Do you ever feel like a failure? Or that you haven't quite measured up to your own expectations? If your answer to either of these questions is "yes" then you and I are already kindred spirits. If your answer to both questions is "no", read on to find out how the rest of us live...
So, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks. Partly, that was becasue I was away on vacation in beautiful Virginia, but it's also because my May theme was remarkably disappointing. May was the month when I was planning to focus on fitness. The weather was a bit too cool, rainy and windy most days, but did I replace that with any indoors fitness activities? Absolutely - I rode our exercise bike - TWICE! You can imagine how toned and energetic that made me!
Everytime someone asked me how my happiness quest was coming along, I deftly (I hope) changed the subject. I was really feeling a little discouraged about the whole thing and then I remembered four of the most important things that I have already learned:
1) In his lovely email to me, Jonathan Haidt (author of The Happiness Hypothesis) suggested that it is easy to make short term change, but to achieve lasting change requires constant attention and deliberate effort.
2) My happiness is rooted in caring for others and my other monthly themes were mostly about doing things with others - this fitness idea failed partly because it was too isolating.
3) Sonja Lyubomirsky (author of The How of Happiness) made a brilliant point when she recommends focusing on the 3-4 areas of greatest strength and growing those areas, rather than focusing on an area of weakness and getting ensnarled in negativity. Every day that I didn't do some even minimal fitness activity felt like a failure - by the end of the month, I was more discouraged than I should have been.
4) I love to be challenged, to experience that "flow" that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discusses. There was simply no "flow" in my complete lack of fitness.
My June theme is to get really, really caught up on my reading list and to get back to the amazing flow that I had with my happiness quest until about the middle of May. I have added 2 new books to the list and am looking forward to digging into them:
- Uncommon Gratitude, Joan Chittister & Rowan Williams
- Why Loyalty Matters, Timothy Keiningham & Lerzan Aksoy
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