Tag Archive for: happiness

What Makes Me Happy

What Makes Me Happy

By Saralyn Richard

 

Nana with the cast of “Peter and Wendy”

Recently, one of my writer friends, Kathleen Kaska, featured me in her newsletter, the theme of which was: What Makes You Happy?

I had fun answering Kathleen’s questions and thought I’d share them with you.

  1. What makes you happy? children and dogs! A long-time educator, I taught pre-school through twelfth grade, and I never had a dull moment. Every time I thought I’d seen and heard everything, something else happened to surprise me. Being surrounded by children guarantees that you’ll have new ideas and be forced to find creative solutions. I’m similarly happy when I go places with my sheepdog, Nana. Prior to Covid, Nana and I visited more than 100 schools, libraries, and museums, where we read the children’s book Naughty Nana. Nana is a show-stopping celebrity, and watching her light up when she’s with people is magical.
  2. What songs, when you hear them, make you glad to be alive? I love show tunes. I can belt out the lyrics to almost any Broadway musical, and I’ve been known to dance around the family room while I’m singing. Happy, sad, romantic, or whatever, I love to pretend that I’m on stage, singing like a Tony-award winner. Two of my favorites are, “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady, and “Tonight” from West Side Story. I also love the Bee Gees tunes from Saturday Night Fever.
  3. What are your most profound beliefs? One of my beliefs is that time is our most precious commodity. I’m terrible at keeping track of time, though. I also believe in the power of girlfriends, great books, and ghosts.

Last weekend, my husband and I got to hear Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. (formerly of the Fifth Dimension) sing, and we visited with them afterwards. We saw them perform on our first date many years ago, when we were in college. We are still together, and so are they! Another reason to be happy!

 

What makes YOU happy?

 

Saralyn Richard loves being a writer and connecting with readers. Visit her website at http://saralynrichard.com and sign up for her monthly newsletter to receive fun info, surveys, contests, freebies, and more.

New Way of Thinking

New Year, New Way of Thinking

By Cathy Perkins

I’ve been thinking about New Year’s Resolutions this week. Making
them is ingrained in us, isn’t it? New year, new leaf, fresh start and all
that. This year will be different! Everything is new and shiny!
Okay, confession: I only made a couple of vague resolutions.
You know, “I’ll finish that online course I started, cough, cough, last year”
ones.
So many people swear they’re going to change, to start doing
the good for you stuff. Go to the gym. Eat healthier. And writers? This is the
year you’re finally going to finish that, fill in the blank. Novel screenplay,
memoire. You hear echoes of “work hard” and “sacrifice” and, if you really want
it…
Why do our expressions for going after what we want to
pursue—our goals, for heaven’s sake—come across as something negative? Why
do we make them about things we clearly don’t want to do?
And what happens? Here we are, barely three weeks into January
and mine are already headed for that big dump station in the sky.  
Then I stumbled across a post by Jennifer Crusie.
Jenny is a fantastic teacher. I met her several years ago
when she taught a masterclass at the beach. I think my head exploded, I learned
so much that week. So, when she says something, I tend to listen and think
about it.
Her proposal is instead of choosing tasks that you know you
aren’t going to carry through, focus on what makes you happy. Won’t that be a
better way to appreciate the good things in life? 
I’ve been thinking about happiness this week (instead of
that class I’m not listening to). What makes me happy?
I love to travel, so I took advantage of Alaska Air’s sale
and booked a few flights. And art. I’ve been playing with my kiln and fused
glass for a while, but those pencils and watercolors are calling. There’s a
shiny new book I want to write and this may be the year to screw up my courage
and tackle the book that nearly made me quit writing.
So, what about you? How are your resolutions going? Did you
make any?

Or would you rather jump on board my Happiness Train?


Image courtesy of Gross National Happiness USA organization. Find them here.




An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd.  Visit her at http://cperkinswrites.com or on Facebook 

Sign up for her new release announcement newsletter in either place.

She’s hard at work on sequel to The Body in the Beaver Pond, which was recently presented with the Claymore Award.

Happiness…The Pursuit

Happiness…The Pursuit

By Cathy Perkins

With so much meanness floating around the US right now, I found
myself falling into a funk. Rather than wallow in disgust with our elected
leaders—and unfortunately, I have to use that term in spite of too many lacking
leadership—I decided to focus on the good things in life. At the top of that
list of good things is happiness.

When you think about happiness, it’s something we all want.

Defining happiness, however, is a bit tougher.

Google says happiness is “the state of being happy.”

Gee, that was helpful.

