Treat Yourself to a Facial

A facial is quite a treat and something I am going to start doing more frequently now that I’ve honed my ideas about how to do it myself at home. 

• There are lots of over the counter masks. My current favorite is one with kaolin, avocado and oatmeal. A homemade mask of honey, oatmeal and green tea could be worth a try too…maybe with some vanilla added to give it a warm aroma. Don’t skimp on the thickness of the mask you put all over your face and neck; it should thoroughly cover the skin. Plan a shampoo afterwards so you don’t have to worry about some of the mask getting in your hair.
• Cucumber slices for the eyes always feel refreshingly cool. Alternatively - some moist tea bags (left over from the morning pot of tea) could be used for the eyes.
• The best part of the facial is the relaxing part - lay on your back with your knees elevated with pillows and a comfortable pillow under your head and neck…on a neat bed…with a light blanket…music you love playing (it was raining when I did my facial so I just listened to the rain). The time can vary. Fifteen to twenty minutes seems about right. I set a timer so I don’t have to move at all until it goes off.
• Afterwards - shower, cleaning off the mask thoroughly using a clean wash cloth.
• To tighten the pores, splash your face with cold water.
• Moisturize with your favorite commercial moisturizer or raid your kitchen. My current preference is Sweet Almond Oil with a few drops of Sweet Orange essential oil. 

At one time, I thought the best facials were at a spa but not anymore. I love taking an hour at home to get my skin feeling great without the bother of acquiescing to an environment I don’t control (and is never quite perfect for me).

See also - 10 Cosmetics from the Kitchen posted last December

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 16, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Wood ducks - duckling paratrooper video. The ducklings leave the nest high in the tree when they are about 24 hours old.

Body Hacks for a Longer Life - infographic

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #15 - birds…and more birds

A Century of Learning About the Physiological Demands of Antarctica - severe exercise, malnutrition, hypothermia, high altitude, sleep deprivation

There Are Two Kinds of “Busy.” Is Yours the Good Kind? - excerpt from “It Takes an Egg Timer” book

Bamboo, A Beautiful and Versatile Material - It can grow 1.6 feet per hour!!!!

Does This Look Infected? Medical Procedures Then and Now - electroshock therapy, bullet removal, inflammation and the common cold, pain relief

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know - from Richard Watson

Top Solar Power Countries - The US is 22nd in terms of total solar power per million people, 31st in total new solar power per million people…..seems like this could result in a challenge to our long term competitiveness in the world

Solar Panel Technology Advancements - infographic

Life History Part IV - Emotions

This is the 4th of 7 posts with prompts to develop a life history. Previous posts in this series: 

