Open Challenge, The Happiness Advantage Starting April 1st

[The Albatross]

Day 13

1. I am grateful that Sunny B has been adopted. My mother kept him and renamed him Charlie Boy.

I am grateful that I was uncowed by a facility director when I had to give him bad news. It started rough but ended well, I was not intimidated. Once he realized that he changed his attitude.

I am grateful that I remembered to cue myself and stay present and in my body during my shifts - no injuries yesterday.

2. A positive experience I had in the last 24 hours: I noted for the other care givers that a client's dog wasn't being fed regularly. Though a high functioning client, he forgets to feed his dog except table scraps. I kept track of what was being used this week to confirm it before reporting it and feel pretty good about identifying it for the other care givers to watch, as I will have less time with this one and am taking on the harder and more difficult client in the coming weeks.

3. Exercise: None except it occurred to me I really should be wearing a pedometer.

4. Meditation: Played inspirational music and zoned out for about 15 minutes between shifts. I needed to hear soothing music. Not exactly meditation... but best that I could muster. I am consistently falling short in this area, I don't know why I am so blocked in this area.

5. Random act of kindness: Brought a favorite meal to a client's house to share, and while driving was mindful to make room for traffic to merge in front of me from side streets, and stop for pedestrians, and open doors for everybody or hold them open. I received many smiles, thank you's and kind hand waves of gratitude.

 

[Changing4Best]

During meditation and prayer today I realized a few things. Prayer is a two way street and we need to keep our spiritual ears open for His responses. I'm a mental and verbal chatter box sometimes (I pray sometimes aloud and sometimes in spirit), and so He has to get a word in edgewise when He can (He's laughing now as I admit this). So the meditation part of prayers is to LISTEN. I'm not that bad of a listener when folks talk, but I do tend to butt in sometimes. I need to watch that both with God and with people. Help me, Lord, to do that! Thank You, Jesus. Amen.

 

[Eleanor]

HA HA! did my exercise. I wouldn't if it weren't for the accountability here. I really don't get what all the RESISTANCE is to it in my. It is not - in the doing, all that hard.

So, random act of kindness still to go for today...

 

[The Albatross]

Day 14

1. I am grateful that I had a 3 hour conversation with my friend in the hospital.

I am grateful that I had a quiet evening and could think more clearly.

I am grateful that my husband is fit and healthy.

2. A positive experience I had in the last 24 hours:

3. Exercise: If housework was exercise I'd be in there, but eh, nope. Not enough energy available and the knee is still swollen and tender. Maybe some stretches.

4. Meditation: No go, couldn't quiet my thoughts yesterday.

5. Random act of kindness was paying for the food, harness, leash, identification tag, and going to change over the records at animal welfare for my mother to reflect her ownership and the new pet name. I also brought two bags of cat and kitten food as a "thank you" to animal welfare for their cats and kittens.

 

[anni]

I tried to write a post last night and just could NOT. I do sometimes have to bow to the PTSD, and how much stress does affect me. My neurological system tends to say ' You know what? Nope. Not playing any more, there's not a synapse firing at this time of day, you should know better '. My writing is flat, no spark, it's dreadful, after arguing with ye head for the entire day. I've finally won, I guess, bludgeoned the whole system into behaving with all the mindfullness, running the tools I use, staying on top of the avoidaance, the fear. What's left just worries me, is the thing. What a blah and colorless person, devoid of character albeit also visible PTSD symptoms. This is very wierd.

Yesterday, did my excercizing and maintained better concentration ( or non-concentration ) with meditating than ever before. 3 miles as usual, went by more quickly than ever before also because my head was maintaining the 'now', also wierd. You'd think it would seem longer, noting every breath and tree, but nope.

I got to be grateful for something which was also a positive experience. I had to drop the son off with the ex's girlfriend. Now, he just brought home a report card which will go down in family history as the Frederick's of Hollywood report card. In TWO of his not-so-important ( in HIS head ) subjects he got a friggin D, so double-D, hence the Frederick's of Hollywood report card, they seem to specialize in those letters.He was terrified to tell his father, asked me to tell the girlfriend with him, I think seeing her as less likely to react poorly at the outset. Here's the positive experience. I'm VERY, very lucky the ex picked a woman who is genuinely interested in my son, I think loves him a lot, has his best interests at heart and I've never once caught a whiff of that stupid thing chicks do, setting up a competive, jealous dynamic. She wouldn't have to, she's cute as a button anyway but I've seen even the pretty chicks pull this kind of thing off. She acts like another mother, takes over where I leave off when I drop him off, and I get to drive away thinking WHEW. So indeed she IS another mother, lucky kid, huh? Lucky me, too. This ex got talked into a h*llish custody battle a few years ago, it was more than dreadful, must have really done some work on himself to have attracted someone as plain old nice and competant as this female. Good for him, too, huh? You take your blessings where you find them. 2 gratefuls in one shot.

