One Report Down... One to Go... Inner Peace is close at hand!

Blogosphere distraction/intermission in work day :)

I have to share this... My imaginary friend, Blissie Boucher (aka. blissfulgypsywoman.blogspot.com), sent me this. She is on a RL vacation right now and I am missing her so I thought this would be the best thing to share in her honor. I KNOW some of you will LOVE this advice!

CALMNESS IN OUR LIVES

I am passing this on to you because it definitely works, and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives.

By following simple advice heard on the Dr. Phil show, you too can find inner peace. Dr Phil proclaimed, "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and have never finished."

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Cabernet, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a bag of Mrs. Fields cookies, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the dulche de leche Cheesecake Factory cheesecake, the rest of a carton of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia, and a box of See's chocolate chocolate chip truffles. You have no idea how fantastic I feel right now.

Pass this on to those whom you think might be in need of inner peace.
Inner Peace Anyone? Spread the word!

The Secret of Life

So... cleaning up the clutter never gets dull. Hard to anticipate what kind of gem you'll find sifting through papers, preschool art, old math homework, and bills. Would you ever imagine I find the meaning of life? NO WONDER I have been so full of question, constantly unsatisfied and stressed!

According to the British Medical Journal, the citizens of Denmark are happier than their European counterparts, even though they rate high for the kind of factors typically affiliated with a LOW happiness rank, like bad weather, bad food, and high alcohol consumption. What's their secret? Low expectations.

So... I'm going to chew on that for a while. I have a workshop this afternoon. I work from home this morning. I'm getting my kids ready to head out of town early with my dad. I have to clean the house. Maybe I just need to shrug it off and just show up? I am not sure I know how to interpret this. I am not sure I am even wired genetically to have low expectations - but dammit - if THAT is the secret to happiness I am all for it!

One other random thought... do you think players on World of Warcraft worry as much as SL Residents about leaving the game forever? Just an early morning thing to ponder while you plan your day with low expectations. WAIT... cancel cancel... you don't plan your day if you have low expectations... DO you? I'm new to this... I need some help! LOL!

Happy Friday everyone!

Sunday Stress

When I was a teacher in the classroom, Sunday's were predictable. I would spend the day at school working on my classroom, making copies, getting things ready for the week. It was a way to work through the nervous energy that rippled through me as I psyched myself up for the trials and tribulations that a week teaching high school students brings. I loved teaching. I loved the challenge. I loved the laughs. But eventually, the stress got the better of me. It was time to try something new.

Moving into the non-profit world I found my hours increased by leaps and bounds. Hard to imagine that I could work more having come from the classroom - but it is true. 60 hour weeks and year round schedules. I think the difference is in the year round part. Being a teacher, you pace yourself like a runner. You know you have to get a certain distance over a certain time period. You take breaks for water but you plug on through. The transition from one world to the year round world required me to rethink my pace. The first few summers were hard. I always worked through the summer as a teacher at the community college but it had the highs and lows of a new job and that was an adrenaline rush in itself.

Having been at this job now almost 7 years in June, I have the pacing down. But it is the travel recovery before and after that gets me. I love to travel. I have always enjoyed the trips I take for work. Adventures in networking with new colleagues. Nothing better than traveling back East to the PBS mothership :) But, along with travel comes a hangover. Not from drinking too much, but from jet lag, from the intensity that comes with being "on" almost 16 or 18 hours a day and worrying about all the happenings at home that I should be there for. They are fine at home. I have a great home team. But it doesn't stop the worry.

I'm back now after almost a week away. 3 nights is my maximum in good conscience. 4 full days. I think that might have been when I spent all day Friday with a migraine. Stress hangover? Hard to gear up then for all the events in the days to follow. I know it may sound silly. But preschool graduation, mom's birthday, the twin's birthday, a major work event at the Zoo later in the week where I facilitate the program, and then the last day of school and organizing all the presents for teachers are enough to make me want to go back to bed and not get up until next week. All this on top of voicemails and non-urgent emails I let await me until I returned to work this week. Xanex anyone?

I'll default to my best strategy. My best strategy is to put my head down. Focus on one event at a time and not think too hard about the rest until one is accomplished. Then, on to the next. Prayer works well too. I need to turn it over instead of just lament it. Breathing always helps. Maybe a few yoga stretches. Its only 10 am on Sunday. Plenty of time for me to deploy my strategies. All those, and a few slip n slide trips with my kids in my parents' backyard should be the perfect remedy.

There is a science to all this - happiness and stress and anxiety you know. I'll leave you with this thought I found...

The answer lies in the pie chart theory of happiness. Recall that 50 percent of individual differences in happiness are governed by genes, 10 percent by life circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think?that is, our intentional activities and strategies. The secret of course lies in that 40 percent.
~ Sonja Lyubomirsky "Get Control of your Happiness"

In the meantime, I find a way to peek at those emails and check voicemail later today. A pre-emptive strike on my week ahead. Hopefully I can squeeze in some Hooing too in SL. A few deep breaths in and out... and I'm off!

In Defense of Rose-Colored Glasses

I have often been accused of being too positive, too cheery, and too pollyanna-ish. Not surprisingly, I do a hair flip and skip away when facing such criticism (insert laugh here). Seriously, I do an internal check and try to figure out what makes me decide to be happy when the reaction should be anything but.

