Feel Good Blogging Challenge #5: My 7 Days to Happiness Challenge

I recently came across the quote: If you want to feel rich, then count all things you have that money can't buy. I not so recently attempted a 100 days of happiness challenge. I was in a bit of a funk and thought this would be a helpful habit to try. I ended up pulling out of the funk and getting to wrapped up in doing so to finish the original challenge. So here's my advice to each of you: cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Be grateful not just for things. A sage German gentleman I love once asked, "Have we not reason to be filled with gratitude, regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves?" He continued, "In fact, most of the scriptural references do not speak of gratitude for things but rather suggest an overall spirit or attitude of gratitude."

Monday, June 23rd. Day #1: Watching Victoria love and read to Baby Valerie (Savage.)

Tuesday, June 24th. Day #2: I love helping me friends and they in turn help me. On her way out of town my friend Marie Pack stopped by with a delicious, homemade cake. Gluten-free blueberry coffee cake with pecan streusel topping. (I ate about 1/3 of it in a single sitting with no regrets.)
 
Thursday, June 26th. Day #3: Gardening and cooking with Victoria (Learning to love green beans may be easier than I thought.)

Friday, June 27th. Day #4: Garden-fresh and fully ripe raspberries. And beautiful purple wild flowers delivered by a thoughtful husband. Also, seeing fireflies for the first time (with Greg and Victoria) at the YSA branch BBQ was priceless and exciting.

Saturday, June 26th. Day #5: Getting to spend most of the day as a family was a wonderful treat! Also, I thoroughly enjoyed Cherry Ruggieri's baby shower and wish her well in her last 7 weeks of pregnancy. I should have taken a photo of the hat I crocheted for her, but oh well.

Sunday, June 27th. Day #6: Today was everything a Sunday should be. We went to church and were filled then spent time bonding as a family.

Monday, June 28th. Day #7: The miracle that is thunder and lightening. Such startling splendor and majestic beauty.

Feel good Blogging Challenge #3: A tutorial?

I thought of doing a hair tutorial at first. I know there are plenty online but I find strange pride in being creative with my hair, especially when it was longer. I love braids and am quite good at them, but that's not the sort of tutorial you'll find here. I want to teach a different sort of life skill: finding joy amid the stress.

You know the part in "Monsters Inc." where Sully is desperately trying to entertain Boo? Between him and Mike and the little girl, there's a lot of emotion and not all of it is positive or cooperative. They may be coming from different points of view, yet they all face the same problem. I think many of us face a variety of situations with similar challenges: how do we calm ourselves and those around us quickly and effectively? In my occasional moments of brilliance when I have had adequate rest and nutrition and no excess stress, I've discovered a way to handle these situations. In my experience it works best with children. I interact more with them than I do with adults these days. Let me know if my secret solution works on adults too.

The secret is this: smile, sing, then dance. Being an opera singer with a degree in music education, I have a lot of training to draw upon, but it isn't necessary to make this work.

1. Simply take a deep, quiet breath to in and out. Now let a big smile gradually grow on your face. People will wonder why you are smiling. It's kind of fun.
2. Now start to hum. It can be an original tune or one everyone knows like "The Hokey Pokey."
3. (Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood does a great job of this next step.) Be thinking of ways to sum up both sides of the problem in an effort to address the solution. Maybe the solution is obvious to you maybe not.
4. Now, add words and movement. You can do anything from mimicking the people around you in caricature of their point of view to a more canonized approach like doing the macarena! Your lyrics can be totally non-sequitur or they might help people see themselves as you're seeing them.
5. The goal is to be a breath of fresh air and make others smile too. Maybe laugh. Then you can come back to the problem a bit refreshed and hopefully having converted some of your negative energy to positive energy which can be used far more productively.

Please enjoy this example of how I blew off steam when my kitchen helper was, well, less than helpful. She still remembers it a year later.