Browsing Tag

happyologist

A gob(ble) of grateful

It’s not happy moments that make us grateful,

but gratefulness that makes happy moments.

A search for “grateful” in my blog posts reveals that word appears 53 times, and that doesn’t include the word “gratitude,” which appears 118 times. So, here’s my GRATEFUL recap……

My goal for this project [of posting a daily Happy Day Moment of Facebook] was to make myself focus on some “moment” during each day where I could be positive, thankful, and “happy” that I was alive. To slow down. Just for a bit. And be grateful.

I’ve learned what being grateful can do, embracing each day. Life can be hard. I know.  But every day that I choose to look for the happy, the good, the blessing, the love, the joy – shifts my heart and my head into a better place. A place of gratitude.

Look for those moments. Listen for them. Wait for them. Be grateful for them.

What started as a simple essay I was asked to write morphed into a Facebook project and is now a website. The idea of choosing to be grateful, to find a “moment” even in the worst day, that was happy, that was thankful.

Because there is always a moment, no matter how small, no matter how dark the day, that is worthy of being grateful.

Because when you’re grateful, you increase your happiness by 25%!

You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to be grateful when you make a daily effort to think about good and not bad; praises and not pain; kindness and not meanness; acceptance and not rejection.

A grateful mindset can help you navigate life’s turbulence.

Grateful people are happy.

Taking in the good and being grateful is not about always putting a happy shiny face on everything, nor is it about turning away from the hard things in life. It’s about nourishing gratitude, your inner well-being, contentment, and peace—refuges to which you can always return.

So I’m all about thankfulness and gratefulness and saluting the goodness of each day.

We can choose to be thankful and grateful, understanding the fragility of life that makes every moment so meaningful. We often waste too many moments immersing ourselves in needless distractions that steal our attention away from the things that actually matter. We should grasp the precious moments of this life and stop being distracted with the things that don’t really matter.

Grateful eyes can see grace and goodness, even in complicated and thorny packages.

Catalog the kindnesses of each day. Look at what you have. You have much to be grateful for.

As I’m intentionally learning that “Living with Gratitude” changes everything, changes the way I think.

Changes the way I see things. Changes me. It’s not that I’ve never been grateful before.  But I seemed to focus my thanks when it was easy. Now I’m learning to give thanks, to live EVERY day with a sense of gratitude. Even when my heart has those hard white cold days.

David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, wrote, “The root of joy is gratefulness … It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” And the Bible tells us to be grateful “in all circumstances.”

Be joyful. Be grateful. Always.

That’s one reason why I post “Happy Day Moments” daily on my Facebook page (and on my personal Facebook page) – to live intentionally with a grateful heart, to plant words and messages of love, hope, confidence, faith and encouragement.

Every day that you wake up healthy, be grateful.

Living with gratitude, discovering a Happy Moment takes practice, believe me. But you can learn to be happy (even for a bit a fleck a jiffy of a time) each day by simply being grateful.

We all get to decide how happy we want to be. Because everyone gets to decide how grateful they are willing to be.

One of the lessons I learned in any hard sad dark season is that it’s important to stop and breathe deeply and look around me and choose to embrace a beautiful life, a grateful life, a happy life, whatever that might look like in any season of my life.

Look out the window. Just look for 30 seconds. Look and really see. Then pause and be grateful for the looking.

Right now is the best time for loving and for being grateful.

There is always, under the mess of life, something to be grateful for.

It’s easy to be cynical; it’s brave to be grateful.

Being grateful is the shortest and surest way to being happy.

Spend intentional time being grateful and you will ground yourself in God’s love.

My first real step towards becoming a “happyologist” came as a teenager when I dove into that swimming pool on that summer day and broke my neck and became a quadriplegic. There was a choice before me: become bitter or become better. {Read more of the story here.} Will I focus on what I lost? Or will I focus on what I can gain? Focus on who I was? Or who I can become? Could I still be grateful, even in the midst of this life-altering circumstance?

I decided to live with gratefulness. I chose happy.