Beyond that, the definition seems to divide into two broad
categories:

  • the immediate emotion: joy and pleasure
  • life satisfaction: an overall appreciation of
    one’s life as a whole

While I’m all for events or activities that bring joy and
pleasure, I found I was drawn to that more subjective well-being. I find joy
and pleasure in my family and my community as much as I do my personal pursuits
of writing, art, and travel. What makes me happy doesn’t necessarily make another
person happy. And given that I’ve been staring at a blank screen for two days,
trying to figure out the one scene (that I skipped) needed to finish the first
draft of my latest novel, writing is not making me happy right now.

Longer term, though, I believe happiness revolves around
your purpose in life, the successes you’ve had, the satisfaction of who you are
and what you’ve accomplished. I’m happy right now because I’m grateful for the
life I have now. This isn’t because of something I’m doing at the moment, but rather
because I work hard and have achieved things I’m proud of.

So, what about you? Do you feel life is good, meaningful and
worthwhile?

An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd.  Visit her at http://cperkinswrites.com or on Facebook 

Sign up for her new release announcement newsletter in either place.

She’s hard at work on sequel to The Body in the Beaver Pond, which was recently presented with the Claymore Award (at least after she finishes that last scene in Calling.)

Writing and the Pursuit of Happiness — T.K. Thorne


 

      Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.


Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson felt those three things of such importance,
he wrote them into the Constitution of the United States and dubbed them “unalienable
rights.”
But what do they mean? 
“Life” isn’t a hard one. I like breathing as much as the
next person. “Liberty” may be more nuanced, but we know, at the least, it means
freedom from tyranny. But the “pursuit of happiness” has always kind of
confused me.
For most of my life, the desire of my heart was to have a
horse. My poor parents had to endure the steady entreaties of my obsession,
begging that did not wait for gift-giving holidays.  If only I had thought of it, I could have
declared it was my right as a U.S. citizen to have a horse because that was the
only thing that would grant me happiness.
My sharp mother would have most certainly pointed out that
having the horse was not my right, only pursuing it, which I was doing.
Still, the questions remain. 
What is happiness and why do I have a right to pursue it and just how do
I pursue it? This is not a frivolous question. Please bear with me for a tiny
bit of history.
Thomas Jefferson was a self-declared Epicurean. Epicurus was
a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 BC and 270 BC, about 2300 years ago.  He emphasized pleasure as the highest goal of
mankind. The word today conjures up words such as hedonism, luxury, and sensual
pleasure, all with a negative judgment attached. This misinterpretation may be
laid at the feet of the early Catholic Church who declared Epicurean philosophy
a pagan challenge to the Church and, therefore, heresy.   Very bad things happened to heretics.
The original teachings of Epicurus lifted up pleasure not in
the sensual, temporary sense, but in the long-term acceptance of oneself and
one’s nature that leads to serenity and inner peace. The journey toward that
goal actually called for temperance and moderation.  The Greek word worked its way through Greek
and Latin into English as “pleasure,” but perhaps in modern terms the word “happiness”
is truer to the original meaning.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s distinguish “pleasure” and
“happiness.”  Pleasure is the temporary
chasing and fulfilling of desire. [I must have a horse, now, or I will forever
be miserable.] Happiness is a state of inner peace and balance where life is
lived for the most part in the present. [I love and appreciate horses but if I
don’t  have the Black Stallion in my
backyard, I will still be a complete and fulfilled human being.]
Go tell that to my ten-year-old self. Ha! . . .Obviously, it
takes maturity to find happiness.
Where were we? 
So happiness is something way deeper than pleasure,
something so important and basic that it is our inalienable right to seek it.
Wow.
What does this have to do with writing?
Again, bear with me for a short backing up.  One of the components of finding happiness is
the ability to live, for the most part, in the present. We humans come with a
brain that has evolved with the capacity to plan.  That is a big deal and definitely made a
difference in our ability to survive.
Planning is not necessarily limited to humans. Squirrels
hide nuts for the winter. (I always thought ants stored food too, but unless Aesop was talking
about the Messor aciculatus species,
that was just a fable.) What we don’t know is if the squirrel is aware that the
tasty nut he hides will feed him come winter or if he just acts on instinct,
but whatever.  The important thing is
that we humans are wired to plan. In ancient days, we sought a cave for when it
got dark and dangerous or rained or snowed. We smoked meet to preserve it. We
learned to grow and store crops. Now we shop at the grocery store but usually for
at least a week’s worth of food.
That’s the good side of concern and subsequent rational
planning, but there is an evil twin lurking. 
Her name is “worry” on a light day, and “anxiety” on a dark one. Our
minds can go into hyper drive about the future or the past. Angst and regret
are children of the mind’s tendency to dwell in a time that is not the present.
[How’s that for mixed metaphors? *sticking
out tongue
* It’s my blog and I can do it if I want.]
Memory can be a friend that saves us from repeating mistakes
and gives us direction for decision making. 
Or it can be a pleasant companion. It can also be a special hell on the
road away from happiness. [See above.]
The answer according to Buddha and Epicurus is to find a way
to live in the present because that is the only experience that is real, that
is truth. There are other aspects of this, but let’s stay with this one—living
in the present, also known as mindfulness. 
Step One used by Eastern seekers of happiness is meditation.  There are lots of ways to meditate, but the
primary goal is to practice bringing the wandering mind (lovingly) back to the now.
We writers are rarely in the now.  We are dreamers.  Our mind wanders as easily and naturally as
breathing.  [Sitting down to dinner and
noticing silverware while guests talk about politics of the day: How would I hide that knife in my clothing
if I were kidnapped—though I put up a brave fight and a breathtaking chase on
my black stallion—and a prisoner in the castle of an evil man who wanted to
marry me against my will?
]
The present?  Very
funny. Impossible.
Writers spent a great deal of our lives dreaming and
“living” with characters and situations in made-up worlds, so engrossed that
the real world, the present, and the passage of time are completely unnoticed.  [Really. 
Ask my husband.] We are not in the here-and-now. You can’t get more
“elsewhere.”
That makes us failures at Step One, right?
Not so fast. 
Meditation is not an end of itself.  It’s a tool. We exercise and eat well in order to have a healthy body that can
do the things we want to do—walk, run, swim, not be in pain.  Unless you are a monk, meditating all day is
not the goal. The goal is happiness. 
Mindfulness is a state of attention that is conducive to the path or way
of being happy.
Wait.  Did you catch
that?  Directing our thoughts to what we’re engaged in. 
A potter absorbed in the feel of wet clay shaping in his
hands is living in the present. An
artist focused on the task of mixing the perfect color is likewise living in
the present. A child at play. A reader absorbed in a story. A parent intent on helping his child hold a bat. An athlete in the zone. A fruebd truly listening.
The purpose of meditation is to exercise our focus, so that
we can bring our full attention to the moment–to a scene of beauty, a moment of
sorrow . . . a task.
When I am writing, lost in the creating or the shaping of what
I have created, I am happy. I am not “aware” of my happiness. I just am. I am
not judging, not thinking about or worrying about the future or the past. I
just am.  It’s my inalienable right.

