Feel-good Friday #13
Because happiness is a choice: 3 ideas every week to help bring the joy in all the messiness and upheaval of life.
Hello, and happy Friday —
I have been reading a lot this week, but in a slightly distracted, fractured way; I have started or dipped into about five different books, and read a couple of chapters of each, before moving on to the next. Seeking what, I am not sure, but I can’t seem to get past 50 or so pages, and then I get an itch to read something else. A novel, non-fiction, self-help books — you name it, I’ve read a bit of it this week.
My mind can’t seem to settle, and I feel a bit like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, but with books (‘but she was still hungry!’). I feel this almost insatiable need to read a lot, discover more, and to keep my books around me, and yet my reading is very disjointed. I have — no exaggeration — 29 books stacked in piles next to my bed. Like little friends, each waiting for me to spend time with them, waiting to share their insights before turning out the light each night. I think I am searching for wisdom, for the answer (to what? life?), or perhaps it’s just a reflection of my current distracted state of mind... am I seeking words to help soothe my racing brain?
I have one book in this week’s Feel-good Friday newsletter — see below for more. Each Friday I recommend three ideas to inspire, comfort, console and help you choose joy — all focused around happiness, choosing happiness and the wonderful messiness of life.
If you enjoy this week’s, please share it and help me build my subscriber list. Thanks.
Stay well.
Liz
Tips for avoiding burnout. I can’t remember where I read these tips by author and writer, Carl Honore (his big book is In Praise of Slow), but they really resonated, so I wanted to share them with you:
1. Schedule moments during the day for handling emails and other online tasks — and switch off the rest of the time.
2. Say no to unessential invitations and tasks.
3. From time to time during the day, stop whatever you’re doing and ask yourself if you’re doing it too fast. If you are, then take a few deep breaths and return to the task more slowly.
4. Start a slow ritual, such as cooking, yoga, gardening, painting.
5. Meditate.
Book of the week. Turns out that clearing out your bookshelves will reveal books you haven’t read for ages, and this is one I rediscovered this week. My god but Nora Ephron can write. In I Feel Bad About My Neck, Ephron (who wrote the movie When Harry Met Sally, if you need a reference) treats us to 15 essays to help women face up to — and laugh about — midlife. Like a brilliantly witty best friend, she gives us insights such as ‘When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you,’ among other funny and incisive lines and stories from her life that we all have to face as we age. The essay ‘Blind As a Bat’ rang true for me, with the recognition that nothing is easy to read anymore without glasses. And that the bloody reading glasses are never there when you need them. If you have a friend whose 45ish to 50ish birthday is coming up, buy her this. You can’t go wrong. It will make her nod her head in recognition, smile ruefully, get indignant and laugh out loud.
Soothing and delightful paint colour of the week. We’ve been decorating (well, technically someone else has been decorating…) our house. I have had the paint charts out, testing colours, looking for shades of blue, green and white. And then I happened upon this gorgeous pink which is so pleasing and satisfying I had to share it. Not sickly, not too dark and dusky, it is a mid-pink, which I think would work as a great accent colour to a dark blue, in particular. Hellebore by The Little Greene Paint Company will bring all the joy :)
Final words of the week come from an old friend, Camilla, who is a meditation teacher (and very wise). We met at primary school and now, 40 years later, I meditate fairly regularly with her online. She teaches and practises vedic meditation, which I learnt a couple of years ago, and her website is here.
We were talking about meditation and she reminded me that wanting things and projecting into the future doesn’t make us happy. Happiness is here in the now. Just knowing this can transform everything.
‘Not I am happy when, but I am joyful now because.’
Choose the joy —
Liz