I like to read it, though, especially after I saw this blurb on a study from Perspectives on Psychological Science in the October 2011 issue of Fitness (p 105; emphasis mine):

Women reported experiencing worse moods after reading an article touting the importance of joy and then immediately taking part in a fun activity. “Setting higher expectations for happiness can actually lead you to feel less happy,” says study coauthor Jane Gruber, Ph.D. . . . To avoid that buzzkill, pause to savor little feel-good moments. . . . “Enjoying the activities themselves, rather than because you think they are going to make you happy, is key,” Gruber says.

What do you think? What are your “little feel-good moments”? (You can see one of mine at right!)

Choosing happiness. It’s been a bit of a theme for the year—one of my resolutions, one of our Group Writing Projects (oh, man, looks like it’s about time for one of those again). It’s something we hear about a lot.

And now I finally know what it means.

Surprisingly, it has a lot to do with why, when I talk about how heart-rendingly difficult stay-at-home motherhood can be, people tell me I should get a job.

It’s because we don’t know how to be happy.

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

The analogy that keeps springing to my mind is one of food. I like donuts and ice cream and cake and pie . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. Food does make me happy, treats especially. I do the grocery shopping, so if I wanted to, I could stock up on these things every week and eat them every meal.

But I can’t choose cake and ice cream all the time. Yeah, I’d enjoy eating it (to a point), but I would soon get sick, gain weight, and miss out on vital nutrients. (Scurvy, anyone? Oh and PS tooth decay?)

To be happy with my body (liking how I look) and happy in my body (not feeling like crap), I have to make healthier choices. I do enjoy eating healthier foods, too, though not as much as my sugary treats.

The same goes for my day-to-day activities. I could ignore my kids all day, plunk myself down in front of the computer and them in front of the TV (where we are now, thank you), but we all end up grumpy and lazy.

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

Staying home with my children all day may not be an endless delight for me. There are diapers and housekeeping and tantrums and nap strikes. But I believe the most important contribution a person can make to the world is to raise their children right, to show them love, to give them their personal attention. I know that in twenty years, my successful marketing campaigns won’t be what warms the cockles of my heart.

By choosing to raise my children myself, I’m choosing a long, hard road—but one that leads to real, long-term happiness.

What do you think? Are you giving up treats today so you don’t vomit tomorrow?

(More thoughts on how to choose happiness as a mom here.)

This post originally ran 8 October 2009.

Photo by Swamibu

The main character and her best friend are coming up on their turn for the procedure. As they go in for their pre-procedure evaluations, the friend turns to the main character and says, “You can’t be really happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes. You know that, right?”

The main character thinks her friend has kinda lost it, but by the end of the book, she knows that her friend was right.

The other happiness quote I’ve come across this week was on a friend’s blog:

“Everybody in the world is seeking happiness – and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People via Clarissa Draper.

Love it!

What are your favorite quotes about happiness?

Photo by Peyri Herrera

Men are, that they might have joy.

Typically, people define the difference between happiness and joy with happiness being more fleeting, and joy being deeper, stronger, and longer lasting.

I think that’s pretty accurate. Joy and happiness can co-exist. I see both in the little moments of motherhood.

I think Joy is built from little moments of happiness, with the assurance (or at least the conviction) that our choices are on the right track—that we’re doing what we should be.

What do you think? How do you define Joy? When do you feel it?

Photo by Collin Mel Cunningham

It seems like, if we’re happy, we’re supposed to love every minute of our lives. If we enjoy motherhood, we should love every minute of it. And some people really do love every minute of being a mom—so if we don’t, there must be something wrong with us.

I don’t believe that’s true (and I sincerely hope it’s not!).

I say this because sometimes I struggle to love any minute of motherhood, for weeks at a time. Sure, there’s the occasional 30 seconds of bliss as I snuggle a finally-asleep-again-baby, and the flush of pride when Rachel starts crawling at six months or Rebecca successfully counts to 12(!) at <two and a half, and the smiles at Hayden’s first realistic full-body drawing:

But those tiny pleasures are so easily forgotten after hours of diapers, whining, crying, screaming, bickering, punishments, refereeing, and motherhood in general—hours where it feels like these tiny tyrants need everything you have to give and more.

When I dare to admit that feeling, I often get comments telling me I should go back to work. Give up, essentially. Focus on what will make you happiest (“giddy with delight”) immediately.

I do still think that what I’m doing as a stay-at-home mom is important. But sometimes, I’m so unhappy on a daily basis that I struggle to feel that what I’m doing is best for me and for the kids.

I do still think that what I said a year ago is true:

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

But I think I need to put more effort into making better choices on a day-to-day basis. I don’t believe we’ll be “giddy with delight” every minute, no matter what we’re doing, but we can try to focus on the things that do make us feel good about motherhood. And it’s about time I recommit to doing that.

