Intentions

Wanting

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When you want something, you don’t have it. That may sound like a simple sentence, yet it is so important.  Think about when you have used the word “want.” I want a vacation. I want some apple pie.  I want someone to love.  What is common in all these sentences is what you don’t have.

If you say, “I want to feel better,” what you get is the “wanting” of feeling better. You won’t feel better when you are still wanting to.  When you say, “I feel better,” what happens? You feel better. You have given yourself instructions that you are following.

Something similar happens when you use the word “have.”  I caught myself saying, “I have a headache.” Now why would I want a headache? Saying, “I am happy that I feel great,” allows you the space to feel great.

I often hear the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for,” which applies here. When you say, “I want” or “I wish,” that’s what you get.  If you say, “I want to take a class,” that’s just a wish. Signing up for a class and attending that class makes it happen.  If you say, “I don’t want to feel this way,” you focus on the negative. Try saying something like, “I am feeling better every day.”

Try this: whenever you catch yourself saying “I want” or “I have,” turn that sentence around so you start it with. “I am.”  When you proclaim who you are, that’s what you get. I often write in my journal things like, “I am strong,” or “I am healthy,” or “I am loved unconditionally,” and guess what happens? I recognize I am strong, healthy, and loved unconditionally!

Pay attention to when you say, “I want” or “I have.” When you do say things like that, stop yourself, and turn around what you said to something positive and present. You will be so glad you did.

 

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Living-Your-Though-Grief/dp/1642504823/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1658356016&sr=8-1

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

Expecting

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I used to love the word hope. I would hope for world peace, for kindness in our country, for neighbors to sell their loud motorbikes, for my house to always be picked up.

I could hope for so many things wanting them to come true, but I started to see that things I hoped for didn’t happen. On the other hand, when I am expecting things, they do happen.

When we say that someone is expecting a baby, we automatically know that baby is on its way. When someone says she hopes to have a baby someday, that may or may not happen.  I have learned when something is important to me, it will happen. I expected to earn a master’s degree, and I did. I didn’t hope to get good grades. I went to all my classes and did my best on all the assignments because I expected good grades.

World peace would be amazing, but that would require everyone in the world to also want world peace, and there will always be people who thrive on chaos and control, and as long as those people exist, world peace isn’t possible. Can you hope for world peace? Absolutely. Can things get better than they are now? Yes to that too. Individually doing things that create peace can lead us all in the direction of peace, and we can individually or in groups do what fosters peace and make the world a better place.

Expecting my neighbors sell their motorbikes is unrealistic. They have them because they love that noise. Instead of hope, I focus on knowing they will get a job somewhere far away, and they will take their bikes with them when they move. While I can’t create something to happen for someone else, I can smile when I just know that their dream job is out there waiting for them.

When it comes to an orderly house, that is entirely possible. All I must do is keep it picked up. This is very possible, though sometimes I need to remind myself.

What does all this have to do with grief and happiness? When you expect that each day will be better, even if just a little bit, each day will be better. When you expect to be happy, you allow yourself to smile and to participate in things that bring you joy. When people tell me that they can’t see how someone dealing with grief can be happy, I explain to them that when you expect happiness in your life, you will discover that reasons to be happy already are present in your life. The key is to recognize what they are and act on them.

I am grieving and I am happy.  I am happy when I read a good book or watch a good movie.  I am happy when I prepare a tasty, healthy meal for me to eat.  I am happy when I say or do something that makes someone else smile. The more I focus on happiness, the more happiness I attract into my life.

What brings you happiness? Try expecting to be happy and see where that takes you. I see lots more smiles on your lovely face are on their way! Enjoy them! And expect a lot more!

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon:

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, by clicking here

Fishing in the Wrong Pond

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I heard someone say the other day that she was fishing in the wrong pond, and that reminded me of going with my parents to Oregon to visit my aunt and uncle so that my father could go salmon fishing in the ocean with his brother-in-law. I wasn’t allowed to go out on the boat with them, so I would wait on the shore watching the big waves and anticipating having a luscious big fish on the bar-b-q for dinner. They always seemed to go to the perfect spot to fish, and always came back with a bounty.

Being in the right place at the right time leaves room for finding exactly what you want. With fishing, you are more likely to succeed if you go where you know the fish usually hang out instead of to a pond that may be pretty, but you never heard of anyone catching fish there. I think of this in relation to discovering who you want to be around when you are dealing with grief.

Someone told me of a grief group she attended where many tears were shed at every meeting, and I knew that wasn’t the place for me. But it was the right place for those who regularly went to that group. On Maui, I went to a Death Café. The idea intrigued me, and when a friend invited me, I went with her. We met at a Mexican restaurant, ate nachos, and shared our stories. The group was warm and inviting, and the people who attended were working with grief related to a variety of reasons. I made friends there and did return.

A place you can make new friends who are also grieving is the Grief and Happiness Alliance. I facilitate this group which meets every week. We write on a different topic each week, then we talk about what we wrote. And then we learn happiness practices.  I love this positive, creative group where I’ve made great new friends. There is no charge for these meetings because we are supported by the Grief and Happiness Nonprofit Organization.

