Lucy's Planet Happiness

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How to find happiness

There’s this gorgeous story, I believe it’s from the Islamic tradition, about a king who happened to secure a spectacularly beautiful necklace for his daughter. Unfortunately it went missing (how do things like that happen in a palace with all that security???).

Well, the king being rich (could he be otherwise!) offered a substantial reward for the recovery of this exquisite piece of jewelry.

Now a businessman who was walking his usual route home, which happened to be along a river, noticed something shimmering in the water. He stopped, wandering what it might be.

As he stood there, he remembered the king’s necklace and the reward for its recovery. He was motivated to investigate this shimmering phenomenon!

He bent down for a closer look and soon realized that the river was pretty grotty. Nevertheless, he stuck his hand in to see if he could get hold of the shimmering item. No such luck.

Now, as you can imagine, he didn’t much like getting his good clothes soiled and wet. Still, he persevered, each time getting more of himself and his good clothes dirty. Oh, it wasn’t fun I can assure you! But the prospect of the king’s reward was, well, too tempting. Why, he’d be able to invest a portion and live the rest of his life from the passive income!

In due course, along comes a saint (don’t you just love when that happens!) who asks the man what he’s doing. Now, this man isn’t a businessman for nothing. He knows about people stealing information from you and using it to their advantage, so he refuses to tell the saint. (Clearly, he didn’t realize the passerby was a saint. Tch! Tch!)

But the saint being saintly was determined to help this rather troubled and by now, filthy looking man. The man, weary, frustrated and disgusted with his condition, soon gives in and tells all.

The saint, with a saintly smile, points to a tree branch overhanging the river. “Look”, he says, “the necklace is up there. You’ve been chasing a reflection”.

Ouch!

Okay, I am not going to tell you, because you already know it, that the river represents our conditioned, materially-driven existence.

Neither am I going to tell you that the reflection in the river is the longing, the desire we have for happiness.

And I am definitely not going to tell you that the necklace hanging from the branch above is where our true happiness, lies – in our higher/unconditioned state of consciousness.

I am not going to tell you any of this because you already know that, like the businessman, we too think that this is how to find happiness. Just like him, we’re prepared to get ourselves caught up in materialistic pursuits because we’re convinced we’ll find happiness there.

Oh sure, we know that true happiness is really found within, which is of course why we spend so little time in the world ‘within’ and so much time in the world ‘outside’ with its wild promises of happiness when all it really delivers is fleeting moments of ‘pleasure’!

Instead of creating our outer world from our inner state of happiness, we look to the outer world to give us what we already are! But you already know all this. I’m writing this mostly to remind myself but especially to share that gorgeous story with you. Hope you liked it!

Love always,

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

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Having trouble making choices? Learn to ask yourself this empowering and liberating question

“I wanted to change my shirt but I changed my mind instead”

Winnie the Pooh

Have you noticed that every moment of your life is a moment of choice?

I know it’s hard to really get that because, most of the time, we’re on autopilot with our routines and our unquestioning acceptance of life ‘as is’.

We tend to forget that life ‘as is’ is the result of PAST thoughts, past choices and past beliefs. If we want life to be ‘as desired’, then we have to change our CURRENT thoughts, current choices and current beliefs.

That means that we can choose to intercept our autopilot thinking, speaking and behavior. More and more, we can make them moments of conscious choice

But perhaps you’ve decided that it’s easier to remain on autopilot, believing that being a conscious chooser can be hard work.

Take my friend, Beverly, for instance. For weeks she agonized over a choice she believed she had to make. You’d think it was a life-changing choice. It wasn’t, at least not in the way we think of life-changing choices

It wasn’t about whether she should have an operation or not. It wasn’t about whether she should marry her boyfriend or not. It wasn’t about buying a house or donating an organ. It wasn’t anything like that.

So what was this choice that she’d spent weeks agonizing over?

This: “Should I exercise for five minutes every day or not?”

Yep, you can pick your jaw from off the floor now. And no, I’m not telling you a porky either.

You see, poor old Bev was feeling dreadfully conflicted. She believed it was the right thing to exercise. She was afraid that if she didn’t exercise, she’d end up with medical and physical problems as she did spend most of her day at her desk.

But, the fact was, Bev didn’t like to exercise. In fact, the very thought of it made her recoil with dread and pour herself even deeper into desk work.

For as long as she remained conflicted about what she believed was the ‘right’ thing to do and what she really felt, Bev could not make a choice. And the more she procrastinated making her choice, the longer it remained unresolved in her mind.

Her ‘solution’? Pour herself deeper into her work, distract herself.

But as you and I know, (because I’m sure we’ve had similar experiences), you can never completely distract yourself, can you? That unmade decision is still tossing and turning in your subconscious mind waiting for you to put it to bed.

Without you noticing it, you start avoiding things, topics and people who remind you of it. Sometimes, you go out of your way to convince yourself that other things are so much more important.

“This is trivial. I’ll deal with it later. For goodness sake, it’s not a matter of life and death!”

Or you convince yourself that you don’t have all the information you need and it’ll take you a while to gather it all. In the meantime, distract yourself.