A retired police captain, T.K. has written two award-winning historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold backstories of extraordinary, yet unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of the world’s most famous sagas. The New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’ behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. Coming soon: HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre. 

She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat vying for her lap. More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.

The Different Meanings of Success

by Susan McBride

I had originally written a post about rejection that was set to go up today. But with all the disasters in the news of late, I decided that topic seemed too depressing! So I wanted to talk about something more positive, like how we define success. It’s very subjective, I know, and means different things to different people. So I’ll meander on about how the idea of “being successful” has changed for me through the years, and I’d love to hear what it means to you.

When I was growing up and moving about with my family, we always settled into a fixer-upper in an upper middle class neighborhood (my mom tried valiantly to place us in the best public school district available), where we’d rub shoulders with folks who often had a lot more than we did, materially anyway. I got a lot of insight into what it took to try to keep up with the Joneses, and for a time–probably through high school–I bought into the notion that having things with pricey labels proved to the outside world that you’d achieved something in life. Don’t get me wrong: I also realized being smart, making good grades, and having responsibility was important. But having a Polo man on your pocket (and your socks, too) seemed like a popular way of letting people know you were worthy.

By my freshman year in college, after being around plenty of sorority girls, frat boys, and debutantes whose behavior made me question if money = worth after all, I understood it was a bunch of hooey. Even without a trust fund, anyone with a credit card could buy expensive cars and clothes. Although it made for a prettier facade, it didn’t mean anything, not really. Some folks may define success as having more $$$–or at least borrowing more!–and showing it off, but I didn’t want my adulthood to be all about accumulating stuff. I wanted to write books, and I knew I wasn’t going to get rich off that (not anytime soon!). With that decision made, my idea of success changed. On the everyday front, it meant having a job that would allow me to write as much as possible and pay for postage to send off queries and manuscripts with SASEs. Being successful meant doing what I loved and being happy, regardless of how much (or how little) stuff I accumulated.

My goal initially was to be published by a traditional press–whether small or big, I didn’t care–and I did that eventually. At 34, I won a small press contest where the grand prize was publication. When AND THEN SHE WAS GONE came out, I was thrilled. And so was everyone who’d ever known me who realized how hard I’d worked for over a decade to reach that point. I sold something like 150 books at my first-ever signing, and, holy cow, I felt like a million bucks! Then I signed with an agent, got a deal with a big NY publisher, and my idea of success shifted again. Sure, I wanted to hit the New York Times list as much as anyone (seriously, what writer doesn’t?), but that wasn’t a deciding factor in whether or not my career was successful. I dreamed of being able to support myself writing, and by age 40, I was doing that as well.