I'm grateful I have a daughter-in-law who gave me a chance a lot of years ago, and also brought these amazing grandchildren into my life. They were here yesterday, also gave my mother some splendid great-grandchildren time, VERY cool and wierdly good timing. Mom had a blast with them, you could see her just getting into it. The younger of the 2, a girl, is a PIP, hysterical, into everything in a good way not an annoying, whiney way, just SO interested and trusting. She just decided Mom was just FINE, one more adult in her life who has a cat, please tell her all about said cat.

Random act of kindness, nobody yell at me. On the way back from dropping the son off, I have to go up and down our big, old mountain and there's stretch on one side where it's fatally easy to speed. Oi. I spotted a speed trap, well hidden, waiting for on-coming cars, thought oh gosh, who can afford one of THOSE tickets these days. So,,,,, had a conversation of sorts with cars who looked like they were tooling along a little too fast coming the other way. I did have the satisfaction of seeing that nose-dip, meaning brakes applied, most of the time. Depending on which side of the fence one is standing on, I call that kind.

 

[ms spock]

I consciously gave myself a day off yesterday.

1. Write down three new things you are grateful for each day.
2. Journal about a positive experience experience in the last 24 hours.
3. Exercise
4. Meditation
5. A random act of kindness.

I am grateful that I reached out to a friend and she was able to talk to me for ten minutes.
I am grateful for the insight that I can drop my front.
I am grateful that did a little bit of cleaning up.

A postive experience in that last 24 hours was that I reached out and received some support. I spent the day yesterday reflecting and assessing things. I rested a lot.

I am about to go off and exercise.

Meditation TBC

I texted someone to remind them of something that needs to be completed today as my random act of kindness today.

 

[Eleanor]

Way to go Ms. Spock. It is so hard to do stuff when travelling a hard stretch of road, and you are really hanging in there.

Albatross posted a little music on the other thread, so I thought I'd offer this. The question is, how do you work onion rings, custard, tomatoes, hasbrowns and whipped cream into the lyrics of a song? Answer below:

 

[Abrasky]

1 Grateful for the ability to have a family at home.
Grateful for the ability to go to work
Grateful for having some financial stability due to my job

2 Positive experience- I have had the opportunity to make spinach and chicken slow cooker curry today.

3 I exercised for 20 hours in an active job at work last week.

4 Meditation- not one of my strong suits with a 3 year old.

5 I haven't got one yet, I feel grouchy.

I think I am going to enjoy this book.

 

[The Albatross]

Maze, I've got some free online links on the private conversation... you're the magic number 20. The max limit for the private conversation. Welcome aboard.

 

[anni]

Grateful to be wildly intrigued by flat History on all levels, American History mostly but like hearing about an awful lot of history elsewhere. It's like living in a multi-dimensional world, knowing how many layers you're walking on top of then contributing to, like we're one massive, deciduous forest. I love that.

Grateful to have accepted that serving others is enough sometimes, like the T (therapist) has said, and a privilege. If my husband and I can just plain help out, get my mother back to where she thought she was when she trustingly dotted all her i's and crossed all her t's years ago, I'm obviously fulfilling some mission God stuck in my path for a purpose. I believe this with all my heart. There's no other agenda other than to do what she and my father would have done for us, without hesitation, no matter what the cost. For real. They would not have thought twice, just loaded up the horses and ridden to the rescue, bottom line. God gave me some horses, it was choice to get moving. I am extremelyyyyy grateful to have done so.