• Introduction and childhood
• Favorites
• Habits

~~~~

This fourth in the series is about emotions. Emotions are the manifestation of feelings. Sometimes they are not entirely logical - but they give our lives dimension. Questions about emotions sometimes beg for a story to provide context. Here are some questions to start exploring the emotional side of a life history. 

• What has been the happiest moment of your life to date?
• What has been the saddest moment of your life to date?
• What holidays do you celebrate?
• How religious are you - what role does religion play in your life?
• Do you attend church (regularly...occasionally...ever)?
• What do you like most about your life right now?
• What do you like the least (or dislike) about your life right now?
• If you have to leave the house in a hurry - maybe not ever to return - what would you take with you?
• What is your definition of success?
• Give a couple of examples of things you enjoy doing with someone else.
• How do I know I can trust you?
• Are you an introvert or extrovert?
• Describe the clothes you like the best.
• Describe an emotionally charged event at work.
• Describe an emotional charged event at home or with your family.
• What makes you angry and what do you do when you are angry?
• How often have you gotten angry in the past month?
• Describe a conflict that did not work out as you had hoped.
• What is your general approach to conflict?
• How emotional are you generally - are you volatile or stoic? 

Topics for the upcoming parts of the series: family and friends, the present, and the future. I’ll be posting them about once a week.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 5, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Live stream of Blue Heron nest at Cornell Ornithology Lab - There are 5 chicks…two cameras. I leave it on almost all the time. I love having bird noises in my office and they are so interesting to watch. The chicks are growing fast so don’t wait to take a look. The adult male has the extra plummage on his head (the female lost hers in a battle with an owl) and a missing toe on his right foot. They take turns on the nest.

New Saturn video created from Voyager and Cassini spacecraft images - Video and music

New Reservation System In Place For Firefly Viewing At Great Smokies June 2nd—10th - The fireflies that flash synchronously have become so popular that a ticketing system has been put in place. Good to know if you plan to see them this year.

About One Baby Born Each Hour Addicted to Opiate Drugs in U.S. - very sad

Arabic Records Allow Past Climate to Be Reconstructed - Weather in Iraq/Syria in the 816-1009 time period…a time with lots of cold waves in that area of the world

Yellowstone Super-Eruptions More Numerous Than Thought? - yes, it’s still a super volcano

The Library of Utopia - Another try to create the giant online library

10 Emerging Technologies - A list from Technology Review. It has a pull down so you can look at their list from previous years too

Is automation the handmaiden of inequality? - Productivity per hour has continued to climb while the hourly compensation flatten sometime in the 1970s. Manufacturing jobs in the US have declined precipitously since around 2000 while the manufacturing output has continued to increase (and this in spite of outsource manufacturing to other countries too!). Blog post + comments to get lots of interpretations of the data.

Breakthroughs in glass technology - and they’ll come on line in the next few years...I like the idea of having wall sized screens!

Quote of the Day - 04/01/2012

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. —Winston Churchill

~~~~~

What jumps into your mind when you read this quote?

My first thought was that this was another way of saying that the past - containing a mixture of successes and failures - is not as important as actions now…or planned for the future. Courage seems like too strong a word for what it takes to continue in a way that counts. Courage implies facing something dangerous or painful or very difficult. Does pushing toward goals to achieve the purpose of your life always require courage? Maybe. Maybe not. It also requires a lot of other attributes too....like preseverance, integrity, discipline.

