. Involving other people in my considerations can just waste time and be annoying to them and to me too.I also think too much about it and that makes it more difficult to decide anything,. I need to be simpler and clearer,.
I think it is partly my desire to share with people who i am really , feeling that they can’t see me, i have this need to get people to understand me, and its also my insecurity as far as what i want and what i am allowed to want and be,
So letting go of this behaviour or habit of dithering and of giving too much (my rocks) , might clear the way for more lightness and space, Its just a thing I’m used to doing when i am feeling under pressure.
Thats the first thought that came to mind after reading the mail.
Even your correcting yourself here about Superpower Sunday vs. Woo-Woo Wednesday is a symptom of your not trusting people to get you.
Can you try to lean into the idea that people are generally smart — and certainly smart enough to ask questions if they don’t understand you — and try to TRUST that you can go with SIMPLICITY and CLARITY rather than crowding things up with so much communication?
You can share who you are without over-explaining. š You just have to trust that we get you! I love that you’re beginning to recognize what you do when under stress vs. when you’re at a resting state of enoughness at any time.
This is good work!
Sorry that was superpower sunday not woo woo wednesday
hey yāall!
(please excuse my double post; i’m not so good when i dobthis by phone!)
iām sure i mentioned this book before. still want to mention it again because so much of what Neil researched & wrote here is in line with Bonās explorations & our comments, especially in terms of reassessing our happiness based upon attachments to outcomes.
happy new year, yāall!!
https://globalhappiness.org/books/the-happiness-equation-want-nothing-do-nothing-have-everything/
Thank you for sharing!! š