Grateful for the author and priest, Henri Nouwen, Mom turned me on to yesterday. Please do not be put off by the religious or Catholic labels if you are personally neither. I'm not. If anyone is in need of comfort or guidance, pick up a book. He's extremely, extremely good. I do not always hold his same perspective, he doesn't expect you to. If one of the signs of a sociopathic personality is that you come away from a conversation with one just plain not feeling good about yourself, and can't quite put your finger on why, the converse would be true with his guy. It's with a twist, though. You feel good about your part in this whole life thing, about being alive and your deep purpose for being so. Also tough to put your finger on, just 'something', and the polar opposite of the other.

I'm also grateful for the massive woodpecker who dive-bombed my car windshield again while I was pulling in here yesterday, and who is now banging holes in some dead tree 20 yards from this sofa. He's prehistorically massive, a delightful shock to see, sounds like the booming of a sledgehammer when he's out there finding terrified insects. He's the biggest bird barring our Golden and Bald Eagles, I've ever seen. Talk about grateful. You could live a long time without seeing something like that, much less rub elbows with one. I'm counting this as my positive experience, too, can you tell? :)

I'm going to add more grateful items than required, I'm awfully, awfully grateful for a husband who SO patiently plows his way through all our taxes. He gave up one of the nicest 'outside' days we've had since last summer yesterday to do this and stayed up late. What a peach of a man.

I did my 3 miles yesterday, repeated the areas nearest our creek because it's conducive to emptying the head and perhaps connecting with nature completely. I think this works, so will try it again today. I've had some kind of unspeakable pain these last few days, it gets to the point where nothing works so you just do not take anything, what's the point. WELL. Get this. While shuffling along (stepouchstepouchstepf**kstepouch), there's a point where you can get to a point where you almost look at the pain from somewhere else. It's a little weird, a little 'out of body', very peaceful.

Act of kindness, I'm not sure I can count this since I think I'm 'supposed' to be there, but I took Mom to the old house to dig into the clearing out process again. We worked our backsides off, and there's still SO, so much to do. 5 bedrooms, 35 years there, plus another family was half-way moved in, kind of mucking up the process and not getting their stuff out. Still. We're doing it, we're WITH Mom, and Dad even though he's not physically here any more. It's a commitment which isn't going anywhere ever.

 

[The Albatross]

Oops, my mind blipped and I forgot what my positive experience was for day 14. I know there was one, but have no idea what it was already.

Day 14

1. I am grateful that we had a long soaking rain yesterday and my new plants will thrive.

I am grateful that I stayed present for the whole split shifts and the drives home (Lemon head sour balls worked for me.)

I am grateful that my client heeded my advice yesterday about edema and his high risk for falling. He is a smart man.

2. A positive experience I had in the last 24 hours: Brought my client red beans and rice, hush puppies, and something he'd been craving - fried chicken. We shared a good meal together and he was really happy. I liked being responsible for elevating his mood.

3. Exercise: Wheel chair pushing constituted about an hour of my day yesterday including housework, but still not what the challenge intended. Need to repeat this aspect of the challenge.

4. Meditation: Perpetually stuck in this area, this is going to be a re-challenge at a more opportune time I think but will keep trying.

5. Random act of kindness: Honestly? I don't think I had one yesterday as I was fully on task and face to face with a client so anything I put down here wouldn't be "random".

 

[Eleanor]

American History mostly

In case you haven't discovered it yet: The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. by Ray Raphael.

I grew up in Newton (as in 'and fired a shot that was darned loud shootin' it woke people up clear down in Newton) and had NO IDEA about this story. Glimmerings perhaps - but it is a story we all desperately need in teh 21st century (not to be too dramatic.)

If you haven't read this - it will definitely count as my act of kindness for today!:)

Exercise - done. (did program 2 of the abs. Killer.)
Meditation - done.

I am grateful for there only being two weeks of class left in the semester...(heavy breathing... dragging across finish line.)
I am grateful for eggs from our friends' chickens.
I am grateful for a little girl with a sense of organization...

I am also (bonus gratitude) MOST grateful that my H is coping well enough not to have spun out completely while doing the taxes yesterday - (Damn you turbotax for that running total of what you owe at the top of the page!!!! - how difficult can it be to put a "hide" switch on it?) This much stress would have put him into an episode in years past - and did.

Happy memory from yesterday - finding Atkins bars at the discount store for 20 percent off - SCORE. And only went in on a whim - bargain-seeking senses back online.:D;) (guess this is a gratitude item as well.)

I wonder if, in the context of PTSD, we might not make "receiving" a random act of kindness count as well?