Quote of the Day - 03/24/2012

A cat’s skin is a bigger envelope than is necessary to hold the flesh and bones inside it. - Muriel Beadle in The Cat: History, Biology, and Behavior

~~~~~

Cats have a grace and fluidity to them all the time and part of it might be that their skin is not stretched so tightly over ‘the flesh and bones inside’ as our skin is. Even when they contort themselves, their skin does not seem stretched. My first cat was one that had longer hair which made this observation difficult but now I have a short haired cat - and it is pretty easy to see. The cat’s skin is like a baggy coat.

Now for  a positive thought of the day about what happens to us as we grow older - think of the wrinkles and sags of aging as our skin becoming more cat-like - ‘a bigger envelope than necessary to hold the flesh and bones inside it.’ Are there other ways you want to be like a cat? I want to 

• Walk at my own speed even though someone is trying to rush me
• Be totally comfortable when I still
• Focus intently on what is happening around me (even if I am stealthy about it)
• Go to sleep easily

What is your definition of success?

Success can be packaged in so many different ways and the definition that fits for us today may change in the future. I compiled the list of definitions below to use as an icebreaker for a personal development session many years ago; each definition was printed in large font on a pieces of paper arranged on a large table. Each person was handed a glass pebble as they arrived and told to place it on the paper with the definition that matched their definition of success. I don’t remember which one got the most votes - but I do remember that it was a very effective ice breaker because people interacted with others as they made their choice and then afterward. The other part of the session was somewhat delayed in starting!

1. Work hard, but don’t put blinders on. Don’t be so driven that you lose track of what’s going on. Be open and not single-minded.
2. Happiness with self, in the belief I tried my best to reach my potential
3. Achieving your goal, never giving up, no excuses. Being the best you can be at whatever you choose.
4. The accomplishment of goals: personal and professional.
5. Happiness and making a difference in my field; helping someone else.
6. Personal goals: family and children
7. Ability to get up every morning looking forward to doing what you are doing that week and to be in a position where you are able to earn a living doing something you would do even if you weren’t paid
8. Satisfaction with achievements, feeling of fulfillment. Having fun with what you do every day.
9. Security: emotional, financial, and social.
10. Having no trouble accomplishing goals and financial security
11. Health, wealth, love and the time to enjoy it all
12. Independence to take on challenges as they arise and the ability to walk away when it is not fun anymore
13. Having the life you want and feeling terrific about it. Knowing you are doing it for yourself and not trying to keep up with anyone in society. Joy and fulfillment.
14. You have got to be happy with yourself. Achieve your goals and be comfortable with your achievements.
15. Achieving deserved recognition as leader in your chosen pursuit
16. Being in control of your life
17. Developing tomorrow’s leaders
18. Success is fun, but my family is first in my heart and although the success in mine, my life would be lonely not to share it with my family
19. To be happy with myself and be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning and every night and be able to say that you’ve done the best that you know how to do.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 17, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Visualizing the Growing E-Waste Epidemic - a graphical view of the way we dispose of computers, cell phones, televisions, monitors, printers. Maybe we should change the scenario.

NASA Scientist: Will We Leave Our Children a “Climate System Spiraling Out of Control”? - (video)

Energy stats from Germany - In 2011, 40% of their nuclear power capacity was phased out….and they still remained a net power exporter!

Recent Generations Focus more on fame, money than giving back - Data collected from the American Freshman survey over the past 40 years on 9 million young adults…unexpected results.

Lenticular Cloud - A wonderful photograph

Air Pollution Could become China’s Biggest Health Threat - lung cancer and cardiovascular illnesses already rising

How Packaged Foods Makes Girls Hyper - Why is BPA still in our food chain (the resins that line cans of food, packaging, drink containers)?

‘Invisible Wires’ for Transporting Electricity on SolarWindows - How long will it be before this technology (or something equivalent) is ready for market…and then used in virtually all new windows?

The Secret Powers of Time - A Philip Zimbardo video

WolfQuest - a 3D wildlife simulation game that challenges players to learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Quote of the Day - 03/16/2012

Illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships between people, or between people and things. - Charles Baudelaire in The Parisian Prowler: Le spleen de Paris: petits poe`mes en prose

~~~~~

The quote today is from a book about 1850s Paris…but applies far beyond that time and place…maybe it is a universal.

Our day to day assumption is that we thoroughly understand our reality but there are so many things that don’t neatly fit our understanding. The reality we understand is only our perspective and even that can change over time. There is no absolute reality. So - we need to internalize the idea from this quote - that ‘illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships’ and be resilient enough to accommodate even those dynamic illusions into our perception of reality.

Some people do this quite naturally. They are the ones we say have good ‘people sense’ or ‘people skills’ - somehow they see perspectives of others more keenly and the actions they take reflect it. Others have to make a conscious effort to seek the perspective of others. Some find it very difficult to the see another’s perspective at all.

Today - think about the relationships important to you and how you are responding to the ‘illusions’ in them.

Quote of the Day - 03/13/2012

Tea, food, and routine paperwork had a normalizing effect. - Nevada Barr in A Superior Death (An Anna Pigeon Novel)

~~~~~

Everyone develops their own approaches for making adjustments prompted by the changes in their life. Activities that tend to have a ‘normalizing effect’ tend to be ones that provide ‘something to do’ during the time we are mentally adjusting to whatever has changed; the objective is to help ourselves be as resilient as possible and sustain our healthy outlook on life. Nevada Barr’s list (‘tea, food, and routine paperwork’) are good examples. Do you have others - ones that are perhaps even unique to you? My list would include looking at botanical prints, sleeping and cleaning house.

What are some characteristics of these ‘normalizing effect’ activities? For me - they must 

• Be done alone
• Relatively quiet (i.e. I don’t find having television or radio in the background helpful...music without vocals is appealing)
• Secure
• Comfortable temperature…perhaps a little warm
• Not totally sedentary (this may mean that there needs to be a variety of activity instead of just one) 

Nevada Barr writes mysteries set in National Parks - in this case, Isle Royale National Park. 

Note: Botanicus provides digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library....one of my favorite web places. 

Quote of the Day - 02/29/2012

Everything mourns for the forgotten, For its own springtime dream - Anna Akhmatova in The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