When I was good about working on Feeling Fulfilled Fridays, that’s what I was trying to do: focus on those things that I can do to affect the way I feel and we all function. Maybe it’s about time I work on those things again.

I stopped posting about it for several reasons: struggling with these feelings, being too busy, and the deafening lack of response and enthusiasm from 99% of my readership. However, I think that focusing on fulfillment again—refocusing—can help with the first two, since I think they’re really symptoms of the problem instead of side-effects.

The last one . . . well, that one’s up to you. Is there anything I can do to help encourage you to participate in Feeling Fulfilled Fridays?

As a reminder, for FFF we create a list of things that help us feel accomplished, work on a few of those things during the week, and report on Fridays.

What can you do to enjoy your time as a mother more?

And oh yeah, Rachel really is crawling:

Manic smiley photo by Astrid Phillips

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever cared less about New Year’s Eve and Day. Ever. My husband spent the evening patrolling the parking lot at a local youth dance (10,000 youth were expected to attend and the organizers solicited several hundred chaperons) so I didn’t even get a kiss.

I’m also so over resolutions . But I suppose I can still take a look at my resolutions from last year and assess how I’ve done.

• Better prayer and scripture study (specifically a 30 minute scripture study/prayer time first thing in the morning). Eh, not really. I did do pretty well at making at least a page a day. Mid-year, in line with our local (stake) goal, I decided to read the whole Doctrine and Covenants by the end of the year and finished it in about 3-4 months reading 2 pages a day. I only missed a couple days and I completed the goal, so that was good.
• Run a 5K. I’m kind of shocked that I actually did this (along with my sister Jaime). I liked being in shape, but apparently not enough to maintain it. I think I’ll do another 5K this year (again, I must be insane), but probably not until September at the earliest.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. I neglected this for a while mid-year, but in the fall I had some health issues come up and I had to start eating more veggies again. I wish we could eat a greater variety of vegetables . . . but we already eat almost everything we like. Maybe we’ll have to get more adventurous this year.
• Do more around the house. Yeah—no.
• Write tons a reasonable amount (specifically, finished the first draft of my latest MS at the time, get through the first drafts of two more MS and finish revisions on the two 2007 MS). Well, I finished almost all of this—I finished the first draft and revisions on the aforementioned manuscript and also drafted two more in 2009. I never did go back to the first MS from 2008; if I ever do, it will require heavy re-conceptualizing. I actually went even further than the goal—I submitted that one manuscript for publication. Also, I want to revise the resolution: three manuscripts in 365 days (nearly 250,000 words) is more than a reasonable amount for me.

And my most important resolution: I will choose happiness. That, of course, is ongoing, but something I both did well (since I focused on it), and continued to struggle with (especially with the ongoing health issue).

So several of those are things I’ll want to continue to work on this year (maybe). But most importantly, I want to work on the habit of choosing happiness—doing more to foster that attitude on a daily basis.

Resolutions are hard to keep because they’re not the same thing as goals. So this year, this is my attempt to start channeling my most important resolution(s?) into goals. (For a blast from the past, here’s my post on setting goals, specifically for your blog; I’ll have another one on my writing blog on Monday.) One of the things I need is to work on breaking down the amorphous “choose happiness” into more specific, concrete things I can do to remind myself of and strive toward that attitude.

What do you think? How can choosing happiness become a habit?

Photo by Neal (Visiting this local attraction was the fulfillment of one of his resolutions)

And now I finally know what it means.

Surprisingly, it has a lot to do with why, when I talk about how heart-rendingly difficult stay-at-home motherhood can be, people tell me I should get a job.

It’s because we don’t know how to be happy.

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

The analogy that keeps springing to my mind is one of food. I like donuts and ice cream and cake and pie . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. Food does make me happy, treats especially. I do the grocery shopping, so if I wanted to, I could stock up on these things every week and eat them every meal.

But I can’t choose cake and ice cream all the time. Yeah, I’d enjoy eating it (to a point), but I would soon get sick, gain weight, and miss out on vital nutrients. (Scurvy, anyone? Oh and PS tooth decay?)

To be happy with my body (liking how I look) and happy in my body (not feeling like crap), I have to make healthier choices. I do enjoy eating healthier foods, too, though not as much as my sugary treats.

The same goes for my day-to-day activities. I could ignore my kids all day, plunk myself down in front of the computer and them in front of the TV (where we are now, thank you), but we all end up grumpy and lazy.

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

Staying home with my children all day may not be an endless delight for me. There are diapers and housekeeping and tantrums and nap strikes. But I believe the most important contribution a person can make to the world is to raise their children right, to show them love, to give them their personal attention. I know that in twenty years, my successful marketing campaigns won’t be what warms the cockles of my heart.