I remember saying to a friend back then, “You know, I have everything I could possibly want. I’m passionate about what I do, I can’t wait to wake up every morning, I love my friends, I have a cozy condo, my car is paid off, what else could there be? I’m about as happy as they come!” I didn’t have a lot, but I had all I needed. That seemed like the penultimate success to me. And then I met Ed, and I realized, “Ah, this is like the cherry atop the icing atop a really amazing cake!”

Ed is someone who also appreciates simple things over material things. His definition of success is much like mine: being able to do what you love for a living and sharing your life with someone who understands and appreciates you. He reminds me everyday of what’s important, and I feel beyond fortunate to have him in my life.

When I was worrying about THE COUGAR CLUB and how it would do, since it was my debut in women’s fiction, and wondering if I would get another contract for more women’s fic books and what I would do if that didn’t happen (well, with the economy the way it is, money is tight and publishers are being extra-careful). I thought about it and I thought some more, and I finally said to Ed, “No matter what happens, I will always write. No one can stop me from doing that, ever. And I will always have you. With those two things in my life, how could I not feel successful?” Yeah, that sounds terribly corny, but it made me feel so much better and less frantic to realize it.

Which reminds me of a gift-type book I wrote eons ago that one of my sister’s long-gone artist boyfriends was going to illustrate. It was called YOU’RE NEVER A FAILURE IF YOUR SOCKS MATCH, and it listed a whole bunch of really simple things that make everyone “worthy:” You’re never a failure if your dog loves you, your cat loves you, you love yourself…and so on. I wish I could find that danged manuscript. It’s somewhere in a folder in a box in the basement. If I ever unearth it, I’ll share it in a post. But the gist of the book was that being happy with who you are, wherever you are in your life = success. Truly.

So what makes you feel successful in your everyday life? Is it seeing the smile on your child’s face? Watching the bulbs you planted last fall grow into gorgeous flowers? Is it volunteering? Completing a project at work? Inquiring minds want to know!

Little Things Mean A Lot

by Susan McBride

I find myself avoiding the evening news these days. I mostly tune in just to see the weather and hear any updates on off-season Blues hockey (hey, they just got a really good defenseman from Sweden who’s about 19 and cute as a button!). I’m not even very keen on reading online news. It’s like everywhere I look something awful’s happening: economies are collapsing, wars are going on, a military coup’s taken place, another celebrity has passed away, or a fat-cat financier’s going to jail (okay, that last one isn’t depressing at all really).

If anything good comes out of our own country’s current mess, I hope it’s people taking a look at their lives and realizing that little things mean a lot. I remember being in high school when Ralph Lauren was taking off, and we all begged our parents for anything with a tiny Polo man on it. “Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko declared, and everyone bought it. Pretty soon, too many folks were living on credit, buying houses, cars, electronics, and other bling they couldn’t afford. Right out of college, my sister had five major credit cards all charged to their limits. Meanwhile, post-university, I paid for everything in cash and had a heckuva time getting a Visa until I’d established a credit history. Then again, maybe that was a good thing as I don’t rely on credit cards much now.

Don’t get me wrong. I like nice things as much as the next gal. But once I was living off my own earnings, it was amazing how much I realized I could do without. What I couldn’t pay for with cash, I didn’t need. My grandfather had lived by that credo, and I see how right he was. I feel fortunate to have married a man who doesn’t need a lot of “stuff” to be happy.

Unfortunately, these days everything that’s affordable seems to be made in China. I’m sure tons of folks like me would rather buy “Made in the USA,” only it’s hard to find. Honestly, I’ve had enough T-shirts that fall apart at the seams after one wearing to be willing to pay more for something that’s domestically produced by skillful adults, not by children in sweat shops. Wouldn’t it be lovely if more companies returned from overseas and got the manufacturing biz humming in this country again?

As kids, we didn’t care about labels or impressing anyone with status symbols. The simplest things were the most fun, like catching fireflies on a warm summer night; running through the sprinkler in our bathing suits; finding clover and weaving it into a necklace; baking cookies in grandma’s kitchen. I’m not sure when the “gotta have it” syndrome sets in or what causes it. Too bad there’s not a vaccine to inoculate us against it.

I still think the best things in life are free, like taking walks in the park, chillin’ on the porch swing, going to art festivals, holding hands with your honey, or singing your lungs out to Def Leppard. Oh, and how cool is the sound of thunder and rain from a good old-fashioned summer storm (but not the kind that spawns tornadoes or knocks down power lines!)?

I’d like to hear some of the simple things in your lives that you love to do. And, whatever they are, I hope you get to do them plenty over this extended holiday weekend. Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

P.S. Speaking of fun free things: The Book Belles are giving away a tote bag full of signed books. Contest ends July 15 so there’s still time!