~~~~~

We are forging into springtime (in the northern hemisphere) - the grand reawakening of all outdoors after the ‘sleep’ of winter. It’s is easy to spot something growing fresh and new…to be caught up in the wonder of the present and lean toward to make the future…warm summer fruits and bountiful harvest of fall.

In the midst of this waking dream of springtime, we sometimes have a niggling at the edges of our thoughts for things not quite remembered or maybe not known at all. This brings an overlay of nostalgia to springtime. For me ‘mourns for the forgotten’ does not exactly describe it. It is a savoring of what I do remember and recognition that there are some things I will never know. I’ll never know any details of my great-grandparents relationship or what really happened to my grandfather’s older sister that died as a teenager or my great-grandmother’s feelings about leaving behind all her family in Europe or how my great grandfather’s fiddle playing sounded.

Quote of the Day - 2/26/2012

Brilliance in youth does not guarantee worth in maturity. - Isabel Allende in Daughter of Fortune

~~~~~

Brilliance. Isn’t it strange that there would even be an assumption that ‘brilliance in youth’ would correlate to ‘worth in maturity?’ Yet - somehow our culture hones in on how ‘smart’ a child is more than any other characteristic. When positive differentiation occurs in school - it is most frequently based on criteria of brilliance. We know it is imperfect but it can reduce the complexity of the school by grouping the students into more similar groups…and then curriculum/teaching can be more finely honed to their needs. It works very well for some students…but not all.

In a perfect world, learning opportunities would be abundant and tuned to the individual rather than a group…and brilliant or not so brilliant…everyone would have the opportunity to develop a ‘worth in maturity.’

Worth. Oftentimes we associate ‘worth’ with how much we are paid or have accumulated. That is a quick way to quantify worth but is it the whole story? For some it might be…for others it is clear that their value…their worth…to their family or community is much higher than the quantification would indicate. For example - someone that cares for young children may not have a high salary but the worth of that job to the families of the children is tremendous.

In summary -

brilliance transformed into worth

is what we are after. Making the transformation is the key.

Satisfaction and Joy with Life (Quote of the Day - 2/22/2012)

Life is a little work, a little sleep, a little love and it is all over. – Mary Roberts Rhinehart

~~~~~

This quote is somewhat like ‘Life is short. Eat dessert first!’ - using the word ‘little’ and ‘short’ to point out the potential of our life being ‘all over’ relatively quickly in the scheme of things. The underlying message is to enjoy your life all along the way rather than thinking to wait for some future time.

In recent years, more and more people have attained the ability to appear ‘always working’ with the advent of mobile devices that enable work to be accomplished virtually anywhere and anytime. Farmers - or anyone that cares for animals as part of their work - have always been in this mode so there was really only a short interval in history when most people could easily distinguish between their work/not work time.

For many of us, our definition of work is evolving. Having a component of satisfaction and joy in our work is more important than ever because time boxed ‘balance’ is often not possible. In other words - work/life balance is no longer a viable strategy. Instead - a dynamic mix of activities make up our life. We can categorize a snapshot of our current activies in various ways if that helps us decide their relative value for us. Here's a quick way to do some analysis using the color coded 2x2 matrixes at the bottom of this post: 

1. Check to make sure you agree with my color coding; make adjustments as needed.
2. Make a list of activities that are taking the majority of your time. Usually the top 10 or so are the ones to focus on.
3. For each activity - look at it from all the perspectives in the 2x2 blocks below and note any that are 'non-green' 
4. Are there activities that have a lot of red? If there are - find a way to stop doing them or to change them in some way to make them more satisfying.
5. Are there activities that have a lot of yellow? Those may be activities to keep but make sure your motivation for continuing is still great enough to overcome their negative aspects.
6. For activities that are 'green' - good for you. These are keepers!

