“Oh?” I said.  “What did you do?”

He listed a few of the detours that lead him from where he’d planned to go.  It was a replay of conversations we’ve had before.

“Life is what happens when you have other plans, hey?” I laughed.

It’s not that my friend doesn’t have focus.  He can knock out daunting pieces of work over the course of a couple hours, and frequently does just that.    And it’s not a matter of time-management either, although almost all high creatives could use some tweaking with that.

It turns out that the time he spends away from his pet projects is usually time that he spends helping other people when they’re stuck and need a hand, or when they need the counsel of a friend, or when his kids want attention.

Like most of us, his highest strengths come so naturally to him that he takes his acts of generosity and service for granted.  He does them automatically because service to others is his real top-tier value.  It gives him more genuine satisfaction than anything else.

He wishes for more hours in the day like many of us do.  But he’s happy and sleeps well at night even, when he complains that he “didn’t get anything done.”

The truth is that any time we give to living according to our personal set of top-tier values is time we’re spending planting seeds.   Eventually those seeds bear fruit and we find, when we look back, that the time we gave to planting them was one of the best investments we could have made.

And when we do that, our second- and third-tier priorities magically take care of themselves.

To learn more about identifying your core value-based strengths, see What’s Right With You: How to Discover Your Personal Strengths

When you feed your mind with little getaways from life’s stresses and demands, you free it to return to its wide, spacious realms.   There, all the pieces fall into place, new possibilities emerge, new perspectives take shape.

Then, when you call it back into service, asking it to focus once more on the business at hand, it comes to you refreshed and paints the sky of your awareness with sweet clarity on your situations.

So, have you freed your mind today?  Oh!  I think you have!  You’re gazing at a summer field where life is rich and green, and reading these words at High on Happiness.   Good for you!

Remember, it’s here for you any time, wrapped in love.  Because you matter.

Between the I and the Thou, the inside and out, the me and not-me is a line.  Here in 3-D, you need to know where your edges are. How else can we dance?

Our edges hold our definitions and our dignity.  Here’s what I’ll do, what I’ll give, what I won’t. Here’s what I’ll allow. Here’s where it stops.

Your edges tell me your character:   Where you’ll compromise, where you stand firm, where I stand with you.

I’m not saying they don’t morph, grow, expand.  We’re not rocks.

I’m just saying that your no has to be as real as your yes for either to mean anything at all.

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When love cascades down, embracing you with its tenderness, immersing you in its goodness and compassion, pouring its beauty and joy into every crevice of your being, give thanks, that love may abide within you forever.

When love reveals to you that you are its channel and child, its meaning and message, its hope and its fulfillment, give thanks.  Give thanks.  Give thanks.

When joy dances through you, whistling like a prairie wind, blowing its flute, streaming its colors in the breeze, give thanks, that it may come to you again.

When joy dances through you, sparkling your spirit, fanning your pleasure, sailing you into ease, give thanks, that joy may visit you again.

When joy carries you to a realm of purity and celebration, when it wafts the fragrance of contentment all around you until it melts your heart and sets you free, give thanks.  Give thanks.  Give thanks.

When beauty rains down, carrying starlight and all the cosmic colors, pouring out its symphonies, flooding you with its oceanic joy, give thanks, that beauty may visit you again.

When beauty drenches you in wonder and dissolves all your walls, when it steeps you in its tenderness and sets your heart free, give thanks.  Give thanks.  Give thanks.

We send our thoughts scurrying ahead of ourselves to make sure we’ll beat the clock to the beginning of the next thing on our calendars.  And before we know it, another day has come to an end and we hardly know where it went because we were so seldom present.

There’s another way, you know.  It’s as simple as breathing, as easy as checking in with yourself now and then.

“Hey, Self,” you say, “How you doing?”  And you listen for the answer.  And then you send your breath to all the places in you that are tense, tight, anxious, stressed, and let your breath linger there awhile, soft and deep and easy, until you remember you that are free and alive in a beautiful world.

So it costs you a minute or two.  It’s a cheap price to pay for a miracle.  And a miracle is what happens when you remember who you are.  Suddenly you’re present again, and relaxed and in control.  You remember that you can be at ease, that you can gather in the joys of the journey, and savor them as you pass by.

Life is a gift.  Untie its ribbons with gentleness and thanksgiving.

Tallest Weed

The country fairs are in full swing around here and their buildings bulge with blue ribbons:  Best Apple Pie, Biggest Pumpkin, Best Quilt, Strongest Mule.  They remind me of a happiness game I love to play, the “Best of Class” awards.

Here’s how it works:  In the morning, you pick out a category – Best Cloud, Most Beautiful Scene, Best Smile, Funniest Moment, Most Interesting Fact, Best Music – and on your way home from work, or over dinner, or before bed, you choose the winner of the day.

Once I spent an hour writing categories on little slips of paper that I folded up and put in a big bowl, and every morning I’d pick one and that would be my focus of the day.

I kept a running list in my journal for awhile.  What a hoot when I stumbled across it years later!  I had written detailed enough descriptions of some of the winners to bring back the memory as vividly as if I’d just picked it yesterday.

The game can take on all kinds of variations.  You can look for the same “best of” for a week, for example.  I choose “best nature scenes” and shot pictures of them every day for a year last year.  You can focus on a different sense every day – Most interesting texture, coolest song, finest fragrance, most delicious food, best shade of blue.  If you’re studying to master a subject, you can keep a log of the best fact you learned about it every day.  It’s makes for great dinner conversation when you play it with your partner or kids.

All in all, it’s a fabulous little game.  It exercises your attention and focus, hones your awareness and keeps you in the present.  And besides all that, it’s a whole lot of fun.  It’s a top contender on my list of happiness practices.

Give it a whirl.  Let me know how it turns out for you.  I’d love to hear.

Definitely, chocolate.

I love that line.  If you don’t recognize it, it’s Celie’s line from the last scene of the novel – and movie – The Color Purple.

I don’t know if God gets pissed off or not.  But I get what Celie’s saying.  To walk past beauty without it even registering in your awareness is cold, man.  I mean, there it is, all laid out for your pleasure and you walk on by without so much as a nod.  What’s up with that?

Oh yeah, I hear you:  “You seen one sunset, you’ve seen ‘em all.”  I know your type.  Aloof.  Jaded.  Untouchable.  You’re the ice man.  It’s all about you.  But nobody’s home.

But you know what?  The purple flowers are all about you, too, and the sky drenched in stunning color, and the green flags of grass, and the sheen of the morning sun on the pavement.  They’re for you.  They’re here to remind you that this isn’t a dream.  You’re real, and you’re alive.  And these gifts are wrapped in beauty just to touch your heart, because you matter and you’re loved, whether you know it or not.

Look at the palm of your hand.  That’s a miracle, man.  Press it to your chest.  Feel what’s in there.  That’s a miracle, too.  All that body warmth.  All that emotion.

Life doesn’t ask much of you, considering all it does for you.  It gives you free reign to make your choices and keeps your heart beating no matter which ones you make, just as if you were its favorite son.  The least you can do is give it a nod of recognition.  You know, notice the good stuff it pours out all around you.  Slip into not-ice mode once in awhile.

You never know.  It could change everything.