Yes, I know a lot about all these little devices that we use to get out of making a choice. I’ve been a master of them!

The sad thing is, trivial as they may seem, we expend a disproportionate amount of time, mental and emotional energy in not making them! Crazy but true.

And yet, most of these choices are really easy to make, once we know how AND once we understand why it is we experience such turmoil, resistance and reluctance to make them.

You see, they really do drain away our life energy for as long as they remain unmade. They really are life and death decisions, slow death that is!

It’s much harder to resist or avoid anything than it is to allow. Always!

Not making a choice is resisting the flow of life. Making a choice, on the other hand, allows ‘flow’, it allows energy to do its work!

So, what are some of the things that you need to understand about why you find it hard to make choices and become a more ‘conscious chooser’ than an ‘autopilot’?

Here they are:

There are no ‘permanent’ choices unless you choose to make them so. You need not condemn yourself to a life sentence of the choices you make

The best and most freeing choices are always open to review and revision

Not acting according to a choice you have made doesn’t make you bad, irresponsible or a failure. It simply reflects your un-awakened state. It is an opportunity to awaken, to observe yourself, to understand yourself and to take charge of your life.

There are no ‘wrong’ choices, only choices based on what you have and know best at any given time

You are a creative being whose creative process involves making choices after choices after choices – see it as a marvelous adventure in a field of infinite possibilities!

And finally, that empowering and liberating question that you can ask yourself whenever you are faced with a choice, regardless of how trivial or significant it may seem to you:

What do I most want now?

Yes, that is the only question you need to ask yourself every time and any time you want to make a choice.

Forget these types of questions:

What is the best or right thing to do?

What is the easiest thing to do?

What is the best gift I can give?

What is the best deal I can get?

None of these questions will inspire you and free you for three reasons:

1) They are all about things beyond your control, based on arbitrary standards or values of others.

2) They speak in absolute not relative terms which means they do not easily lend themselves to review and revision

3) They are based on life ‘as is’.

But asking, “What do I most want now?” inspires and frees you to listen to your true desires which are not based on life ‘as is’ but which draws on your imagination, that creative genius which roams freely and is truly at home in the field of infinite possibilities!

Ask this question when faced with the most ‘mundane’ or ‘trivial’ choice. Ask it when faced with the most trying and ‘critical’ choice.

Ask it. Then listen. Really listen. Then allow yourself to be guided into an inspired, empowering and liberating choice!

Love always,

Lucy

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you cantake control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedomthat comes from being in charge of yourself.

Robert F Bennett

Want to be a Happy and Successful Parent? Learn ‘INSPIRED PARENTING’ from 5 teachers from The Secret. (Might be the perfect gift for Christmas :))

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Which comes first, Success or Happiness?

“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.” Earl Nightingale

Yes, I know, sometimes it’s easier to blame it on that rascally, indefinable, elusive thing called ‘luck’, isn’t it?

But jokes aside, what is this equally hard-to-pin-down thing called ‘success’? Have you ever thought of yourself as a success? Have you ever done or ‘achieved’ anything that you would consider a success?

You must have heard the story about Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb. He was asked in an interview: How did it feel to have failed all those many times (reportedly in the vicinity of a thousand).

“Failed?” exclaimed Edison, “those weren’t failures! They were all the ways I learned how not to do it!”

Ah, yes. It’s hard to have that kind of attitude though, when a relationship has ended or you’ve been told you didn’t get that job or you just blew the diet plan yet again.

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”
– Thomas J. Watson

Here are some dictionary definitions of success:

The achievement of something desired, planned or attempted
The gaining of fame or prosperity
One that is successful

So, how about it? Would you consider yourself a success? Or do you think it would be more accurate to say that you have been successful on some occasions and not others?

It’s an important question to ask yourself because, you see, success and happiness have a lot to do with each other. Or at least, your beliefs about success and happiness do.

Which brings me to the question in the title of this post:

What comes first, success or happiness?

Well, if you believe that success is the achievement of things, then it is more than likely that your happiness will depend on how successful you consider yourself.

If you get what you desire, aim for, work for, in other words, if you succeed, then you will be happy. This kind of belief demands certain outcomes and your happiness is contingent upon securing those outcomes.

But is there a different way of looking at things? Could one be happy regardless of the outcome? Put it this way, would you rather be happy regardless of the outcome?

I know I would. In fact, my life experiences have shown me that there is no other way of being truly happy and staying happy. I would go so far as to say that being peaceful and happy is the greatest ’success’ one could have or be!

So, I’ll finish with a rather nice quote to which I’ve made a slight adjustment to make it more gender inclusive:

“When a person feels throbbing within them the power to do what they undertake as well as it can possibly be done, this is happiness, this is success.”
Orison Swett Marden

Notice, this kind of ’success’ and happiness isn’t contingent upon an outcome. Rather success and happiness are experienced in the enthusiastic and fully committed (passionate) ‘doing’ of something!

Love always, Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

Want to be a Happy and Successful Parent? Learn ‘INSPIRED PARENTING’ from 5 teachers from The Secret. (Might be the perfect gift for Christmas :))

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“Don’t believe everything you think!” Critical advice for your happiness!