 

The Symbolism of the Spiral

Almost all primitive cultures seem to create spirals --- pecked into rock, painted on to cave walls. They appear in nature --- the fiddleheads of ferns, the snail shells. 

I’ve always liked spirals and enjoyed drawing them as doodles. They imply multiple things to me…perhaps one of the reasons I find them so attractive. 

1. Continuum of time… past - present - future
2. Perspective looking from now…is it backward (history) or forward (future)…it is good to consider both positibilities
3. Curves seem a more natural shape to life…not right angles and straight lines that humans seems to love creating. Curves are comfortable.

What does the spiral symbolize to you?

Quote of the Day - 2/14/2012

The important thing is to do something, even if it’s as simple as making a pile of pile of pebbles. For it is always the doing that leads to the becoming, and before you know it you’re on the next stage of life. - Joan Anderson in A Walk on the Beach (2004)

~~~~~

Just thinking about something is not enough even if the change you are making is mostly a mental one. While there is a concept of continuous learning - in reality, we learn in spurts. Getting to a next stage of life generally prompts a learning spurt; sometimes we experience a spurt when we discover something new and pursue it with intensity. I find it more descriptive to think about life as a series of transitions. These transitions can vary in length and importance; they can overlap. The idea is to recognize our situation (the ‘as is’) and what we want (the ‘to be’) so that we can take the actions to make it happen.

Finding a way to ‘do something’ is an accelerant to transition. Realizing this should influence how you plan ….making sure that you focus on tangible actions. In reality there are almost always multiple transitions going on concurrently at various stages of maturity; think about your plan as something that will continue as your life moves forward; some transitions will complete but others will start…it’s the nature of life.

Here are my rules of thumb for developing a personal transition (life?) plan:

• Plan a ‘something’ for every day that moves you toward a goal. It is easiest to have it be something that is part of a daily rhythm rather than a totally unique action. My current example: this blog.
• Identify a larger project that will take several months and add the time phased actions it will take to make it happen. My current example: get the interior of the house painted.
• Write it down. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I like to use a task list that includes dates and categories unless a project gets complicated enough that I need to identify relationships between the tasks (then I use something like Microsoft Project). My current example: task list in Microsoft Outlook with categories of blog, house, etc.
• Check off actions as you complete them. My current example: I look at the list every morning and, most days, mark everything complete by the evening.
• Every week/month assess how well you are moving toward your goal and make adjustments to your plan. My current example: I pretty much know how I am doing every day but I find adjustments or additions to the plan are made either weekly or monthly, depending on how quick the series of actions are.

A great periodic self-assessment is to ask yourself what you are doing differently from the way you were 3-6 months ago. The focus should be on how you have translated something you learned into how you live. It’s looking at the results of your plan from a different perspective and may help you answer the really important question - Did you move yourself toward your ‘to be’ objective?

A Surprise in Every Day

The old proverb for physical health

'an apple a day keeps the doctor away'

has a parallel saying for creative/mental health which goes

'a surprise a day makes for an interesting life.'

What I mean by that is that if your life has a few things that are unexpected you will never be bored for long.  Make an effort to notice anything that is different than you expect. It will 

• Increase your focus on the present
• Prompt associations which lead to
  • Creative bursts - sometimes extreme
  • Memories of similar situations
  • Linkages that are new to you
• Open another path into the future 

Here are a few of my recent 'surprises' - 

• I discovered that the panel below the sink in my bathroom actually opens up and there is a bin there for toothpaste and other sundries. I’ve lived in the house for over 15 years and had never used it! I promptly put some things that had been on the counter into the new found space.
• Chia seeds. I remembered the chia pets from years ago but was surprised when I read a about the seeds being edible and highly nutritious. I’m now trying a tablespoon a day for a month. The second surprise was how good they taste even just rehydrated in water. Will they work as a substitute for poppy seeds in muffins? Hmm…an experiment for another day.
• At the grocery store I noticed that there were only 2 types of people shopping at mid-morning on a Friday: the group about my age that was leisurely shopping and parents with children that had come in for a single purpose. There were several surprises in that observation:
  • Why weren’t the children in school? (I found out later that it was a day off between quarters for some schools)
  • Are there more people like me (happily and newly free of the M-F work week) than I realized?
• As I drove through the light rain this morning, I thought about how much like dusk is looked with the thick clouds and the trees in silhouette. The surprise as I scanned the scene was a hawk in the top of a tall tree. I’m happy that hawks are around in the area where I live; I enjoy having the rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks too; it’s good to have the balance. 

Have your enjoyed your moments of serendipity today?

Quote of the Day - 1/27/2012

A desert is a place without expectation. - Nadine Gordimer

