Get to know who you are and what you want!
“Embrace your uniqueness. Time is much too short to be living someone else’s life.” ~ Kobi Yamada Perfect moments are when you are truly present in the moment, when nothing is missing and nothing could be added to make the moment better. You feel bliss. It is selfless; you don’t need to do or be anything different. You feel slightly removed, non-attached, you just witness it.
The purposes of this following exercise is to really identify those times when you are the most happy and blissful and to be aware of how your body feels when you are happy! Try this activity:
Can you think of a perfect moment? A moment when time stopped and all was blissful? Write it down and then close your eyes again and remember the way your body felt when you were in this moment.
When you have at least 5 happy and peaceful moments – open your eyes. And look over your list. When reviewing your list, see if there is any relationship between them.
Let’s extract some more happy, feel good information from your life. Ask yourself the following questions and record your reaction in your journal.
- What makes me feel good? What fills me up?
- When am I the most energetic?
- When am I happiest?
- How are my relationships and daily experiences affected when I am happy?
Record any insights that you have and write down anything else that you can think of that makes you happy. Often after completing the exercise, people find that they have experienced “more happy moments than I had thought!” Delicious meals, special moments with children or animals, the thrill of overcoming a challenge –are all things that people begin to add to their happy lists.
I remember one woman at a retreat I co-facilitated sharing her joy about taking a bubbling apple crisp out of the oven and how the sweet smell spread through the kitchen as she lifted the first portion onto her plate. She oozed joy when she shared this memory! We all agreed that these simple experiences are within our reach and experienced every day.
How do you feel so far? Record these ideas or insights in your journal. Next open up your daytimer and consider how you can incorporate some of these happy items into your schedule over the next day, week, month and year.
When you begin to collect items for your happy list, try not to eliminate items because they occurred on your wedding day or the day your child was born or the day you hit your first homerun, these special events cannot be recreated. If you can, try to extract the feeling of what was happening in that special moment, remember it isn’t the event you are looking to recreate but the feeling you felt being with the people at the event. Maybe it is time to call and rekindle some friendships or simply just connect with a loved one. Or maybe picking up a favourite activity again, it can be as simple as that!
Commit to creating happy moments in your life by deliberately setting an intention and making an appointment with yourself to do it! Your daytimer may have entries for going to the gym, going to an art class, booking a girls weekend, calling your old best friend from school, planning and working in your garden or cooking your favourite recipe, or volunteering etc.
Aligning your behaviour with your ideal life happens one choice at a time, one moment at a time. Getting in touch with what feels good in the present moment helps motivate us to make healthy choices each day.
Knowing what makes us happy helps us gain clarity and choose more of these happy activities to add into our routines. So review your “Happy List” regularly and choose more activities to add to your day that are on this list!
By recognizing the positive effects of making mindful choices, we become motivated to choose happiness and to feel good! And choosing happiness and feeling good are behaviours that are aligned with our ideal life! Great work!
Enjoy!
