We often find what we're looking for.

I love to see what sentiments people feel strongly enough about to put on their bumpers. Sometimes I’m amazed at what you can learn about the person driving merely by reading a handful of words.

Here’s one I wouldn’t mind having on my car.

Superhero

It’s always nice to have good examples to follow.  My friend Kristin is setting one of my favorites, and I can already see the effect she’s having on people.

A couple weeks ago she gave her notice at work.  She doesn’t have another job to go to; which is proving to be hard to understand by some amazingly vocal and well-meaning folks around the office.  What Kristin has is a calling.  She now knows, beyond a doubt, what she wants.

She knows what she wants, and she trusts in her ability to arrange the circumstances in her life to accommodate the drummer (however measured or far away) she hears.

I’ve been thinking about Kristin, her certainty and the actions she’s taking as a result. She is leaping, and I absolutely believe she’s going to land on her feet.  She will be more than fine, she’ll be fabulous, because she has what most people look for all their lives and never find: a sound belief in herself and her abilities.

What better example could we have to live by?  Learn more about Kristin and how she’s leaving her job and selling her house to travel around the world at midleap.com.

If you’re willing to live from your convictions and fulfill your destiny, then what others perceive as taking chances are simply the ways you choose to elevate your life.   -Dr. Wayne W. Dyer from Excuses Begone!

Love

In the conference room of my office today I took a quick break from a group envelope stuffing project to sip a bit of my freshly-made mocha.  When the yummy caffeine concoction hit my tongue and warmth slid down my throat I moaned my love and appreciation so audibly that my coworkers stopped their stuffing to look up at me.  I just couldn’t help myself.  I was in pure rapture and sound escaped before my brain could flash the “WARNING: People will think you’re weird” light.

In an attempt at recovery I said, “Oh, I’m sorry.  I just LOVE this mocha.”

That’s when it hit me: joy IS love. Anytime I enjoy something it necessary follows that I love it; otherwise it would be merely acceptable.  I love / enjoy the sunshine, my kids smiles, a nice hot shower, (obviously) good mochas…  It also occurs to me that the things I truly enjoy / love I also feel a deep reverence for.  To me, there is something divine in sunshine, smiling children, hot showers and yes, a really good mocha.

Do you suppose that joy, love and divinity are all the same thing?

What if every time we feel that moaning-good-mocha feeling we are actually sending up little prayers of gratitude and joy?  Mantras of of love and reverence that ripple out and cause distant flowers to bloom?

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

-Henry Ward Beecher

Happiness Clusters

I always believed happiness was contagious.  Now, like so many other things I feel innately but tend to doubt without external verification; I can say I know it to be true.

We now have scientific proof that happiness spreads.  James Fowler (UCSD) and Nicholas Christakis (Harvard) recently released the results of a 20-year study showing the “dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network.”

They analyzed data collected from nearly 5,000 people over the course of 20 years and found that happiness, like health, is a collective phenomenon.

If I’m happy, a friend of mine living less than half a mile from me is 42% more likely to be happy because of it. The increased likelihood of happiness drops to 22% if that friend lives within two miles from me.  However, if you’re my next door neighbor, your increased probability of happiness is 34%.

Amazing, yes?   There’s more.  This effect, although somewhat diminished, reaches out to three degrees of separation. Increased probability of happiness for the friend of a friend is 15.3% and 9.8% for the friend of a friend of a friend. The diagrams in this post show the ripple effect of happiness.

WOW.

Examination of this same group of people shows that having an extra $5,000 increased a person’s chances of becoming happier by 2%.  But if a friend of a friend of your friend is happy, it can increase your chances of becoming happier by 9.8%.  So, someone you don’t know and have never met can have a greater influence on your spirits than thousands of dollars in your pocket.

Wow again.

Combine this with the knowledge that being happy greatly improves the likelihood of being healthy and we now have more than ample reason to make choices that support our joy.  Our happiness is not only good for us, it benefits the friend of the friend of our friend.

I don’t know about you, but that thought alone puts a smile on my face.

Welcome

Mom and I spent yesterday wandering.  Mostly on Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland.  The neighborhood there is a vibrant and fun and more than a little funky.

The neighborhood is that way, of course, because that’s how the people are who live and work there.  It’s a very welcoming place, with welcoming people.  What I love about them is that they are not afraid to show it.

They are not timid in anticipation of rejection or judgement.  They wear their welcoming on their sleeves and give you the option of taking or leaving it. They are open and confident and free of the need for the good opinion of others.

They paint their houses in any combination of colors that please them and proudly post their desires for “Peace on Earth” where ever they see fit (look closely at the window).

