Happiness Project - The Days are long but the years are short.

Literally minutes ago, I finished the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  It is basically a manifesto about the author who created a year resolutions chart, and planned new resolutions to try to complete each month.  For an example, January was dedicated to boosting her energy.  Gretchen made sure to sleep more, exercise better, and to stop eating fake foods as well as to spend more money on healthy foods.  The memoir was fascinating but also interesting to see how hard and unscientific it really is to measure happiness.  Everyone defines happiness differently and everyone has different things in life that make them happy.  An interesting point she came across was to do activities she found fun.  In the past, she was participating in activities because she thought that they were the activities that other people found to be fun.  An ubber dorky thing that she found fun was reading children and teen literature.  Gretchen started a teenage literature fiction book club with her friends and fellow authors who also enjoyed doing the same thing.  I thought this was great because even though she felt embarrassed by her guilty obsession, it was still something she enjoyed doing.  I know we can all relate with this.  I CAN relate to this.  This example is proof that happiness and fun mean different things for different people.

During the course of the book and year, she found more ways to be light hearted, to laugh at herself, to be more kind, and to be less negative.  Because she felt happy she was happy.  Gretchen even at times had to push herself to laugh more or be more kind and it became contagious to herself and the others around her.  Ultimately, by spreading joy to others she was spreading joy to herself.  One of the quotes that resonated with my life and it being the year before I will approach 30 years of age is "The days are long, and the years are short."  My days right now feel very long but I know the end of this year is already approaching fast.  I cannot believe it's already February but because of school and work, my mind is working in overdrive and working more hours a day than it is use to.  I'm not sure if it's ever going to adjust :)

Gretchen created a valuable list of Happiness Tips she learned during her project.  They are as follows:

• To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; one of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• You're not happy unless you think you are happy.
• Your body matters.
• Happiness is other people.
• Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
• It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.
• What's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.
• Best is good, better is best.
• Outer order contributes to inner calm.
• Happiness comes from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.
• You can choose to do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
• You manage what you measure.
• Loving actions inspire loving feelings.
• The opposite of a great truth is also true.

I feel that for the most part, I'm a really happy person.  I'm content with who I am and have tried to be happy even when faced with unhappy situations.  Life is short and it is too short to be angry and unhappy.  With so much beauty in the world around us, it can be easily forgotten.


She has a website to go to if you want to create your own happiness toolbox/resolution chart:
www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com  She also has a blog that people can subscribe too.

I feel like I sound like I'm one of her endorsers!! :P  When time approaches, I think it would be fun to do my own happiness project.  I think everyone could always use a dose of happiness in their lives!

Lifes Pressing Questions

Hello!!

So a question I have had to face lately is what are you passionate about when it comes to counseling people.  What populations are you interested in counseling?  What makes you passionate?  When the two questions are asked, I usually don't know what to say.  Well, I like to work with adolescents I guess because I have in the past.  Or, I really am interested in music therapy which tends to make the other counselors eyes glaze over.  I feel empty and crappy when I am being asked this by fellow counselors because in all honesty I don't really know the answer to the questions, and I feel like I should. 

In my internship, I have really enjoyed family therapy work.  I have shadowed a therapist a few times who does mainly counseling with children and parents and it has been my favorite to see so far.  Okay, pick your jaw off of the ground right now - who would have ever thought I liked counseling children???   Not in a million years would I ever have thought that this would be the type of counseling I find the most enjoyable. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not that much of a kid person.  If I was interested in kids, I would probably have married some guy I thought I loved and had some babies by now. Not saying everyone who is my age and who is married is married to someone they don't love. But considering I don't think I found that "one" everyone seems to rant and rave about, I just really don't see the point of having kids.  I don't really even know if I want them - why the hell would I just marry anyone and start breeding?  A hells no to that.

But, I have found something ever so enticing.  I've started writing a book - yeah word.  A book.  I have two chapters (20 pages approximately -seriously that is sometimes what I do in my free time when people think I'm doing homework - I am really that nerdy).  But, I found an MFA program by chance online the other day at the University of Minnesota.  Basically if you get in (which is largely based on the 20-25 pages of fiction writing you submit), they pay for everything.  Tuition, salary, health benefits.  You TA for 3 years while you work full time on your MFA in creative writing.  Which means they would basically pay me to teach and write my book.  In addition to this, they let you read as many books as you want.  I seriously could not think of a better way to spend my life.
No GRES and no English degree required.  The program only takes 11 to 14 students per year which is a pretty small sum of people.  I'm sure they get tons of applications and read copious amounts of bad literature (ahem, probably my book). 

So the final question is - if I get in would I go?  Yes.  Am I going to apply?  YES!  So... you mean to say you would have two masters in two different subjects but the equivalent of years in school to be at the doctorate level but no PH.D.  Okay... a sad, morose yes to that.

BUT why the change of mind?  BECAUSE, when anyone asks me what my passion is it always falls back to writing and books.  I cannot shake it.  I have tried to shake that bad illness plenty of times and it's impossible because guess what?  It always comes back to this.  Being a counselor would be just fine.  I would enjoy it, I might be okay at it, I might help some people, and it's a million times better than anything I have ever done in my life.  But is it my passion?  That is where the real question comes into play.  Because - I'm not 100% sure.  I would hate to live in that uncertainty without trying my real love and passion.

MFA people usually end up teaching at the college level or writing books.  I think I just want to keep delaying adulthood.  I'm really getting fantastic at that.  We shall see!  All you can do is try :)

http://creativewriting.umn.edu/program/ I heart this program.