Joy

Would you, most of the time, rate your life as ‘happy’? Are you satisfied with your ability to live in a space of kindness, compassion and honor, more often than not? Have you reached a place in heart, mind and spirit that would allow for you to qualify your days as ‘heavenly?’ If you are thinking about the best way to answer these questions; if you are not quite sure; if you express anything other than a resounding YES, you have work to do!

Perfection, Not So Much …

If you did answer the above, with an absolute, no-doubt-about-it affirmative, you should give yourself a big hug! Does reaching this state of being mean you have achieved ‘Nirvana,’ that all is perfect in your world? The answer to this lies within one more question… would you still be ‘here’ if you had achieved a state of perfection?

Obviously perfection is not the answer to living your best life. For those now reading who leaned toward the ‘maybe, not sure’ you can create a ‘live in the moment’ plan that will provide you with what you need to stay balanced; and staying balanced leads to happiness.

Please allow me to introduce you to one of my core (May 2010 issue Om-Times) beliefs here; every moment contains a precious gift – that of choice. Each article, column and essay I write centers on the power to choose. Living in the moment means no matter what presents itself, you may captain yourself in any direction. When you choose to be negative in any way, the energies that you will attract moving through your day will remain negative. Every thought leads to the next, it really is that simple. Trauma and challenges are a part of the design of life. More often than not, these upsets or shocks are with us as barometers, measures, or directional guides. What direction have you chosen? What joy are you missing by dwelling in the negative? Once a moment has passed it will not return and the joy, however big or small, is gone. Just imagine, on your kitchen counter, there is a container of joys, a ‘cookie jar’ of sorts. It would be a beautiful, shining vessel. If the container holds knocks, bumps, lumps and heart-ache, it will be a sad, misshapen, gloomy, dark pot. Do you truly want such a container to sit upon your counter-top?

There are always two sides to a coin, two ends on a see-saw, two ways of looking at a story and so on. This is the yin/yang of life, the balance. When you toss a coin in the air, yell heads or tails and watch it drop you anticipate that your call will be the side that lands facing up. When the toss does not land as you hoped, you still have a choice, a direction in which to go. What will you do? Whether or not you ‘like’ what has come to you, you do have to manage it. Will you look for the joy?