Joy is a Choice

11 November 2010, 11:11 am by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Life

When talking about communication skills, the point is often made about the power of “I” statements over “you” statements. Such statements do not put the other person on the defensive. They are not attacking statements. But they are also statements about owning your thoughts and feelings. If you can say “I feel this way” rather than “you made me feel this way” you are realizing that you have control over your feelings, you own them. And if you own them and control them, then you can choose them. And if that’s the case, I want to choose joy.

It isn’t always as easy as that. Sometimes situations happen that make that choice very hard. Sometimes making that choice also involves making the choice to get professional and medical help. I think that is a very brave choice.

I am a person who does better with to-do lists. So when I stumbled across the idea of a joy list a while back, I thought it was brilliant. I could choose to do things each day and each week that would help me have joy in my life. The idea of choosing to be joyful in my life reminded me of President Hinckley’s Be’s. So I pulled his book, Way to Be, off my shelf and read it. And then I sat down to decide what I would do to make more joy in my life.

I came up with some things I need to be doing each day. I need to be on my knees in prayer and in the scriptures each day. I need to eat healthy each day. I need to laugh and get outside.

Some things I want to do regularly, but not necessarily each day, like running, writing my thoughts, and reading. So I decided I would do each of those at least three times a week.

And other things I knew I wanted to make time for, but if they didn’t happen each week that was okay. So I made a list of things that I wanted to pull from at least ten times a week. I want to appreciate nature. Have you seen the sunsets here? I want to make more time for bubble baths. I want to write in my journal more regularly and I want to write more letters to family and friends. I want to take photos and create with my hands and make music.

Some days it is much easier to find the joy in my life than others. I have yet to have a week where I cross off my joy list perfectly. But I’m choosing to keep working at it.

Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you; it is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life.
President Harold B. Lee

2 Shared thoughts

I believe

10 November 2010, 9:56 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Exercise, Family, Gospel, Happy Things

I believe in sleeping in, sunsets, and bubble baths.

I believe in runner’s highs.

I believe in the power of words and laughter.

I believe in homemade bread, hugs, and fuzzy socks.

I believe in the power to create that is in each of us.

I believe in eternal progress and constant learning.

I believe in family, love, mom and dad, husband and wife, man and woman.

I believe in the beauty of this world.

I believe God knows and loves me.

What do you believe?

3 Shared thoughts

House Cleaner

9 November 2010, 9:01 am by Giggles
Categories: Life, Work

For three years I worked as a house cleaner for a friend of mine. (I even showed up dressed as a house elf once, much to everyone’s delight.) Once a week I would clean the floors, counters and bathrooms of their house, including the dusting. It was a four bedroom, 2.5 bath house. And I could get it done in 3 hours. I didn’t do the dishes, general straightening, or laundry. But that was still a lot. I often find myself reminding myself of that whenever I look at the house and get overwhelmed and start to think that it will take forever to clean it. Because I know it won’t.

I’m not a scrub-it-every-day type of person, but I do like things to be relatively clean. Although I’m looking at the random scraps of paper covering my desk right now and realizing I probably need to do something about it. I’ve really enjoyed my schedule the past year though because I’ve had at least the part of two days each week (this semester it’s two full days) where I’m home and Brett is at work and I can do some cleaning. And then when he gets home he always compliments me on it and tells me how good it looks and how hard I worked. That works out very well for me. But I don’t spend the entire day cleaning those days either.

When I’m cleaning I try to do the kitchens and bathrooms on the same days. They both require basically the same cleaning stuff. There are counters and sinks in both and the floors are solid and are cleaned the same way. Vacuuming and dusting I can do on another day. And then we do laundry on Saturday because otherwise it throws off Brett’s schedule. Dishes are done whenever we notice there are enough for a load, and they are most often done by Brett because I told him long ago that I hated doing the dishes and would clean everything else if he’d take care of those. And I love that he does.

And there it is. Our house that’s clean enough because people actually live here so it will never be perfectly clean and that’s just fine.

Now, since today is Tuesday, I should probably go clean the counters and sinks.

1 Shared thought

Grow up already!

8 November 2010, 8:49 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Life, Questions

Clear back the end of August I read an article in the New York Times Journal. I thought it was interesting because Brett and I had just been talking about the issue. Then in the first of September I had to read it for one of my classes. And I still found it interesting, especially after some of the comments made in class. The article: What is it about 20-somethings? And that is a very good question. Because really, what is going on with the vast majority of them? I just don’t get it.

The author tries to make the argument that we need to define a new developmental stage in life. He says that “young adult” is a completely different thing from being actual adults. In fact he terms it “emerging adulthood.” They don’t have the responsibilities yet of adults and aren’t making big life decisions yet, so obviously they need to be treated differently and given the chance to explore.

My opinion – it’s a load of crap. It’s not a developmental stage, it’s not a psychological phenomenon. It’s a societal one. Society today has made it possible for people to push back becoming full functioning adults until well past the time to do so. It’s even been legally mandated now that people don’t have to grow up till the late 20’s; the new health care bill allows them to wait till they are 26 before they have to think about that. I was naming beneficiaries for my life insurance policy at the age of 23.

