I’ve moved!
Thank you for following me here and reading my posts. I’ve moved my blog over to my website, where you can subscribe to my updates, that will still be daring you to be happier.
Much love
Caroline x
happiness
The gift of curiousity
If there is one gift I would grant a child, assuming love is aleady there, then it would be curiousity. That courage to explore new places, meet new people with an openness that builds better relationships and turns strangers into friends.
It will change their thinking and their ability to learn. It’s the gift that will encourage them to have ideas and invent things that change the world for the better, to travel to other places and cultures with respect, and even explore other galaxies. It will keep rocking them back in wonder at creation and the world around them, so that even when adults, they will stop and stare at a rose, whirl a dandelion head round to see what happens, or crunch through autumn leaves .
It’s what will allow them to wait to see the butterfly emerging from a cocoon, an egg hatching, what shape the bread that rested and was kneaded makes. It means they can never be bored, for they can stimulate their imagination and get lost in different worlds of books and games.
It will give them the courage to take risks sometimes, to ask “what might happen if I try” – and find out that even if they fail, they can still be curious about the lessons they learned. It encourages flexibility, and gives them the resilience to deal with uncertainty. It can turn everyday chores into adventures, and even give them the freedom to explore the big questions in life without fear (like who are we, what happens next, how can I bring peace, can I dare to be happier?)
That’s what I would give a child, if I had a magic wand. What would YOU give them?
How to become wise
A short parable showing that making a choice is better than making no choice..
Some students asked the great teacher, “How do we become wise?”
The great teacher replied, “by making good choices.”
“How can we be sure we are making good choices,” they asked.
“Experience will teach you that.”
The students then asked, “how do we get this experience?”
“By making bad choices.”
All you need is love
I’m a fan of Marianne Williamson – her books have inspired me over the past 16 years or so. A friend recently told me about how she walked out on to the stage after the Paris shootings, and said that we needed to send love out to the city – and that included the terrorists. She had misread many in the the audience.
But then she wasn’t coming from the point of the audience. She wasn’t denying the horror, she was simply coming from her truth. She is a long standing teacher in the Course in Miracles, which teaches that what we believe, we perceive; so since she believes that ultimately love is what matters – what will transform the world – then that’s what she sees, and how she lives. And though I may have been where those in the audience were, I just thought wow, she really lives her truth, and it’s transformed her in the process.
How we think – what we perceive – is how our lives unfold. If love is really what matters to us, we will look for it and find it, and we will be it. What if we lived today, looking at the world from the eyes of love, or the eyes of what we feel is missing from our life – friendship, compassion, kindness? What if that’s all we tried to focus on being and seeing? How would our day change?
Do let me know what you chose, and how you got on…
Last night, as I was sleeping,
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvellous error! –
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
© Antonio Machado
Look for the sunshine by Nancye Sims
Life can make choices for us.
Sometimes these choices
Seem unfair
And make us unhappy if we let them.
But in the end we control our own destiny
Because we can decide how we are going to allow
People or events to affect us.
So much of our happiness, and unhappiness,
Lies within the choices we make.
We can accept that life isn’t the way we want it to be,
Or we can work to change it so it will be.
We can walk through the shadows,
Or we can choose to smile
And to seek out the sunlight.
We can create grand dreams
That never leave the ground,
Or we can be builders of dreams that that touch the sky.
We can look at only
The negative aspects of ourselves,
Or we can lift ourselves up
By being our own best friend.
We can live in the past
Or dream about the future,
Or we can live for today.
We can give up when the road becomes difficult,
Or we can keep on going
Until the view is much better.
The choices in life are endless,
And so is the potential for happiness…….
Is the kind of life you are currently living sustainable?
In her book More Time to Think, Nancy Kline refers to an article which posed that question. It said:
“Describe your current life – the number of hours you sleep each night; the amount of time you rush; the proportion of your day you worry; the amount of time you don’t just sit; the amount of time you don’t listen to your children and your partner; the amount of time people don’t listen to you; the amount of time you complain; the amount of self-betrayal you do by not sticking to your value of self-care the amount of time you do emails; the amount of time you don’t exercise; the number of days per month you drink alcohol; how often you don’t laugh; how frequently you don’t each freshly prepared food; your waist measurement; your weight; the amount of time you spend in aeroplanes and cars; the amount of time you are away from the people you love most.”
And then she says, here was the scary question.
“Is this sustainable?
Well.
Is it?
Remember – life isn’t a dress rehearsal, so dare to be happier! x
https://daretobehappier.wordpress.com
T: @DareToBeHappier.
Hardships vs blissful encounters. Which are you most grateful for?
I read this at the weekend – and it rang true for me. I loved it ❤
“I would never trade my hardships – past, present, or future – for blissful encounters. These very tribulations have revealed what true happiness is.
The darkest nights yield the most luminous dawns. If everything always went your way, you would be denied the precious opportunities to grow, surrender, trust, evolve.
Without fear, you would never learn to be courageous. Without anger, you would never learn forgiveness. Without heartbreak, you would never open your heart to true love.”
Sara Avant Stover
Elizabeth Gilbert reminds us happiness has nothing to do with luck
I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works.
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.
And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t you will eat away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Elizabeth Gilbert
(Eat, Pray, Love)
Don’t make others right or wrong
Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there’s a middle way, a very powerful middle way……
Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way….. true communication can happen only in that open space.
Pema Chodron
Dare To Be Happier 