This post is part of a multi-day series on fostering happiness in your life.
Taking Care of Ourselves – Our Mind

One critical aspect of happiness is taking good care of our minds and bodies. We can’t be truly happy if we’re not respecting and nurturing our essential selves.

We, among all the species on earth, have brilliant minds. How do we use them? What do we do with the overwhelming amount of information that we have? How do we use it well in our personal lives? How do we use it to teach and nurture our children? Are we using the media only for entertainment and not for information? There is so much entertainment! It’s important that we, and our children, don’t drown in it.

“Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.”

– Jim Rohn

We need to stay informed. We are among the most blessed people on earth to live in a democracy where we are not governed by ruthless dictators, where our lives and the lives of our children are not in constant danger. Do we contribute to our democracy? Are we civic citizens? Do we help to keep our schools, our communities, our government, our leaders, accountable? Do we pay attention to the issues of the day? Do we pay attention to our environment and the small, besieged planet we live on?

As humans, we “love, learn and leave a legacy”. What is your legacy? Are you focusing beyond yourself? Helping others or working for a cause is one of the actions that contributes to a satisfying life. Volunteering and giving back to the community are a huge way to make sure that you are thinking outside just your life and issues. Bramble Berry donates a portion of our profits and I donate my time serving on various non-profit boards to give back and also recognize that there is a greater purpose and calling in life than just my small world sphere.

Another action is the time-honored ritual of “gratitude”. Gratitude represents an attitude toward life in general. Over many centuries, gratitude has been recognized as a way to elevate the human spirit. Keep a Gratitude Journal and every day write down the things you are grateful for. Or before you go to sleep at night, think of the things you are grateful for.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, founder of the non-profit agency http://www.gratefulness.org/, says “Gratefulness is the key to a happy life… because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.”

Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of the wonderful book, Simple Abundance, tells us: “Your life will not blossom and flourish without gratitude. With gratitude, we discover we are much richer than we think…. You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life.”

Things you can do to increase your contentment and happiness quotient:

Keep a gratitude journal
Volunteer
Turn off the TV
Read a non-fiction book
Take a class
Learn another language

Have a question about this blog post? Come join us at Bramble Berry’s Facebook page and we can help you out with any of your soapy questions!

Time: Our Precious Resource

Busy-ness seems to be a plague of our current society. Despite modern conveniences and technology, once thought to be the key to a more leisurely lifestyle, time seems to be in shorter and shorter supply and we think we have to keep moving faster (I know I certainly do!). People (myself included) seem to boast about being busy, as if having 112 e-mails to answer, or only getting six hours of sleep, was a sign of success.

If Barack Obama can try to focus on one simple thing at a time, so can we. Time is a precious resource and we need to reflect on how we use it. Do we manage our time wisely? There are many time management models, but over the years, I’ve always loved Stephen Covey’s model of time management, described in his books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First.

He talks about the difference between “urgent” and “important”. We respond to urgent matters all day long and keep up an urgent time schedule, and are driven by urgency, but we don’t do the things that are important – that are, in fact, vital to our happiness.

According to Covey, the important things that we typically don’t allow ourselves time to do include: improving our communication with the people in our lives, taking better care of ourselves, personal development and personal empowerment, seizing new opportunities, and better planning and organizing.

For example, when we don’t focus on our communication – with spouse, children, family, friends, fellow workers, etc. – there’s a string of negative consequences – and there’s a BIG, if sometimes not immediately obvious, effect on happiness.

Like chemical abuse, says Covey, urgency is an addiction. It’s like taking a painkiller and then using it in excess. Then what happens is that we don’t make choices and decisions; urgency makes those choices and decisions for us.

Which means we need to get off the urgency treadmill. We need to think carefully about what is truly important that we’re not doing and who is truly important that we’re not spending time with. Shandel Slaten from True Life Coaching has a great call-in class (Life 101) that can help you identify what your values are and what is truly important to you. We have to say “no” to urgency and “yes” to the vital, meaningful, life-giving things that make us truly happy.

And there may be other things we may need to say “no” to besides urgency. Our time is a precious and limited resource. “No” is an important part of our vocabulary, and essential for self-care. Jack Canfield in The Success Principles recomends a “Just Say No” list. I have one of those lists and while it doesn’t make everything all perfect and easy for me to whittle down my to-do list, it certainly helps.