~~~~~

Are we so full of expectations that we don’t notice instances in our lives when there should be none at all?

Personal Rhythms - Daily

This blog item is the first in a series about the rhythms we choose for our lives. Today the topic is daily rhythms. In upcoming weeks I’ll post items about weekly, monthly, and annual rhythms. There will be a final post for rhythms that don’t quite fit into a daily/weekly/monthly/annual cycles or the rhythm is set by a metric other than time.

~~~~~

For most people, consistent and healthy daily rhythms for sleeping and eating optimize how we feel about everything else. 

• Being asleep for about the same length of time each day and starting/stopping the sleep period at about the same time is a key to feeling rested and alert during the waking hours. Generally 7 to 8 hours of sleep is required. Try this experiment for a week:
  
  • Set a timer for a bit longer than you think you need to sleep.
  • Go to bed at the same time each evening.If you wake up before your timer goes off and after you have been in bed for at least 7 hours (you can make this shorter if you think you need less) - get up. Many people will feel warm at this time because their metabolic rate has already increased to the ‘awake’ state.
  • Otherwise - get up when the timer goes off…no snoozing.
  • Make some notes about how rested - or not - your feel during the day and make adjustments to the timer if you need to. 
  • At the end of the week, make some decisions about the optimal sleep duration for you and set your alarm clock accordingly or continue the timer technique. Many people are surprised to find that they almost always get up before the timer goes off. The benefit to waking up on your own is never being jolted awake by an alarm.
• Three meals a day work for most people but not for everyone. If you have times during the day that you feel sleepy, start keeping a record of what and when you eat; make adjustments. I am an extremely early morning person and I find a small meal (2 squares of dark chocolate and vitamins/mineral supplements) first thing in the morning followed by another small meal (a piece of fruit or small muffin) is better for me than combining everything into one breakfast. I eat lunch and dinner at about the same time each day and frequently try to have the largest meal of the day be at lunch. 

 There are hygiene related daily rhythms that are good habits. There are some examples below. Think aboutyour daily habits. If changes need to be made commit to making the change for at least 3 weeks before re-evaluating since habits take time to establish (or break). In either situation - it takes conscious effort to make the change. 

• Brushing teeth
• Showering
• Clean socks

 And there are metrics that you make check daily to provide the feedback loop for your health related goals - things like:

•  Weight
• Blood pressure
• How many steps you took 

Again - evaluate the metrics you are checking. Remember that metrics can warp your actions to make sure that warp is in a direction you intend.

Annie Dillard is right: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Rhythms that build your appreciation of the day for yourself and for others are the most important rhythms of all - intentionally look for those pleasant surprises - the serendipity - that makes life interesting. All the rest of the rhythms discussed above are the administration behind the scenes so that we are primed to live the day.

Quote of the Day - 1/16/2012

"Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." - Emerson as quoted by Louisa May Alcott in Moods.

  

Moods are an overlay to our perception of the world. The more we hold moods in check by melding everything into a homogeneous demeanor we can sustain for long periods of time, the more consistent everything becomes. This is often the ‘professional’ behavior that training and workplace metrics encourage. It comes at a cost. We are purposely looking through the same lens…that paints the world the same hue…and only shows what lies in its own focus. It can make life easier for us because we know exactly what to expect of ourselves; it can also help our relationships for the same reason.

It can also be boring and stressful.

Acknowledging a different mood, even slightly, can change the experience of an everyday situation and provide new avenues to address problems. For example, usually Andrea is in a good mood in the morning when she gets to work but one morning she arrives having spilled coffee while driving in and now she is upset, feeling that nothing has started right with the day…she is grumpy. She opens her email and there is, yet another, request for help finding a chart set from a recent review. Usually she replies to these requests with a link to the location. It takes less than 5 minutes to find the location and respond. In her grumpy mood - she realizes this same person has been asking this question pretty frequently and she starts a note with a link to the library and plans to tell the person to ‘find it themselves.’ Fortunately she realizes it will come across as abrupt and rude before she hits ‘send.’ The outcome, in the end, was positive because she wrote up a very simple procedure to find the chart sets and now sends it out when requests come in - just below the specific link to the one requested; the number of requests have gone down because the frequent requesters now understand how to easily find the chart sets themselves.

Keeping moods internal - not showing them outwardly - can be stressful. It is probably healthier than not acknowledging the mood at all since the ‘focus’ for your mood is still visible (i.e. you have not narrowed your perception by only experiencing/acknowledging one mood). Because you restrict yourself from jumping up and down with joy or clomping down the hall with tight fists in frustration, there need to be alternative escapes for the emotion of the mood. Think about what works for you. Physical activity works well for me because it serves to break the thread of activity my mood had created:

• Take 5 deep breaths. Air in through your nose…out through your mouth.
• Walk rapidly to your car…and then back.
• Roll your head clockwise 10 times, counterclockwise 10 times.

Remember - The more intense the mood, the more intense the new perception might be so seek to use the positive aspects of that perception while curbing the actions that could damage relationships.

And - enjoy your life’s “train of moods like a string of beads.”

Quote of the Day - 1/8/2012

When we were young, we thought we’d build a house

And happiness would happen in. By middle age, we’d feel

Secure, propped by old loves, certainties. All we’ve learned,

And that with luck, is to invent ourselves each day.

Nadya Aisenberg in Leaving Eden: Poems  (1995)