In RL, I have one of those faces that smiles automatically. I smile when I'm sad and crying even. I even find myself laughing when I cry sometimes - yes, for those of you wondering, you can now OFFICIALLY declare me NUTS. However, since I have had children, though, I have come to realize this is a genetic trait - smiling and being nuts. My oldest son is often in trouble for smiling when he is getting redirected for torturing his younger siblings.

I did a search for cranky, bad mood, negative thinking, and anything else I could think of on Google. I read a few blogs. I tried to get in the skin of someone who chooses this outlook or at least can communicate it well on the web. I dispute my husband's bad moods enough that I simply cannot go there to get into character :) but I have to say I think we make a good yin-yang and he tempers my pollyanna-ish views.

What I found was a whole host of individuals and organizations trying to move out and away from negative thinking. People don't write about staying in bad moods, they publish how to overcome them. I suppose this speaks to the huge industry that is self-help and wellness. It is the ultimate in-search-of-a-happy-ending Hollywood factor that childrens books and movies end with.

Happines is associated most heavily with the left (i.e. logical) side of the brain, while anger is associated with the right (emotional, non-logical) side of the brain. From a Society for Neuroscience article on Bliss and the Brain:

"Furthermore, studies suggest that certain people's ability to see life through rose-colored glasses links to a heightened left-sided brain function. A scrutiny of brain activity indicates that individuals with natural positive dispositions have trumped up activity in the left prefrontal cortex compared with their more negative counterparts. "

In other words, happy people are better able to think logically.
-Creating Passionate Users blog, 4/17/2006

I would like to challenge you, if you are taking the time to read this, to consider the above passage I found in another's blog (Creating Passionate Users), and take the additional effort to follow the link and read up. Being happy makes you HEALTHY. Heck, with my whole family - all 6 of us - battling asthma, the flu, pink eye, you name it I think we are due for a little happiness or maybe a BIG happiness. For those of us in SL who choose to enjoy our pixelated freedoms, why not choose happiness there as well? SL is built around the text communication that takes place between individuals and groups. We talk talk talk talk talk. But when, does one, as a person and as an avitar decide to walk the talk? Easy to say, much, much, much harder to do.

Is a happy ending possible? Can someone REALLY wear rose-colored glasses and survive in the big bad RL and SL worlds? I say yes. If you took the time to read the link I included - I hope you read far enough down the screen to realize that happy people feel bad too, happy people experience sadness and unfortunate experiences, but happy people choose to look at those experiences and process those feelings in a different way.

Ironically, I'm coming full circle here. I ask you to look at the name of my blog (not the typo name, smartass) and think about what it means to be resilient. I have to say... another way to be pollyanna-ish... is to be resilient. It is super hard. It makes you crazy. It is not the way the rest of the world would like you to think. But hey, I never was much for trying to do what the rest of the world wanted me to do anyway.

Unanswered Prayers

At the risk of frightening those that know me, I have to quote another country song. :) Hold on people - I won't sing it for you - I'll just share a small piece of it..

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn't answer doesn't mean he don't care
Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

- Garth Brooks, Unanswered Prayers; written by Pat Alger/Larry B.Bastian/Garth Brooks

I find myself a lot of times praying for things, asking for things, and outcomes that I hope will happen, that I want to happen, that I think is for the best. It is sometimes a huge paradigm shift to step back and realize that when prayers aren't answered it is because something better is headed our way.

SL has taught me alot about myself and a lot about realizing sometimes things happen because something else is coming along. SL is not different from RL in any way when it comes to emotional capacity and introspection. Afterall, we are all the spiritual driving forces behind our pixelated avitars. It helps so much to remember we can simply turn something over, resolve within ourselves that a situation or problem is bigger than we personally know how to handle, and allow for it to be solved in time, with assistance from whatever higher power you choose to believe in. Without fail, it never disappoints.

I've been given much food for thought in SL in terms of relationships. Friends lists, group memberships, and the locations I frequent all build a sense of identity in SL. When is it right to remove yourself, when is it right to just wait, when is it right to fight for them and hang in there? I know I am a pleaser by nature. I try to make sure any and all in my life are happy - and I know that sometimes making everyone happy makes no one happy, including myself. I am also someone who likes to solve problems. There must be some way to make it work, some way, some how. With both of those viewpoints - happiness and solutions, it has been reaffirming to remind myself that sometimes I am capable of neither and I need to just turn it over and let it be resolved in a different way - a way perhaps I haven't even thought of yet.

So what the heck does this all have to do with unanswered prayers and that ridiculous country song quote I began with? If I feel lonely in SL, despite the abundance of events, avitars and constant opportunity, perhaps it is time to sit back and realize my immediate unhappiness is an unanswered prayer. It is a time to learn more about myself. Do I take a break and resolve to not log in to SL for a while? Maybe. Maybe that is where the answers will find me. Do I resolve to explore new places and meet new people and look for new opportunity until the answer comes along? Perhaps. Do I remove people and groups from my profile and cut ties? Perhaps that is the answer too. But maybe, just maybe, I sit and wait.