Tag: happiness

Categories
Fulfillment

How to choose happiness

rebecca smilingChoosing 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.

I think we need to redefine what constitutes “happy.” It is not the “constant giddy with delight” that society would have us believe.
—Liz C, in a comment at Segullah

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

Categories
Faith Fulfillment

Negativity kills

They say that one of the most important things you need in a survival situation is PMA: a positive mental attitude. A self-defeating outlook is, well, self-defeating. If you don’t think you can build a shelter, it’ll only make it harder to build a shelter. On the other hand, if you believe you can build a shelter, even if you don’t really know how, at least you’re not adding more obstacles to your path. Blueprint. Whatever.

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.

Categories
Fulfillment

Writing Resolutions

January is everyone’s favorite time for setting new goals, right? I actually really don’t like making New Year’s Resolutions (come on, you know you don’t either)—because I hate setting myself up to fail, and if there were a statistic on the number of resolutions broken it would be astounding, I’m sure.

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?

Categories
Fulfillment

Filling my days

In case by some insane stretch of the imagination you’ve forgotten, it’s election day; please vote!

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.