DRIVE YOURSELF HAPPY NEWSLETTER 10/27/08

Welcome to this week’s DRIVE YOURSELF HAPPY
Road Ramblings.

Life may be simple, but it’s not always easy. If
you find value in these gentle reminders and
rules for the road, please invite your friends to
sign up for my free newsletter by visiting
www.driveyourselfhappy.com. Also, please visit my
blog site, www.centerofhappiness.com. Your
perspective is a valuable one, and we can learn
from one another how to create a happy life
worth living.

I’d like to welcome all of our new subscribers to
the DRIVE YOURSELF HAPPY Road Ramblings
newsletter and acknowledge you for taking the
first step toward living a better life.

Today’s rambling from the road will include:

~ Joy Generating Tips
~ Smell the Roses
~ Visit the Center of Happiness
~ More About Happiness
~ Drive By Quotes

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Joy Generating Tips
by Rhonda Hull, Ph.D.
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Dear Happy Traveling Companions,

With the continuing avalanche of economic concerns, the political twisting of the truth that leads us up to the US election, and with the resulting pressures in our personal and professional lives, how can one possibly feel happy?

Feeling happy is an important ingredient. Make it up if you have to!

Crazy, you might say?

Well, to a great degree the choice to feel happy is influenced by where you place your focus. If you believe that you cannot feel happy until all of the world’s problems are solved, your focus is in the wrong place, causing the continuous waves of self-generated worry and overwhelm.

Granted, to feel happy is a simple choice but not always an easy one. Still, the benefits of this leap of faith are profound. Actually, they are essential.

We need not accept the troubling circumstances that surround us, but it is in the choice to focus on and feel happy about all the things that ARE wonderful that brings an elevation of joyful feelings. It is this that shifts the energy of how we perceive everything else. The circumstances need not change for us to feel happy, although it is more likely that they will when we extinguish them with joy.

By easing your grip on our circumstances and expanding our willingness to defy fear and choose to focus on feelings of joy we get to feel good and are better able to access the creativity and intuitive inner guidance we need right now to maneuver turbulent times with grace.

How does it make sense to stew in our worries and hook up an I.V. drip of doom and gloom TV and news when being happy feels good, makes you healthier, keeps away wrinkles, allows you to access your ’smarts’, and makes you more successful?

Choosing to generate happiness, even if it is by remembering a time you used to be happy, and then relishing that feeling in your body. Send that feeling from head to toe. You may doubt the value of this, but it is far more practical than you think. The feeling precedes the experience. So, it makes far more sense to start with feeling joy, even if the only place you can find it is in the cracks of life.

We think that in being successful we will become happy, when in fact it is when we are happy that we more often experience true success. So, if what you say you want is to be happy and successful, why would you choose anything else. Remember, what we focus on expands, so it is wise to make a conscious choice to defy fear and generate joy.

A few joy generating tips:

1. Remember a time you were happy. Feel it throughout your body and spirit. Talk about it.

2. Practice gratitude and generosity, remember all you are grateful for, wallow in your positive emotions, share something meaningful, and say ‘thank you’ more often.

3. Make a game of looking for the silver lining in each dark cloud and keep your focus there.

4. Don’t hang on too tight to your expectations and let go of things you do not need (especially your negative thinking). Willingly share the wealth you do have with others.

5. Get ample sleep, eat well, act consciously, spend time with friends, take time to play, and monitor your conversations taking the focus off the ‘dramas’ of life so you can replenish your energy.

6. Become creative and have fun finding ways to expand the joy of an experience while minimizing the expense.

7. Take a vacation from the TV and radio for a few days.

8. Allow yourself to love yourself as much as you love others.

9. Forgive quickly.

10. Repeat over and over.

Have a wonderful, joyful week.

In Joy,

Rhonda

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Smell the Roses
– Author Unknown
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I had a very special teacher in high school many years ago
whose husband unexpectedly died of a heart attack. About a
week after his death, she shared some of her insight with a
classroom of students. As the late afternoon sunlight came
streaming in through the classroom windows and the class was
nearly over, she moved a few things aside on the edge of her
desk and sat down there.

With a gentle look of reflection on her face, she paused and
said, ‘Before class is over, I would like to share with all
of you a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I
feel is very important. Each of us is put here on earth to
learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves…and
none of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It
can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps this is God’s way of
telling us that we must make the most out of every single
day.’

Her eyes beginning to water, she went on, ‘So I would like
you all to make me a promise… from now on, on your way to
school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to
notice. It doesn’t have to be something you see — it could
be a scent — perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of
someone’s house, or it could be the sound of the breeze
slightly rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the
morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to
the ground. Please, look for these things, and cherish them.
For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are
the ’stuff’ of life. The little things we are put here on
earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted. We must
make it important to notice them, for at any time… it can
all be taken away.’

The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books
and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I
noticed more things on my way home from school than I had
that whole semester. Every once in a while, I think of that
teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of
us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that
sometimes we all overlook.

Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour
today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off
on the way home tonight to get a double-dip ice cream cone.
For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we
often regret, but the things we didn’t do.
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MORE ABOUT HAPPINESS
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http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Healing-Power-Ordinary-Things/dp/0307209903/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221418676&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Soul-America-Reclaiming-Spiritual/dp/B000C4SYXO/ref=pd_sim_b_2

http://www.healthywealthynwise.com/article.aspx?author=Karol%20Avalon&title=The%20Alchemy%20of%20Gratitude&Article=5536

http://www.lifewithhappiness.com/

http://www.thetruthforgirls.com/2008/10/16/seven-gateways-to-happiness-for-girls-how-do-we-help-our-girls-walk-through-the-gateways-to-happinss/

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DRIVE-BY QUOTES TO CARRY WITH YOU
ON THE JOURNEY
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“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.?”
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

?”The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. What tiny attitude adjustment might turn your world around??”
– Oprah

“Divine chaos is a course corrector, a way of bringing down the systems
that distraction built in order that they can be replaced with systems or
structures designed with conscious thought.”
– Caroline Myss, “In Times Like These,” http://tinyurl.com/4g3swz

“When the forms of an old culture are dying,
the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.”
– Rudolf Bahro

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result
of getting something we don’t have, but rather of
recognizing and appreciating what we do have”
— Frederick Keonig

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