By choosing to raise my children myself, I’m choosing a long, hard road—but one that leads to real, long-term happiness.

What do you think? Are you giving up treats today so you don’t vomit tomorrow?

(More thoughts on how to choose happiness as a mom here.)

Photo by Swamibu

I’ve been in a pretty negative mood lately. Rebecca is teething—and this is way harder than it was for Hayden. (Think near-constant holding, squirming, nursing and interrupted sleep just weeks after we finally got her sleeping through the night.) Hayden, meanwhile, has developed a disturbing inability to sleep at night, too, but his waking is without apparent cause. Oh, and have I mentioned how much worse three has been than two so far?

My outlook has grown steadily gloomier. I began feeling my children and my life were completely out of control, mostly because I was obviously an inadequate mother. What else could explain the constant tantrums, child-juggling (and disappointing) and general overwhelmed-ness?

By Monday, I was walking in a no-sleep-constant-screaming-from-one-of-the-three-of-us haze. I was too down to care about needing a shower or the chest-high pile of laundry spilling off the couch (at least it was clean) or dinner or grocery shopping or anything else. I didn’t care if I slept, since I figured I wouldn’t.

And then Tuesday came (AKA today). In my feed reader, I came across an article on negativity and perfectionism. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best, when we while away our days with good things but not essential things. But sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

As mothers, we don’t have to be perfect all at once. I believe that our lives on Earth are a journey, progressing towards (eventual, heavenly) perfection. God doesn’t ask us to make ourselves perfect overnight, or even all by ourselves. Even if you don’t subscribe to my church, I think everybody is trying a little harder to be a little better.

Sometimes we hold ourselves back from that progress by holding up a “perfect mother” (real or imaginary) as the standard, one that we’ll never measure up to. And because we don’t measure up, we beat ourselves up. But really, that attitude only defeats us before we’ve even begun to try. It doesn’t help anything to put myself down, so this morning, I rubbed the sleep from my bleary eyes and smiled at my (constantly) nursing baby.

Though I didn’t think about this at the time, I see now that this morning, I chose happiness.

Today wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than yesterday. And when it comes down to it, I think that general upward trend is good enough.

And yet I still feel the need to try to set goals this time of year. Sigh. Some of the goals I’m contemplating:

• Better prayer and scripture study—kind of amorphous, isn’t it? But plenty of room for improvement there. I’m aiming for a 30 minute scripture study/prayer time first thing in the morning.
• Run a 5K. There, I said it. Ack. Running a 5K is one of those things that I’ve always kind of wanted to do, even though I hate running. Go figure. I started training today. The race is March 14, if it’s the same weekend it was last year.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. Notice I am under no obligation to eat less junk .
• Do more around the house. I don’t mean chores, though I really have got to get on top of those (still recovering from a two-week vacation!). We’ve been in this house for 3 years now and haven’t done a quarter of what we wanted to do with it.
• Write tons a reasonable amount. I’m nearing completion on the first draft of my latest manuscript (don’t worry, you didn’t miss the good news—I haven’t published anything yet—I haven’t even submitted anything yet. Accursed, beautiful revisions.). I’d like to get through the first draft of two more this year—and finish those accursed, beautiful revisions on last year’s two manuscripts.

But those aren’t my most important goal this year. The ultimate goal in my life, for this blog, etc., is to be happy with my life—to be fulfilled. I’ve talked before about how “finding” fulfillment is misleading—so is finding happiness. As part of my Christmas trip, I stayed at my sister-in-law’s lovely home, and she had a painting there that said (paraphrased) “We talk about finding happiness when happiness is actually a choice.”

So, resolved, for 2009:

I will CHOOSE happiness.

How do you choose happiness? What are your goals for this year?

Back when I only had one child, the days seemed very long sometimes. For weeks, we would go on long daily walks—30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour. We explored every street east of our neighborhood and admired all the homes and gardens, but mostly I was trying to just pass the time so that we had something to do.

While it was undoubtedly good for us to get exercise out in the fresh air, I could help but feel . . . well, bored. I was raising one child, holding a reasonably big responsibility at church and working part time, but it still felt like there weren’t enough activities to fill my day. (Of course, there was still a good-sized amount of time that I felt the opposite—too much to do and not enough time to do it in!)

Now, however, I seldom find myself searching for something to do. It may be having two kids, it may be that Hayden’s older and more communicative and easier to play and interact with, it may just be that we have toys that I enjoy playing with now.

But for whatever reason, as I’ve filled my arms and my days more, I’ve spent less time angsting over finding fulfillment as a mom. I think that there’s a direct relationship there, too. After all, spending our time in enjoyable activities as part of an overall venture that we know is important sounds like the definition of fulfillment, even if we can’t see the fruits of our efforts immediately.

Or maybe I’m just not as bored.