A Happy Brain

A person may be a born optimist but it doesn’t mean they can’t still hone their funny bone.  I bought a book a few years ago “Train Your Brain to get Happy” which I found quite interesting.  Each section has a little quiz and then ideas on how to up the ante of your happiness.  I know that for people with depression or who may be a “natural born pessimist” the challenge of getting to the happy place is much greater.  The first step, like so many first steps, is simply to WANT to get there.  Then you need to BELIEVE that you can get there.  Finally you then have to do the WORK. 

 

Nothing falls into our lap when it comes to our brain power and ability to think or will our way to “whatever”.  Sure a person may be lucky in some things but achieving great thinking does not happen because you woke up as a Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein.  Even these great men had to work hard to get to greatness.  Okay, we may not be wanting to become an Einstein but don’t we all want to feel that our ideas are worthy of discussing and implementing?  I’m not talking about changing a doorknob.  I am talking about the things in our lives that can have a lasting effect on ourselves, families and friends.

 

Specifics?  I am living with “terminal” cancer.  I choose to direct my thinking past my illness and on to everyday things first (daily chores, writing, morning coffee with Mom) and then I delve into the news for a little bit (I don’t like to hang on to news too long because it is 90% negative – just to get the overview and then I will move on).  That takes me to around 10 a.m. when I start my activity mode, most of the time that will be out in the garden, watering, weeding and creating new scapes.  As I work away I will philosophize with myself, thinking over what I heard on the news, what I saw on social media, what I had read the night before or early in the morning.  Why do I do this? First of all, it comes naturally to me, always has.  But I want to pull things around, stretch it (to use Maxwell’s term) and come up with a new blog for my readers’ consumption. 

So why am I blogging?  I started this blog in 2011 and at first it was simply to challenge myself to write something rather like Oprah’s “What I Know for Sure” article in her magazine.  More recently I have felt that I would like to bring encouragement to my readers to make their lives happy, honourable and inspiring enough that they will feel that they can make a difference in the world.  Sometimes I may sound like the school marm of yore but truly I just want to say YOU CAN DO IT, whatever “it” is.

Let us then be up and doingWith a heart for any fateStill achieving, still pursuingLearn to labour and to wait

William Wordsworth