~~~~~

Have you reached the realization that “All we’ve learned is to invent ourselves each day?” As children we knew it and, unburdened by a lot of remembered experience, just did it. It is something we rediscover at different points in our lives; it is a positive response in times of transition or change.

Part of growing up included the invention of expectations of what would make us happy. They focused our early adult lives. Sometimes that focus was about a career or a relationship or the accumulation of things. Having enough money almost always was a component. We figured that happiness would be the result.

For me - the life expectations invented in my teen years included college, career, and marriage. The momentum carried me through my mid-20s with almost no tweaking. I was happy during that period but still believed ‘happiness would happen in’ because that was what my experience seemed to be. Then I decided to change plans for graduate school and focus more on career; it was a significant shift in thinking of life goals from academic/theoretical to business/tactical…one of those inflection points of life. Again life proceeded with that focus for years and happiness still seemed to ‘happen in.’ At some point along the line, I began to realize that my tendency toward optimism and trust made it easy for me to be happy. Happiness did not ‘happen in’ because others could view the same situation and not be happy. It was my choice to respond with happiness in the present rather than regretting something in the past or being so focused on the future to not enjoy the now.

As we truly mature we realize that happiness is not something that just happens accidently. In this case I mean something different than physical maturity. Maturity is the knowledge, and sometimes wisdom, that individuals achieve easily in their 20s or beyond while others never quite achieve. This kind of maturity is not tightly linked to an individual’s age. It can be linked to parenthood because that situation often prompts heighted caring for someone outside of ourselves (a child) and that motivates us to be better people than we were before. The key is to realize that our response to our life’s situation is what is important. Whether or not you are happy is your choice; it cannot be provided by someone else.

Happiness is the response we choose to the daily invention of our lives.