What is HAPPINESS?

How do you define happiness? 

The dictionary says: 

delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: to be happy to see a person. and characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy:a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.

Simple right, just be delighted and pleased and smile alot? Well not so much. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics nearly half (45%) of all Australians have experienced a mental disorder at least once in their life, and most commonly anxiety and depression are the culprits.

The thing is as much as happiness is elusive, defensive and aggressive behaviours based on fear and pride are running rife, smothering the workplace, the home, sport and schools. I was lucky enough to attend a course recently for work, HeartStyles, that lifted the lid on why we behave like this, and exposed how we are spreading unhappiness between us as fast as a cold virus can sneeze and cough its way through a peak hour bus.

The premise they lead with was how the vast majority of people have a good heart and good intentions. As they move through life wounds and voids occur and often work to crowd out the goodness as we protect and defend ourselves from having to suffer again. Our once vulnerable self is covered by a dark wall that lets nothing and no-one in to hurt you again. This is when happiness really becomes a huge struggle. Brené Brown, a researcher "storyteller" from the US explains it so well in her TED talk below. 

The courage to be imperfect and show imperfection to others. 

I love every minute of what she has to say - basically she has found that if we are going to be happy vulnerability is key. Her research shows that those people that are happy are living wholeheartedly, being vulnerable with the knowledge that they could get hurt. And even more interestingly they strongly believe they are worthy of love in spite of their imperfection. 

For the sake of our children

We can't escape our parents, you will become your mother, the good and unfortunately the bad stuff passes down the line. Our behaviour gets hardcoded into the neural pathways of our children, and even more so our whole outlook on life. Our anxiety when their imperfections start to show is SO damaging to their worthiness and like Brené says "Our job is not to keep them perfect but to realise they are imperfect and hard-wired for struggle...our job is to make sure they know they are worthy of love and belonging." 

I can't think of any better reason than looking into the beautiful unaffected eyes of my two sons to find a way to be grateful and wholehearted about my life. Maybe by doing so I can start to really get on this single ride I've got in this big theme park called life. We only get one chance at it and quite frankly I'm tired of not throwing my arms in the air and screaming with unbridled joy. 

Do you want to get on too? or are you on it already and can share what it feels like to us who are still holding back? 

Read More

Mummy #FAIL

The baby chokes
So Crash*, my 8 month old just choked on some bread crust that I shouldn’t have let him have and so as to save his own life he spewed all over himself, me and the floor. Now any normal person would put this incident down to experience and move on, doubtless not trying it again until the little chap could chew. Me well today I wasn’t normal.

Boom~ warned me not to give Crash the bread and I shrugged off his caution. He gave me that annoying look, you know the one your mother always gave you when you were a teenager. His face quite clearly stated, “you’ll see” as if he was this wise old man.

I secretly was a little worried when half the crust disappeared into Crash’s mouth and I tried to extract the offending piece with no luck and so the almighty spew. Boom came rushing in and kindly didn’t say ‘I told you so’ and took Crash away to clean him up as I mopped up the floors and myself.

Cloaked in chores
Dejected I raced to the laundry in search of chores to hide my shame in and found a load of washing that should have gone out an hour ago, yay! (You won’t see that very often, that is, me getting excited about washing). So off to the yard I go to dwell on my failure. I was in a deep tailspin and bracing myself for the lecture I was going to get from my “perfect” husband.

Empathy and husband in the same sentence – it’s a miracle!
But there was no lecture and then a rare moment of empathy that I was so grateful for I ended up crying while pegging up his undies. He even took some of the blame – this was mercy indeed and I knew I didn’t deserve it. Then I realized something that rarely occurs to me – maybe, just maybe, my husband really loves me????

You see my abnormality this particular day was being too hard on myself. If my hubby could forgive me, surely so could I? So I stopped and thought through why I was judging myself and I realized it was wrapped up in the pressure placed on women still to be these perfect earth mother, domestic goddess-types.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, I’m clearly destined for an eternity of flames
That’s not me, especially the domestic goddess part. To be fair being pregnant and/or breastfeeding for the last two-and-a-half years has probably exacerbated my sub-standard approach to home management, but as my Mum will tell you I’ve never been a fan.

It’s ok!
But tonight I’m done with feeling guilty for just being imperfect me. From now on my new favourite phrase is going to be: “It’s ok!” It’s ok if Bang^ wants to wear his Thomas winter PJs under his Bob the Builder summer ones and not his designer outfit to Mother’s Group. It’s ok if I don’t feel like seeing the dirt on the floor and let Crash crawl through it. It’s ok if I’d rather spend an hour on Twitter than doing something “productive”, why do we always have to be so productive? We’re not friggin’ factories! Who was it that decided incessant activity was the stuff of halos anyway?

WORLD FIRST: Mother decides not to feel guilty - is promptly ousted from village.
I’m going to relax in my failings, I’m going to rejoice in my hatred of cleaning, maybe I’ll even have a drink too many and do some swearing to add to my transgressions, but I’m going to give myself a break, I’m going to forgive myself for almost choking my baby, I’m going to let myself off lightly for not having any inclination to re-arrange the pantry, I’m going to sit here and write because that’s what makes me feel whole. I’m a bit of a #FAIL as a housewife, home economist, whatever label you want to place on it and you know what – It’s ok because I like being an un-domestic goddess (even if it means a little shaming in the village square).

P.S. This is not an overly elaborate way of saying it’s cool to be lazy either…no seriously, it’s not!
^Bang=my 2yr old. *Crash=my 9mth old. ~Boom=my 3.5 35yr old hubby
© 2011 My IdeaLife, All rights reserved

Read More