We decide what to look for and what we see. We decide our focus.  It’s about learning, studying the ways of contentment and appreciation.  As a happyologist, I know that by slowing down, by looking differently, I choose to focus on the light, the positive, and all the reasons I have to be eternally grateful.

Start to see the good, the happy, even in the small.  Actively search for those moments, develop a posture of looking for and of finding happy. Cultivate this vision: seeing those moments, and being grateful for the happy day moments.

Be patience when you have little; be grateful when you have more than enough.

I want to understand that every day love makes a difference. That life is a gift. That love is a gift. That each day I awake and breathe is a gift.

It’s the only gift that I have right now. And my only appropriate response is gratefulness.

When we view our situation through the lens of gratefulness, instead of a self-centered mind-set, we have the potential to be happy in spite of circumstances.

You’ll have a hard time ever being happy if you aren’t grateful for what you already have.

Focusing on finding a “happy/grateful” moment in each day has made me powerful and positive and able to conquer disappointment and pain and innumerable hard places.

Some days we wake up with body aches and heart aches and life is bleak and the truth is we’re tired and we know we just may carry sadness all day long. And then. We shift our focus, we look above, we refocus and we become grateful for love and for a God who can take our aches and replace them with joy, who can be light in darkness, a compass for direction ….even in the midst of storms and difficult places.

That season of minimal color, stark branches, when the world feels forsaken, will become a season of blossoms.

And I will be grateful.

For every season holds something of value. The buried seed blooms.

Essential to living a life with joy, confidence, faith, and hope is remembering to be grateful.

By understanding that every moment of every day in every life does not have to be happy.

Only ONE moment does. ONE glimpse. ONE second. ONE breath.

And choosing to find it. Choosing to hold onto it. Choosing to claim it to redeem any hard messy heartbreaking sorrowful day. It’s our choice. Being grateful. For life.

Happy Day Moment Echoes: 1.15

Living with gratitude will change your perspective.

In January 2013 I began the Happy Day Moment Facebook Page, so every day for two years I have posted some words of encouragement, inspiration, motivation, hope  … a fragment of comfort, cheer, charity, wisdom…… #happydaymoment

And since I’ve deemed myself the Happyologist-of-the-internet, I’m going to always cheerlead the idea that we can choose to live with gratitude, that we can choose to be happy, no matter where we are in our journey, no matter what chapter of our story.

Gratitude is a life-changer. It does something to the human heart.

Even when I close my eyes at night and the day spills over my soul like a dark stain. Even when my heart is parchment. Even when the space between where I am and where I desire to be is a vast valley, and way too dry.

Even when……

So I breathe. I pray. I anchor myself to gratitude. I gather my words and share them with you.

Most of all, let love be our guide.

Surrender the vain idea that you can please everyone. It can’t be done.

When external circumstances whip you around and threaten your joy, God’s love for you still abides.

When we care deeply for others, we will live along side them by bearing some of their pain and agony.

The commitment to love, forgive, and motivate others results in enriched and joyous relationships.

When there is a deep schism with those you loved, keep believing for harmony and understanding.

Let’s not just say we love each other, but let’s show it by our actions. Let’s do good to others.

Be gracious when you’re right. Be even more gracious when you’re wrong.

Think about apologizing – not as a matter of right or wrong – but simply to start over.

You don’t need anyone else’s permission to be happy.

Every day gives us a new story. A new beginning.

View your work as a chance to help others and to change the world. No matter what your work is.

Be more intentional about lifting up others rather than criticizing.

Be that friend who nourishes the goodness in others.

Pursue connection and friendship, and happiness will happen.

When you assess your present circumstances, work to paint a vision of a breakthrough for all the obstacles you’re facing.

When some situations appear impossible, there are still miracles.

Today look for opportunities to bless others and let your actions speaker louder than your words.

Clear your vision to see the everyday evidence of beauty and goodness despite your feelings of weariness.

Don’t be too sensitive about inconsequential matters.

It’s threatening territory to allow the opinions of others to continuously shape you.

