stop and be happy
I've spent much of this week focusing on courses: the upcoming Path Finder session (so looking forward to it!), as well as revisiting Lime Retreats, the in-person retreat that I'd like to host for attorneys later this year (and am diligently working on the agenda). Since both of these projects are focused on finding and cultivating superpowers (in a more general way in Path Finder, a more focused, managing-your-legal-career way for Lime), I've been doing a ton of research this week on expressing your gifts, finding moments of joy and just generally discovering the meaning of life.
You know, simple stuff.
Anyway, as part of my roving all over the web, I came across this post by my friend Maggie Mason, on happiness vs. meaning. She quoted Victor Frankl, who said, "happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue." I do love this, and in many ways, I believe it to be spot-on.
And so, because at my core, I'm an engineer: I started drafting flowcharts in my journal, trying to break down the formula for how to pursue your gifts, and how happiness would therefore ensue, and my diagrams got incredibly convoluted, and different tracks were labeled in different colours, and I used terms like "inversely proportional," for God's sake ...
(You're feeling sorry for my husband right now, aren't you?)
... anyway, through all of these shenanigans, I started to get a bit agitated that I wasn't able to distill the pursuit of happiness down to a single, simple formula. But then, I stumbled on the following quote:
Click here to get a free 5"x7" .pdf download of the image above (use it for your inspiration board, your vision board, your journal, or whatever personal use you'd like).
Well.
I guess that's just it, isn't it? Sometimes, we get all caught up in the meditation practices, and the exercise routines, and the "simplifying your life quickly" schemes, and the "how to record your life" scrapbooking guides, and ... and ... and.
Sometimes we're so busy trying to get happy, or we're so focused on what's not perfect yet, we forget to notice the really good.
I love it when the Universe hits you upside the head, don't you?
Song: Jolene, as performed by Miley Cyrus. To be clear: I am not generally a Miley Cyrus fan. However, this cover that she does of the Dolly Parton classic is nothing short of breathtaking, and when I heard it, my first thought was, "Good Lord, girl, you've been pursuing bubble gum pop forever, but it turns out you were a classical country singer all along. You were making it way more complicated than it needed to be."
And then I looked at my happiness flow-charts.
Physician, heal thyself.
(Fun fact: Dolly Parton is Miley Cyrus' godmother.)
(Related: I'm a little stunned I know that fun fact.)