Day 18

Day 18 – I started thinking seriously about how happiness could be cultivated. I’d picked up the book, The Happiness Project, at the airport several months ago and started reading it, but then stopped. It was very good and practical, but, something about it overwhelmed me. After I read Grit, I realized what it was. For so long, I didn’t know what I really wanted out of life and from myself. That had to be the first question I asked myself.

Actually, the reason I read Grit, the desire that allowed the recommendation from a friend to manifest in my life, happened a month earlier at a dinner with my friend Ashley.

She’d come out of a divorce and had to ask herself what she wanted. She’d been unhappy without knowing it for years. To fix that feeling she clung to the thing she knew and got married ,even though she and her partner had never cared before about getting married before. Well, it all fell apart, of course, and she started doing some self work. She said she’d always known what she wanted but thought it was weird. “I want to live with my dog in my own house and have an amazing career.” After her divorce, she found the job she wanted, moved into her own house, funded by the money she was making with her new career, and now lives there with her dog, loving her life. 

What do I want, I had asked myself after our dinner date? I meditated on this question extensively. I want to write. I don’t want to write copy for products or work in marketing, but I want instead to tell my own stories.

I’ve been doing that, so why isn’t it moving me forward?

I think there were many reasons, but namely, I didn’t have faith in even making that the primary goal. I had to say it aloud and believe in it myself. Then, I had to do it.

The next question was, why aren’t I writing more? This answer was easy. I work from home (teaching online) and write from home too. Though I have an active social life, I see friends constantly, I go to coffeeshops to work, I go to yoga classes, I get out, etc., I still spend the majority of my life in my house, the house I moved into with my then finance and the expectation of a very different life.

If the stories I’m telling were going to serve anyone other than myself, they had to come to a place of having moved forward, of having learned something true and useful. You don’t tell a story that has no point. You tell a story when you’ve figured out the meaning or lesson from your experience and you think it would serve someone else to hear. It is not that my stories were sad or lacked epiphany or insight, but that they were born, literally, in a place seeded in the past.

How far could I get with this tether to my old life? That made it very easy to snap the ties I felt to the comforts of my house, my life, my stable predictable day-to-day.

After it occurred to me that I am doing what I want to (writing) and I know what my passion is, the next goal is to do it better. And, do it bigger.

What I found interesting about Grit is that one of the precepts it promotes is one found in all spiritual guidance for living with purpose and mindfulness. It mandates that one engage in work they not only enjoy, but that serves others. My stories could not fully help someone else until they were fully helping me, and vice versa. We (me and the writing) both had to grow and expand and open to every possibility.

What does this look like? Full trust in my ability to write a good story.

And I do, time and time again. It amazes me with each instance that this happens, but it does happen, with hours of work (and sometimes years of working on just one essay.) Something clicks and the story transcends itself and what I thought it could be. I jokingly say, “it was written by divine inspiration.” But it’s not a joke. I work and work and work, but then something else comes through, I tap into it and it comes through me. That is the part that is beyond my ego and makes my representation of life useful to someone else. So I trust myself to put in the labor and the universe to support me.

What else does it look like? Getting out of my comfort zone. Moving to a country where I don’t speak the language or that I’ve ever even visited. Jar my senses. This is the cure to fear. When you are afraid to do something, it shakes you wide awake and afterward, you’re a million times be content and confident from having done it.

My dad has said, “get up and make your life happen”

My mom says, “go out and make your life shine”

Both begin with the impulse toward movement. When I heard these words of advice, though, I got caught up in the how. How the hell do I make my life shine? I work and try, but nothing is happening. What do I do? I sit still and listen.

This is my one life little life. I say, fuck it to fear. Where are the crystals I energized at the sound bath last night?

Does this make me sound crazy and new age? Yes, but saying fuck it to embarrassment too, is another tenet to being open. As long as what I’m putting out there, what I’m sharing with the world, comes from a place of loving kindness and my authentic desire to do good, and with integrity, I give zero shits about looking silly. 

Only if it is a hurtful, negative thought do I think twice about putting it out there.

Tis is the life I’ve chosen to live, so I can live it better, do it so it suits me. I am naturally curious. I want to be startled every day. I can stand at the precipice or I can just jump.

My dad also once shared with me the piece of career advice his own father gave him. Just pick something and stick with it. While the choice of what you pick shouldn’t be totally arbitrary, as Duckworth says in Grit, it should be something you like and have a natural interest in, the sticking with it is key.

Just the act of throwing yourself into something, of basing the majority of your decisions — those grand plans as well as the day-to-day to day tasks –around accomplishing that thing you believe in, is rewarding in itself. Laboring at something you truly dedicate your time and energy and heart to, generates its own kind of love.