Strolling among such honest, endearing homes it’s easy to be swept up in the warm embrace of joy; content and grateful to find a pocket of life lived out loud.

In addition to being very intentional about experiencing joy at every opportunity, I have been working on making friends with money.  This may sound silly, but financial stress can be a serious downer and I know when I’m worried about money I’m not as likely to see or feel joy.

It seems that money is like one of those super popular kids in school–so cool and mysterious and utterly uninterested in hanging out with me.  And what I’ve been learning is that, just like the popular kids, money is just money.  If money was a person (popular or not), it would have bad hair days, get a pimple now and again, burp and fart and even have moments of insecurity and low self-esteem.

Money is just money; in and of itself it’s nothing more than paper, or even a mere idea imprinted on paper. AND, it’s a wonderful tool.  Not too dissimilar to a good hair gel or a facial astringent, money can help us get to the good stuff. 

In a fabulous book by Esther and Jerry Hicks, there’s an exercise I’m having some fun with. Every day (or almost every day) I write myself a check from The Universe in increasingly larger amounts.  Starting at $1,000, then $2,000 the next day, then $3,000 the day after that, and so on. And every day I spend every penny of it.  Just like real money, this is all on paper.  I cut out the check of the day, put it in the Bank of Abundance (which is a glass jar on my desk with a sticky note on it that says Bank of Abundance), then I log in the register all the things I’m able to bring into my life with that money, ie: take the family to Disneyland, pay off a credit card, replace the back deck, take my friends out to a champagne brunch, etc.

So far, I’ve deposited $45,000 in 9 days and I’m already seeing a shift in how I think, feel and experience money.  A few items have already made their way into my hands and I’m pretty excited about that.  I feel like I’m on the verge of discovering the secret to the Rubik’s Cube or a cure for the common cold or a way to eat chocolate every single day without gaining an ounce.

Wanna try?  Print out ISpyJoy.com’s Checks from Universe and give it a whirl. 

See you at Disneyland…

Starting over after the fire

The canyon behind my friend Ginita’s house in San Diego burned in the last round of fires there.  As we walked her dog along the trail/fire road and saw a sea of blackened brush the contrast with the new growth was more than beautiful; it was inspiring.

Amidst the charred wood a tall, dried white grass and cheerfully yellow flowers grow.  For a visual person like myself, the stark distinction is breathtaking.  And then, as air refilled my lungs, I was struck by the wonderful and unalterable way nature has of beginning again.  Every death has within it the promise of new life.

I don’t know what this canyon looked like before the fire.  Somehow I believe it couldn’t have been as striking untouched as it is now, having gone through this bit of adversity.  There are people I know with this same deep beauty; exuding a complex magnificence that only reveals itself after walking through the fire and being nourished by the ash.

When we really love something, we love it in many ways.  We love people not just for the pleasure of being around them, but also for the many different windows they open for us to peer through, for being able to see life–and ourselves–through their eyes.

Walking on the beach I look out at the ocean and see a vast universe, an incredible power, a weightless world of possibility.  Then I see this surfer, sitting, watching, thinking very different thoughts than I. 

I imagine him looking at the ocean with the admiration of a lover, trying to better understand the nature of her waves and why they move the way they do.  He is peering through a different window than I am, and I love being a witness to that.  His joy and appreciation doubles my own.  And that is one of the many wonders of being human.

Ahhhh...

Mom and I arrived in San Diego yesterday for a girl’s weekend with long-time friend and mom’s ex-business partner Ginita.  After a leisurely lunch of chicken Caesar salad and chardonnay, we headed for the beach.

The ocean breeze ran through our hair, the fresh salt air filled our lungs, and the fine sand kissed our toes with every step.  There are few things as pleasing to feet as walking barefoot on a sandy beach. 

Add to that popping the washed-up kelp bubbles like a child jumping on plastic bubble-wrap and I felt as though I was 4, rather than 40.  A fabulous day, indeed.

Cat Wisdom

I had the day off today, and because I wasn’t yet awake enough to make the 150-foot (ish) trek to the mailbox to get today’s paper, I sat down with my mocha and read yesterday’s.  After some very selective reading, I moved quickly to what may very well be the most enlightened section of the paper: the comics.

I so enjoyed the Mutts strip that I had to cut it out.  I think I’ll laminate it and tape it to my computer at work.  You know, as a reminder for when I find myself leaning toward a complaint.  Life really is all good. If we let it be.  There is a wonderful zen saying that no thing is good or bad in and of itself – it’s only our perception of it that makes it so.

A little purrrrrring goes a long way.