You can come to the meetings by registering here: Grief and Happiness Alliance 

Another place you can attend is Dialogue on Death and Dying provided by the Transform Myself Ministry of Unity Church. I am on a panel of four people with different backgrounds who meet once a month to discuss anything related to death and dying. We meet on Zoom and people come to see us by getting a ticket on EventBright. The four of us talk, then we break into smaller groups to have more in depth conversations. Every month the discussion is different, and you can make new friends there too.

You can sign up to attend here: Dialogue on Death and Dying

Ask around in your community to see what is available in person there. You can also find groups for a variety if things where you live on MeetUp. Try something new like a Pickle Ball group or a reading group.

Find MeetUp in your Community: MeetUp

The key is to find the fishing hole that works for you. Having people to talk to is so important, as is just having fun! The key is to do something. You are not going to find that big fish in your living room. Find your own, special fishing pond.

 

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon:

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, by clicking here

New Year, New You

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While time may seem to stand still while in early grief, it will start picking up speed. Now, each year now seems to fly by faster than the last. The good news is there are ways you can more effectively deal with time to make it your friend.

I know I say this often, but I learned by experience to stay focused on the moment. By being present in each moment, a moment at a time is manageable. In this moment, I am writing to you to help you feel better as I listen to Yo-Yo Mah play Bach on his cello, with the birds in my yard singing cheery songs to each other while feeling a light cool breeze on a sunny day with blue skies. What a lovely way to spend these moments with you.

When you fill your life with all that is good and beautiful, there’s not so much room left to slide into the blues.  Look around you right now and identify 10 good and/or beautiful things you enjoy. While you did this little exercise, I doubt you had room left in your moment for any sadness to sneak in. How easy was that!

I love to make lists because I learn so much from them. You could make a list of 5 things you love to eat that you haven’t had in a while. Then plan how to work those 5 things into your food planning for this week.  Things on my list would be things like marmalade; fresh baked bread; spinach salad with strawberries, goat cheese, and poppyseed dressing; homemade pizza, and Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream of course.

Try writing a list of friends you’d like to talk to, then call them or invite them out for coffee. Or you could make a list of movies you’d like to see or books you’d like to read. Or make a list of creative things you’d like to try.  I taught myself how to paint watercolor flowers by watching YouTube videos, and I taught myself how to draw by taking a class at a local art center. The gist here is to do something. Anything. Get creative and see what you come up with, then do it!

After my husband died, I realized that the new year was approaching, and I decided I had to make a change. I had been spending way too much of my time alone, not doing anything in particular. In the past I had made New Year’s Resolutions, but like most of us, I forgot what most of them were by the end of January.  I decided that I would set one intention for the year and stick to it.  I just had to figure out what that intention would be. What came to me was to accept invitations. I hadn’t been receiving any invitations, but my feeling was so strong to make this my intention that I decided to give it a try.

Some of the invitations were for little things and others were huge, and I had an amazing time with all I did. I realized that I actually had some invitations before this, but then I automatically turned them down because I was grieving and didn’t want to be a wet blanket. Giving up that sad story allowed me to do things I wouldn’t have dreamed of before from watching a movie my friend suggested, to going to a Patti LaBelle concert, to being on the Ethics Committee for the local medical center, to driving the follow car for a 24-hour bicycle race, to creating a film festival, to going to South Africa! Whew! That’s a lot, but I did even more.

My intention became to say yes first, then allow myself to figure things out. This year of Yes changed my life.  I found that I enjoyed my job teaching at the university much more, I made new friends, I found a new place for me to live, and I smiled. I smiled a lot. My aches and pains and physical complaints melted away. I felt so much better.  And I felt so good, that I found it easy to stay positive and live my life full out in a way that supported me and made me happy, so I have kept it up.

This year my intention was to publish another book and become a best-selling author. I became an international best-selling author when I wrote a chapter for Ignite Forgiveness and that intention came true the first weekend that was published.  And I am finishing up my next book that is being published in March. If you asked me after either of my husband’s died if I would ever do all the things I listed here, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I did all this and much more by learning to say yes and believe that I could fulfill the intentions I make.

As you look at this upcoming year, decide what intention you are going to write. Try choosing just one knowing that it will happen. And when it does, choose another. Your beautiful, surprising life is just waiting for you to say YES!

 

Get your Awaken Your Happiness Journaling Guide at no charge by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/pl/2147595767

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Living-Your-Though-Grief/dp/1642504823/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1658356016&sr=8-1

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, here:

https://smile.amazon.com/Ignite-Forgiveness-Journey-Peace-Harmony-ebook/dp/B0BLFCYYD6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9C6VAFE42H5C&keywords=ignite+forgiveness+book&qid=1669836040&sprefix=Ignite+forg%2Caps%2C284&sr=8-1

The Truth

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Do you always tell the absolute truth? The most common answer to this question is “Of course I only tell the truth!” But do you? Really?