I once saw that on a bumper sticker!

“Don’t believe everything you think!”

Excellent advice, if you ask me. Advice that meditation practice, including mindfulness meditation practice, will help you see the value of.

Not long after the car with that bumper sticker drove off, another car with this bumper sticker drove by:

This is the lab calling. Your brain is ready to be picked up.

Ouch!

Then again, in the context of meditation and mindfulness and peace of mind, perhaps having the brain/mind reconditioned/reprogrammed in a ‘lab’ might not be such a bad thing :)

But the purpose of this post is really to remind us of the neurotic thinking habits of our conditioned mind and to encourage us to take time to disengage from it by some form of meditation practice. I know that in my last post, I talked about mindfulness meditation. I have also provided you with some simple instructions on 3 types of mindfulness practice.

This lovely little Zen spiritual story, told by Maritza Parra, illustrates this point beautifully:

I know the value of mindfulness practice and I do some form of it everyday. In fact, I make it a point to maintain a constant degree of awareness at all times. I don’t always succeed but I am quick to catch myself when I am not being present.

So, how is mindfulness practice valuable? As I said, it breaks the conditioned pattern of thinking, the kind of thinking that is anchored in unexamined beliefs, fears, doubts, worries etc. It gives you a chance to step out of this whirling pool of conditioned thinking and step into the crystal-clear waters of the unconditioned mind. “Ground zero‘ if you like.

What a relief! What a marvelous reality check! What a magnificent way of reconnecting with your true nature! And what an amazingly healing experience – mentally, emotionally and physically! Yes, of course your body heals as your mind is cleared of all its toxic thought patterns and their neurochemical and biochemical products!

Love always!

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

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Mindfulness Meditation to handle boredom and restore happiness

Do you get bored easily? Have you ever stopped to consider why?

Studies done on boredom show that people who are unable to remain attentive get bored easily. They seem to require frequent, new and different stimuli to keep their minds active and thus avoid feeling bored.

Studies have also shown that people who are not very self-aware and not accurately in touch with their emotions are more prone to boredom.

When we feel bored, we are not really present to where we are and what is happening within us and around us. This lack of attentiveness can have unhelpful long-term effects.

For instance, over time, we become less and less in touch with our internal and external world and require more and higher intensity stimuli to keep us interested in life and focused on the things we need to do.

However, if we were able to pay more attention to what is going on within us and around us, not necessarily with a judging eye but with the keen eye of sheer observation, the most mundane things can suddenly become the most fascinating things in our world.

This is what people who practice mindfulness meditation frequently experience. Both the inner world and the outer world become amazingly exciting and intriguing.

They begin to notice that the sky is not just blue or pink but that it holds so many different and constantly changing hues and shapes and forms that it becomes a panorama of movement and colour!

Grass is no longer just green but a palette of many ‘greens’ depending on where and how much light hits it, what length it is, how damp it is, what other plants are growing around it and so on.

Now all this may seem trivial and useless but for the person who suffers from boredom (which can often be a precursor to depression), this ability to be very mindful can be a life-saving skill.

In fact, mindfulness is really about being in ‘the flow’, the natural flow of consciousness, of life. It allows your natural happiness to flow through unimpeded by feelings of being stuck or resisting the way things are or fearing the way things will be or regretting and obsessing over the way things have been.

Of course there are other ways of overcoming boredom and most people tend to rely on these. Sports, hobbies of various sorts, social activities and intellectual pursuits are often things that people engage in for a variety of reasons including the desire to avoid or reduce boredom.

The practice of mindfulness and other forms of meditation is, however, something that you can do without any additional resources, anytime and anywhere.

For instance, being mindful of your breathing can open you to the fascinating world of something as mundane as your breath. Or simply being very mindful of a mundane task such as washing the dishes can help alleviate any boredom or resentment you feel when you have to perform the task.

Instead of eating or reaching for a cigarette, practicing mindfulness meditation can not only help you overcome your unhelpful habit, it will also increase your ability to focus and be attentive, increase your powers of observation, improve your memory (which is closely related to attentiveness) and remove blocks that have collected in your mind and body as a result of feeling stuck, bored or even anxious.

It can also put you in touch with your feelings, allowing you to encounter them in a relaxed and fearless way. It offers you the experience of noticing how your feelings come and go thus encouraging you not to get fixated on them or to make hasty decisions in order to try and get rid of them.

Before I finish this post, I would like to mention another kind of boredom that mindfulness practice and meditation more generally can help overcome. It is called ‘existential boredom’.

This boredom is with the world generally. It is the kind of boredom that a person experiences when they find the world meaningless and their life purposeless. They have little enthusiasm or passion for anything. It is the kind of boredom that is most frequently associated with severe depression.

When we fail to see the magnificence of the world, the diversity and intrigue that it holds, when we fail to feel the very pulse of life throbbing, the world can indeed become a cold, lifeless and meaningless place.

The practice of mindfulness and other types of meditation can tune us into the very heartbeat of the world. It can awaken in us the natural joy and passion that we so long for.

Bored?

Distant mirrors, Dimly lit: Leisure

The Book of Boredom

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