Three Good Things

Ten happiness boosters may increase your happiness up to 40%. They are to savor life’s joys, drop grudges, get moving, give thanks, keep friends close, get with the flow, practice kindness, look on the bright side, avoid over-thinking and comparing, and recall three good things.

For the past week or two I’ve been posting on the UC Berkeley list, giving you my practices and ideas. I didn’t do great with kindness but I did figure out it is easy to be kind to those who are kind to me, not so much for those who show disdain, hatred, ignorance, or negativity. So I’m still working on kindness.

Looking on the bright side, I pretty much avoid anybody who bums me out. Distain me, not gonna sustain me. Hate me, never gonna mate me. Show ignorance, I’ll quietly give you a comeuppance, negative words, I’ll fly the coop at dawn with the birds. So that’s the bright side. I have a bunch of kindness in my life because the other stuff doesn’t get in much anymore. And if it does, it quickly gets swept to the curb with the other garbage.

Avoid over-thinking and comparing. Here is good news for older people. We like to use our brains but then they get tired so we rest. I meditate, my husband watches sports on the television. We are so over over-thinking. I have a habit now when something worries me, and I get to that circular reasoning thing where I just go round and round with a topic, where I eventually get dizzy and give it to the universe. Things have a way of sorting themselves out without my breaking my brain.

And comparing! Ha. What a waste. I hesitate to waste the words but in case you have not discovered this beautiful secret of getting older is comparison never ever feels good. Just the minute you find you have less necks than your neighbor someone across the street aged 22 is going to move in. So you know, give up the eyeing of the inches gained and the hair lost and your Amazon ranking and how many Twitter followers you have. It don’t matter, and neither does grammar. Ha. Just, when you start to compare anything, file it with the grudges.

Recall three good things. Saying “I do.” Birth of my babies. Birth of my grandbabies. The day my author copies of The Paris Notebook arrived. Opps that’s four. Or six, depending on how you want to count them because Al, Mike, Tim, Owen & Ben should each be their own good thing. And they are. The men in my life. Then there’s the writing.

Somebody asked me yesterday why I still blog. 13 years, haha. I said “I like it.” Blogging is another good thing. I’m sorry, Berekely, it is impossible to recall just three good things. But I think I may feel 50% happier having realized that.