Years ago, there were many stories that I told. I wasn’t trying to be dishonest. I was trying to feel better about myself.  I felt that I could be seen in a better light if I just enhanced what I was saying just a little bit, but if that enhancement didn’t happen or didn’t happen the way I described, what I said wasn’t the truth.

One relationship I had ended badly, so when anyone would ask me about it, the story I told made me a victim and the other person the villain. I wasn’t exactly lying. I was trying to be persuasive and get sympathy. I look back now at my sorry self and see how what I said just made things worse.

Can you think of a time when you fudged a little? Something could be as simple as writing the weight you’d like to be rather than your actual weight on a health questionnaire is an example. Or something like telling yourself that buying just one extra carton of ice cream won’t affect your weight, when you know for you that one extra carton leads to three since they are on such a good sale.

Your dishonestly can be even more troubling when you say what you want to be true, like telling someone you love them because they said it first instead of recognizing that is not how you feel at that point.  You aren’t telling the truth when you embellish what you are saying like “That pie you made was so good,” when you knew it was a struggle to take another bite.  You just didn’t want to hurt the baker’s feelings. What you didn’t know when you said that was because of your compliment, that baker made several of that same pie for the bake sale later that week.  Those poor people who bought something they thought would be good and your baker friend lost their reputation as a good cook.

Little lies can build up locking you in a trap of having to create bigger lies to cover up for the first thing you said. Maybe when asked about the skills of a friend, you exaggerated because you knew that what you said could get them the job they needed. When that didn’t work out, then you found yourself being more dishonest when you tried to cover for what you said in the first place.

Lies we tell ourselves while we are grieving are things like, “I will never be happy again,” or “I can’t get over how I am feeling.”  What do you say about your grief that isn’t exactly true or that you don’t know if it is true or not?  Remember, if you say something often enough, it can become your truth. And I know you would love to feel better.

Be mindful of what you say. When you aren’t completely sure if something is completely true, don’t say it. What often happens is that we speak first and think about what we said later. The trouble with this is once the words come out of your mouth, you can’t take them back.

When I finally realized that I was not being exactly truthful because it was easier or because I just didn’t think before I spoke, I knew that not being in integrity was hurting me. Now I have developed the habit of being mindful of what I say, of thinking before I speak. I no longer embellish, exaggerate, or just fudge a little with what I say. Changing this behavior was not quick and took dedication, and it was so worth it.

True happiness can only come with true integrity.

 

 

 

Get your Awaken Your Happiness Journaling Guide at no charge by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/pl/2147595767

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Living-Your-Though-Grief/dp/1642504823/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1658356016&sr=8-1

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

Unconditional Love

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Most of my life I had no idea what unconditional love was. I hadn’t thought much about love in general. I knew my parents loved me, but many times it seemed conditional. The first time I thought I fell in love, I realized that we could only be in love if I was perfect in his eyes in all things, and I wasn’t.  I learned from that the importance of being and doing what someone else expected of me. All that did for me is help me lower my self-esteem.

When my first baby was born, one night nursing him in the middle of the night, I realized what deep, true love really was. He was so little and so fully dependent on me. And I loved caring for him.  I also realized at that moment how my mother must have felt about me, but she was never able to demonstrate it.

I went through life thinking I could find true love if only circumstances were different. If only I was prettier, if only I got better grades, if only I had a magnificent job, if only I married a doctor, if only I was shorter (I grew to six feet tall when I was in seventh grade). All of those if onlys didn’t help me a bit.

When I met Jacques, I learned so much more about love. He loved me just the way I was, and I loved him that way too. I discovered along the way that we developed what I consider now to be a bad habit of judging people, and when you are judging others, you really are judging yourself too, and I fell back into that “if only” place I thought I had left behind.

We were both teaching college, and we’d say if only our students would pay more attention or take their education more seriously.  We both did lots of theatre and we were always complaining about actors not memorizing their lines or missing rehearsals. That judgement of others got in the way of us living our best lives.

I started learning about unconditional love from Ron. If I started to complain, he would say, wouldn’t it be better to do something positive about an issue than to get upset about it? That was hard for me at first, but I eventually realized that it is not my place to judge anyone else. When I learned that, the gateway began to open for me.

I finally started taking responsibility for myself. I stopped finding fault with others. That enabled me to make a huge shift. I started to love people for who they were. I choose to spend time with people I enjoy being with and I don’t judge them. And I don’t judge myself.

Why am I writing about all this right now? I have been observing the state of the world. So much of what is happening that is negative comes from judgement and hate. We could all learn from the song Hal David and Bert Bacharach wrote and Jackie DeShannon sang in the mid-sixties, What the World Needs Now:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing there is just too little of . . . .

No not just for some, but for everyone.

Imagine what our world would be now if we all chose to love one another instead of judging them. What if we are all at the beginning of a huge shift in the world? We can be if choose to.

Start right now. Remember the deepest love you have experienced or that you would love to experience. How does that feel? Take that feeling and pay it forward. If you realize you are judging someone or something, forgive yourself, forgive whoever you need to, and then start spreading that beautiful, unconditional love. May it circulate all over the world and beyond.

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.