Do You Radiate Happiness?

Would your kids, niece or nephew, or anyone else look at you and think you were happy? Would they aspire to a life like yours? Are you happy?

I recently asked an older teenager whether there was anything she was particularly looking forward to in her future years. Her response was – since she doesn’t want kids – she can’t really see past forty (as in, nothing appealed beyond that age).

It made me think about whether those of us past forty make it look attractive in any way. I don’t mean whether we think we are happy, that was my first (and likely defensive) thought pattern. I started to think about my life, the things I’m grateful for and found that I was almost going through this process of persuasion to an extent, feeling I ought to be happy because my life is pretty great.

What I mean is whether I actually feel happy most of the time and therefore project happiness to those around me? If I could hook up a mood-o-meter that took a pulse check on how I was feeling every few minutes throughout the day, I thought about where I’d sit on the scales:

• Mostly stressed or relaxed?
• Mostly distracted or present?
• Mostly negative or positive?
• Mostly unhappy or happy?

And is happy or unhappy a combination of the first three? Certainly they seem like fairly good indicators. There are lots of other categories I could probably name, but these ones provide enough contrast to help me see that – while I still have room for growth - I’ve made a definite shift towards the descriptions on the right these last few years.

What has created the shift for me is tuning into what I’m thinking and feeling more often.
When I think of my life before conscious awareness of my thoughts and feelings, ouch, it was ugly and I was most definitely not happy. I can totally see why someone like me, just running on default, wasn’t radiating anything anyone else would have aspired to.

Like most people, I was all wadded up with thoughts and beliefs that I had inherited from my childhood. Over the years these thoughts and beliefs that had once served a purpose (usually they were keeping me in the good books of adults around me) were no longer serving me at all. The true gift of my adulthood has been the space and freedom to explore who I am, and what I truly think and feel about things.

Just fifteen minutes a day meditating has given me an increasingly conscious awareness of my thoughts and feelings in many given moments, so it’s created a lot of positive change in my life. That said, while it would be great to be relaxed, present, positive, and radiate peace and contentment all the time, I do still get tripped up.

For example, with chores to be done around the house, especially at breakfast or dinner time, there is no doubt my kids get little attention as I juggle between their chatter or requests and preparing food or clearing up, while also often managing other communication with the adults in my life at the same time.

Making it through the period between school pick up and the kids’ bedtime in a relaxed mood can be challenging to say the least. I often find myself saying to the kids “I can only focus on one thing at a time” or “how many pairs of hands do I have?”

It is often said women can multitask, but I find if I’m trying to split my attention is creates tension. And, although I am an optimistic person, my kids certainly hear the word “no” on an all too frequent basis.

So as I contemplate this outside-in view of whether I am any kind of a role model for happiness, it is a bit of wake up call. Even though my life has changed considerably, my kids still get the best and worst of me. It’s obvious that there are still pinch points in my day that don’t feel so great because I get overwhelmed.

This is never truer than when I am mulling over something that happened and dwelling on what I should have done (or what I wished someone else would have done) or I’m thinking about something like imminent chores and their delicately balanced sequence in order to meet some deadline like getting the kids to school or to bed.

Regurgitating the past and obsessing about the future are hard habits to break I find, despite knowing that things always work out and – most often – in ways I could never have planned. Today is yesterday’s dreams, like the beautiful family that I dreamed of – striven for – for many years. It wasn’t the obsessing and planning and worrying that got me there, instead it was a series of unplanned moments that I would call serendipities or coincidences that finally brought it all about.

I have a lifetime full of examples like that, the unforeseen things that happened in the lead up to landing jobs, or meeting partners, or other opportunities. In spite of these examples I often forget all about them and  obsess, worrying about what I should be doing in order to make things happen; noticing things aren’t where I’d like them to be, rather than just trusting a dream will work out when I take inspired steps as they arise.

The answer, then, seems to lie in continuing to practice conscious awareness of my thoughts so I can:

• remind myself to let go of the need to do just for the sake of activity rather than inspired progress, recalling the examples of the things that have taken care of themselves in the past.
• focus on honouring what I say to my kids “do one thing at a time” and give that thing my full attention.

I know a lot of people feel like they’ve tried and failed at meditation because they keep thinking. But I have discovered that noticing my thoughts is actually the point. I have become increasingly aware of how unlikely I am to be either stressed or negative if I can truly bring myself into the present. 

There are a whole host of apps out there to help if you don’t know where to start. Just a quick Google search on the topic immediately brings up suggestions like Headspace, Calm and Smiling Mind, but there are also an abundance of guided meditations on You Tube.

Personally I just sit with my eyes closed in a quiet space for fifteen minutes each day and listen to the sound of nature, constantly refocusing on the sounds as I notice thoughts creeping in that I then let go of.

​Whatever the method, I figure the way to be more happy, and radiate that happiness, is to live more of my life in the moment.

If you can connect more with the present, it will help you become less detracted, more relaxed and more positive – in short, happier. The happier you are within, the more you’ll radiate it outward, and the more infectious that happiness will become. A world infected with happiness, now that does sound attractive!

​If you feel stuck in the weeds and would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog