Happiness is the Best Offense

“Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.” ~ E Cubed, Pam Grout

“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” ~ Jim Rohn

“Some days are just bad days, that’s all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that’s just the way it is!” ~ Dita Von Teese

Okay, I know in the last post I wrote that I was mad and wasn’t going to take it anymore. But we don’t have the same emotions from day to day, or even minute to minute.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the years. The way through rough or dark emotions is to embrace them. That’s the only way I get through anger, sadness, or any other dark emotion, and emerge into joy. So last week I was venting. This week I’m sharing what happened when I had a little breakthrough.

It wasn’t anything spectacular. I just woke up feeling excited about the day and what I had planned to do on my creative projects. Part of my frustration of the previous post was because we were having some difficulties in communication with CreateSpace, our print-on-demand publisher. Getting my book published has been a many month process, and that’s on top of seven years of writing. So, I will be glad when the book is finally out in both print and ebook formats. After a little break, I may look into an audio version of the book, but for now, I’m concentrating on writing the sequel novel and promoting The Space Between Time.

It wasn’t just the issues with my book that were bothering me. I’ve had been feeling the turmoil about the political climate. But a friend of mine from my college theatre program, posted something on Facebook that was exactly what I was trying to achieve in my thinking. He said that he doesn’t wake up every morning thinking about all the political antics, or even all the hate, or crazy tweets posted in the night. He wakes up focused on his creative projects. He’s an independent movie maker and playwright. When I read that, I breathed a sigh of relief. It’s true, that’s what I do most of the time. I’m too busy having fun writing my novel, blog posts, and working on other creative projects, to worry about what’s going on in politics. However, every once in a while I get distracted.

For quite sometime, I’ve had this deep sense that all the spiritual teachers I’ve been reading are right. What we pay attention to expands. That’s not just a spiritual principle. It’s a scientific one as well, but I won’t bore you with all the data. That means that if I’m focused on my creativity and connecting in positive ways with my family and friends, then I’m helping hope, love and happiness expand. I certainly don’t want nastiness or hate to expand. I think my role on this planet, in this lifetime is to spread as much positive energy as I can.

I can’t say that coming to this conclusion has been easy. I’ve had to do lots of unlearning. One of the things I learned, in error, early on is that there is not enough money to go around. Another is that the world is a scary and dangerous place. Getting rid of fear and “lack” thinking has been a real challenge. However, it’s also been rewarding to dig into my thought patterns and release the ones that no longer serve any positive purpose. My life is so much happier now because I realized that what happens to me doesn’t happen from the outside. I create my experience by the way I’m thinking.

In the future there may be times when I will again vent my frustration, or anger. But it’s just my way of acknowledging that those are my feelings at the moment. I mean I have to take responsibility for ALL my emotions not just the great ones. Once I’ve vented, I can go back to concentrating on love, compassion, and joy.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment or share with a friend.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, a historical, time-travel, magical realism women’s novel. It’s available in all ebook formats at Smashwords, and will soon be available in a print-on-demand version at Amazon and other fine book sellers. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.