Let the symphony of your life be unceasing gratitude.

Don’t beat yourself up for a lack of willpower, but give yourself compassion and you can bounce back from failure.

Don’t live for tomorrow. Live for today.

It’s wiser to pray about your problems than to talk about them.

What if we all became more mindful that every moment, every breath, that absolutely everything can become a gift from God?

Lift your need for control, your need to have all the answers, and drop those things into God’s hands.

Your Turn

Thanks for reading, and as always, I would love to hear from you. Post your comments below!

What I’m reading:

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

II Thessalonians

What I’m watching:

Parenthood on Netflix

photo by:

Becoming a Happyologist

hap·py·ol·o·gist

ˈhapē/ˈäləjə̇st/

Happyologist

This is what I’m becoming: a happyologist. A person who studies a subject – HAPPY, and who has knowledge of a certain topic – HAPPY. A person who understands that living with gratitude (even in hard places) shifts the heart and the head into a better place—of love, of joy, of grace.

Who doesn’t want to be happy?  Who doesn’t want to become a happyologist?

That would be. All. Of. Us.

And here’s the rub: it’s in our power to be happy. Because it’s our choice, no matter what our circumstances, no matter where we are in our journey, no matter what chapter of our story.

My first real step towards becoming a happyologist came as a teenager when I dove into that swimming pool on that summer day and broke my neck and became a quadriplegic. There was a choice before me: become bitter or become better. {Read more of the story here.} Will I focus on what I lost? Or will I focus on what I can gain? Focus on who I was? Or who I can become? Could I still be grateful, even in the midst of this life-altering circumstance?

I decided to live with gratitude. I chose happy.

Then, and now all these years later, through shocks and surprises and sudden storms that have often shaken and knocked me off balance, as a happyologist-in-the-making, I believe that there is always something happy or good in every day.  The key is to notice these things and celebrate them.  It’s training our hearts and minds to see the good.  Positivity is a choice.  Studying each day and seeing a happy moment of our lives, and our relationships, depends on the quality of our thoughts.  It’s understanding when we cannot change a situation, yet knowing we can change how we think about it.

And the first step to becoming a happyologist is learning we CAN celebrate – the lessons, the laughs, and the love that each day brings. We CAN live with gratitude.

A matter of perspective, a choice.

We decide what to look for and what we see. We decide our focus.  It’s about learning, studying the ways of contentment and appreciation.  As a happyologist, I know that by slowing down, by looking differently, I choose to focus on the light, the positive, and all the reasons I have to be eternally grateful.

Without gratitude, we lose fulfillment, joy, happiness, and a sense of meaning.  In constantly rushing from task to task, our focus can quickly shift from all that we have to do, how tired we are, how under-appreciated.  We focus on frustrations, storm clouds, the negative. We become anxious, tired, irritable, frustrated.

The thing about November …. and December …. and every single day …. is that we have the choice to be thankful, to live with gratitude, to work at becoming a happyologist.

The thing about November is that it can be a reminder that there are things we still want that we do not have, or that the year has held more heartache than we expected. Yet, we can choose to be thankful.

Finding a happy day moment in every day isn’t about complacency, it’s about accepting the full truth of the present moment. It’s about focusing our minds on the positive aspects of a situation, and then reaping the benefits of doing so.

Finding a happy day moment even in very difficult days involves acceptance of (and even surrender to) things that we didn’t choose and perhaps didn’t want. But instead of pointing to all the ways the day is hard or wrong or bad, or focusing on all that we’d like to change, we can transform that dark day by also acknowledging that it can contain a happy moment, even if it’s a teeny tiny second of gratitude.

Lets be happy

Seeing this fuller picture–accepting both the good and the bad of any day–is a solid tactic for becoming a happyologist, for feeling happier and more fulfilled. Gratitude, love, hope, optimism, compassion, awe — these emotions all make us healthier, happier, and more satisfied with our lives.

And turn us into – HAPPYOLOGISTS!

It is our CHOICES that show what we truly are. You know this is true.

Happy kitty