Happiness
How can a person who doesn’t know how to be happy teach someone how to be happy?
— Byron Katie, Loving What Is, p. 142
Category: Joy
10 Posts
The Multiplying Effect of Gratitude
Gratitude brings more to be grateful about. It increases your abundant life. Lack of gratitude, or complaining, brings little to rejoice about. Complainers always find that they have little good in their life, or they do not enjoy what they do have.
— Louise L. Hay, Gratitude: A Way of Life, p. 3
The Dance Floor
The problem with always having to be in control is that you have to stay at the control panel. You can’t leave to get out on the dance floor.
— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 82
Brokenness
Something bad happens. I hurt. I feel unhappy. I long to feel good. I ask God for help. I am resolved to feel better. I do whatever I can to make at least a few dreams come true. That is the way of the flesh.
Something bad happens. I hurt. I feel unhappy. I long to feel good. But I trust God. His pleasure matters more than mine. But His pleasure includes mine. I believe that. So I abandon myself to His pleasure. I live to please Him. I work hard and live responsibly and strive to put balance in my life because that pleases Him. Making Him feel good is a higher priority than making me feel good. And somehow, inevitably, at some point, I discover joy. That is the way of the Spirit.
I shift from walking in the way of the flesh to walking in the way of the Spirit when the pain of life destroys my confidence in my ability to make life work and when it exposes as intolerable, insubordinate arrogance my demand to feel good. That is the experience of brokenness. It is then that the chain falls off my leg and the heavy ball rolls away. It is then that I fly.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 153-154
Age with Joy
The responsibilities of a mature life often force us to focus on things that are immediately in front of us, and in that sense, “settling down” can be a good thing. But such focus doesn’t have to translate into a constricted state of mind. No one can age well who lets go of their sense of wonder. You might find yourself thinking things like, Oh, that museum. Been there, done that. But if you make the visit anyway, you’ll realize that what you saw at the museum in your younger years was only a fraction of what your eyes can see now….
All of us have seen people who’ve aged with sorrow; we’ve seen others as well who’ve aged with joy. It’s time to intend to age with joy, deciding that the joy of youth is a good kind of joy, but it’s not the only kind. In fact, there is a joy in knowing that after all these years, we’ve finally grown up.
— Marianne Williamson, The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife, p. 4-5
All-Round Benefits
When we commit ourselves to writing for some part of each day we are happier, more enlightened, alive, light hearted and generous to everyone else. Even our health improves.
Brenda Ueland, quoted in Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper, by Sark, p. 50
Good Things Coming
Do not worry about how the good that has been planned for you will come.
It will come.
Do not worry, obsess, think you have to control it, go out hunting for it, or tangle your mind trying to figure out how and when it will find you.
It will find you.
Surrender to your Higher Power each day. Trust your Higher Power. Then, stay peaceful. Trust and listen to yourself. That is how the good you want will come to you.
Your healing. Your joy. Your relationships. Your solutions. That job. That desired change. That opportunity. It will come to you — naturally, with ease, and in a host of ways.
That answer will come. The direction will come. The money. The idea. The energy. The creativity. The path will open itself to you. Trust that, for it has already been planned.
It is futile, a waste and drain of energy, to worry about how it will come. It is already there. You have it already. It is in place. You just cannot see it!
You will be brought to it, or it will be brought to you.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 368
Why Write?
We also write to know that we are not “the only ones” thinking and feeling what we do. We discover and interpret the world, and perhaps live life more richly and rarely — because of the writing.
I write and share stories to experience life more than once. In the writing and telling of my stories, others read, listen and respond to me and my words.
Most of all, I write because of the joy it creates. Writing creates connections and magic and certain kinds of permanent bliss. I can write myself in and out of moods and experiences, and create new places to live in my mind. It’s kind of like pole vaulting with a pen.
— Sark, Juicy Pens and Thirsty Paper, p. 27
Haunted by Goodness
It strikes us that to hope in the kind of goodness that would set our heart free, we must be willing to allow our desire to remain haunted. This side of the Fall, true goodness comes by surprise, the old writings tell us, enthralling us for a moment in heaven’s time. They warn us it cannot be held. Something inside knows they are right, that if we could do so, we would set up temples to worship it and the Sacred Romance would become prostitution. We understand that we must allow our desire to haunt us like Indian summer, where the last lavish banquet of golds and yellows and reds stirs our deepest joy and sadness, even as they promise us they will return in the fragrance of spring.
— Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 140
Angry or Joyful
Starting arguments, blaming others, or internalizing anger is not the way to go through life. Treat the problem knowing that you will get through it, and you will be a better person because of it. Remember, you can spend your life being angry or joyful. You control only one thing: your thoughts. So find the serenity within yourself. Or as my wife says, “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” Keep your sense of humor, express your feelings, and recognize your power, and you will spend more time at peace than at war.
— Bernie Siegal, M.D., Love, Magic & Mudpies, p. 186