A life of privilege has made young adults feel that there are not entry level jobs worthy of the lifestyle they think they should have, lifestyles that match the one they had with their parents. That privilege  is allowing someone else (generally parents) to continue to make the big life decisions for their children long past the age when they should have stopped. Helicopter parents still exist in college, but at least at that point I can tell them that legally I can’t tell them anything, no matter how angry they get. If they were to let their children sink a little, they’d learn to swim, their brains would adapt to make their own life decisions fast enough.

The author talks about “the age 30 deadline” when the stakes start to rise as people approach the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments are made. Was this deadline not the early 20s a generation ago? Just because society has pushed that deadline back ten years does not mean that we need a new ten year long developmental stage.

One reason I see for this delay in growing up is the loss of ritual and ceremony in our society, in our culture. Many cultures have rituals to formally welcome individuals into the community as full adults. Our society has lost these distinctions. We have no marker to say “today you are a man.” High school graduation used to work for that, but it doesn’t seem to be doing it any more.

We need to not just let these “lost souls” be adults, but we need to make them. We need to stop enabling their behavior. Mark them as adults and then treat them as such. They’ll figure it out sooner that way. Generations before them sure did.

2 Shared thoughts

7×8=56

7 November 2010, 3:09 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Gospel, Life

When I was learning the multiplication facts, the 8s gave me problems, but the 7s seemed impossible. My least favorite fact was 7×8. It was a combination of my two worst sets and I could never remember it directly. My mom taught me that 7×7 was the “San Fancisco 49ers” and that 8×8 was “I want to hold your siiiiiixty-four” (The Beatles song “I want to hold your hand” was released in 1964. That is the only Beatles fact I know.) Those two facts gave me guide posts that I could build the rest of what I needed to know on. To figure out 7×8 I would remember that 7×7 was 49 and then add 7 more or 8×8 was 64 and then subtract 8. Another tough one, 6×7, was 7×7=49-7=42.

Life sometimes feels almost as hard as learning those darn 7s. But there are several guide posts I have that I can compare to and build on. Some of my guide posts are faith, hope, charity, integrity, prayer and family. When I compare the world to those I can see what I need to do next and where I need to go. The more secure my guide posts, the more I can hang what I know and do on them. And those guide posts are pretty secure. Knowing those guide posts means I don’t have to know everything. I don’t need to have the answer to every question that comes up in life. But when something happens that I need help with, I can go back to the basics, back to what I know, back to my guide posts, and from that secure place I can figure out where to go next.

3 Shared thoughts

First, find a rock

6 November 2010, 7:54 am by Giggles
Categories: Life, Random

At the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum they have a display tucked away in a corner about how they make the fake rocks for their displays and enclosures. They show what each of the steps are to get to a finished fiberglass rock that looks just like the real thing.

The first step is: Find a Rock.

Yup. If you are going to make a fake rock, you first have to find a real rock. Only then can you make your molds and casts and figure out how to paint the fake rock. Almost seems too simple to mention. And it certainly made us laugh when we saw it. But I think there’s some real wisdom to that first step.

Often it is the first step that we get hung up on when we are trying to get something done. We think it needs to be some grand gesture or something real complicated. But often it is the smallest steps that make the biggest difference, that get the momentum going. Those complicated grand gestures are generally more for the later steps. For example, the first step in problem solving is to identify the problem. Before you solve a problem you need to know what it is you are trying to solve. Sometimes that can be difficult, but it’s even more difficult to try to solve a problem you don’t know exists yet.

So think about your life, your goals, where you want to be, and what you want to do. And then, first, find a rock.

4 Shared thoughts

Elevator or stairs?

5 November 2010, 11:40 am by Giggles
Categories: Random, Science & Tech, Work

My office is on the sixth floor. I have class on the fifth. And I teach on the second and third, all in the same building. This is why graduate students can’t give directions on campuses. There are two elevators for the building, and depending on what floor you are on, five stairways (two only go from the second to the fourth, one goes from the first to the fifth, one from the first to the eighth, and one from the second to the eighth). I’ll often take the stairs down, and I take them when I’m just going from one floor to another. But when I need to go all the way from the second (ground floor) to my office, I often take the elevator. The stairs aren’t climate controlled and they get very hot 10 months out of the year.

One of the elevators is a very nice elevator. You get on. It’s a smooth ride. It takes you where you want to go. It’s a regular old normal elevator.

The other elevator likes to mess with your mind. It goes fast. It jerks and bounces when it gets to your floor. I’ve waited more than five minutes for it before. And there have been several times where I wished I’d had my phone on me because I was sure it was going to get stuck.

One time I got on at the sixth floor to go down. The elevator went up to the seventh floor and someone got on. Then it went down to the fifth floor and someone got on. Then it went down to the second floor, which was where I wanted to get off, but it didn’t open the doors. Instead it paused, and then went back up to the third and opened the doors there. Another person on the elevator decided that was too scary and got out to take the stairs down to the second. I figured I’d try my luck and it did go back down to the second after that and opened the doors.

This past week when I’ve been going down it goes down one floor, bounces, and then continues down to the floor I want. And when I’m going up it goes up one floor, bounces, and then keeps going up.

I’m starting to wonder if they haven’t rigged that elevator to be scary on purpose to encourage us to take the stairs more. After all, there are signs next to the elevators about the health benefits of taking the stairs. Although it could be that the elevator is wearing off on me. Wednesday I took the stairs up to my office and found myself at the seventh floor and had to go back down to the sixth.

If I’m ever stuck in an elevator, you know where I am.

9 Shared thoughts