We have the slow food movement; now we need the slow time movement. What slows time for you? Some people meditate or join meditation groups to slow themselves down and cultivate awareness. Some people do yoga. Some people walk in the forest or by the ocean to get back in touch with the rhythm of the universe.

Trying to add “slow time” to my life, I’ve started yoga and meditation time in my morning routine for the past six months. I get up 15 minutes earlier and do a quick set of 5 “Sun Salutations” (don’t know what a sun salutation is? Click here for a quick YouTube video explanation) and then focus on my goals for the year ending with an easy daily meditation reading. This morning time seems to help me focus on my day and reviewing why I do what I do before the day really starts. It is a great motivator and reminder (“Oh yeah, I practice Chinese daily because eventually, I want Bramble Berry to do something over there.”)

Whatever you do to add more quality time in your day, feel good knowing that quality time pursuing activities that mirror your life values increases the level of happiness you feel on a daily basis.

Have a question about this blog post? Come join us at Bramble Berry’s Facebook page and we can help you out with any of your soapy questions!

Many of you recently developed a vision for your business. But do you have a vision for your life? Jack Canfield in The Success Principles (my #1 favorite business book) calls this a “Life Purpose”. What are you moving toward? When you close your eyes and picture yourself and your life five or ten years from now, what does it look like?

Someone once said: “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get your there.”

Vision is a powerful, motivating force. It’s our true north; it gives meaning to our life. If we’re clear on our vision, we can make wise choices on how to spend our time and energy, our most precious resources. We can organize our life so we keep moving toward our vision. There’s a joy in knowing that we have a direction and a larger purpose.

Are there dreams that you’re dreaming but not enacting? Sometimes we park our passions on a shelf, or in a closet, or on a mountaintop where they’re lofty and inaccessible. But we need to bring them down to earth. What do we really hunger for? What are you truly longing?

If we take the time to create our vision, it means that we’re honoring our aspirations, that we haven’t hidden our dreams away and that we aspire to realize our full potential.

If you don’t think you have a dream, if you don’t think you feel passionate about anything, think of the concept of “flow”. When are you absolutely engaged? When does time stand still for you? When do you find you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing and you never want it to end? Is it when you’re painting, when you’re out in the wilderness, when you’re teaching someone to read, when you’re at a protest rally, when you’re organizing your office? What makes you feel a sense of deep happiness, like you’ve come home to yourself?

My huge passion in life was (is) soap. I was fascinated with soap. If I ever went into a store, I immediately made a beeline for the soap. All I saw was soap! So, I’ve become a professional and full time soapmaker. My entire life revolves around soap – talking about it, making it, talking to people about it, encouraging others to make it. Looking back, it wasn’t an easy path for me; there were obstacles along the way, but I had a vision and didn’t let it go.

If you followed the goal-setting exercises in January, you’ll have a Vision for your business that can be easily tweaked to fit your personal life goals. If you’ve done a Vision Board, you’ve also got a great head start on this. If you don’t have your personal vision written, there are a few ways to go about it. One is talked about by Jack Canfield in his book “The Success Principles.” It goes like this:

1. List two of your unique personal qualities, such as enthusiasm and creativity.

2. List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others, such as to support and to inspire

3. Assume the world is perfect right now. What does this world look like? How is everyone interacting with everyone else? What does it feel like? Write your answer as a statement, in the present tense, describing the ultimate condition, the perfect world as you see it and feel it. Example: Everyone is freely expressing their own unique talents. Everyone loves their jobs. Everyone feels joy daily.

4. Combine the three prior subdivisions of this paragraph into a single statement. Example: My purpose is to use my creativity and enthusiasm to support and inspire others to freely express their talents in a harmonious and loving way. Or: If the world was perfect, everyone would love what they did for a job and feel joy every day. From this feeling of satisfaction, a deep well of peace would spread throughout the nation and the world.

So, a vision statement for me might be: I use my forward-thinking positivity and drive to teach and education everyone to how they can find joy every day.

If you don’t already have one, make a vision statement for your life. Everything will flow from your bigger picture that you create with this vision statement.

Have a question about this blog post? Come join us at Bramble Berry’s Facebook page and we can help you out with any of your soapy questions!