ultimate happiness
I listened to The Ultimate Happiness Prescription by Deepak Chopra yesterday. I think I’ll be listening to it, again, today. Its one of the drawbacks to listening to these audiobooks while I’m working. I don’t always get all that is being said due to thinking about something I just heard in one of the audiobooks or having my attention distracted by something I’m cleaning needing more detailed attention. Of course, there is always the fact that my mind seems to like to find whatever it can to start the thinking hamster wheel going.
I know I said I was going to start looking into The Daily Post’s Events and Daily Prompts for writing inspiration, and I still plan on doing that. I spent the first 45 minutes of my morning coffee and writing ritual perusing the different writing challenges, daily prompts, and other reoccurring writing events. I guess I’m just not feeling very inspired by much this morning because here I am, winging it, again.
I’ve started to contemplate if what I am going through mentally, emotionally is some sort of mid-life crisis type thing. I think I’m about the right age for that at 43 years old. Maybe its menopause. I had a hysterectomy when I was about 28 years old, so I don’t have a monthly indicator to help me in determining if menopause could be the impetus of my current mental state.
At any rate, I am where I am at, for whatever reason. I’m going to just have to muddle through it, being extra-thorough with my self system checks, looking for the opportunities in the different point of view(s), whatever the cause for it/them. The only other option I can see would be to go completely bananas and make everyone else’s life miserable around me by sucking them into the unsteady terrain I seem to be traveling, which I don’t really consider an option at all.
I can’t really say that I am feeling particularly nutty or depressed. Its like I’m stuck in thought mode, assessment mode, where every last thing is open to the processing of my brain. There are times I have to stop myself and ask why I am dissecting this or that because the topic seems to be not something that is in need of my personal assessment. I wish I could give an example, but none come to mind at the moment.
That’s another thing. I have thoughts, ideas, whatever that come up that, when I try to look at them directly, they hide/disappear from my gaze. I can’t recall them. It’s a bit annoying and has been going on for a little bit. I keep telling myself it’s just because I’m tired, I just need to get a bit more sleep and have some solid down-time, but I’ve had a couple of days off in a row, recently, and it didn’t seem to help that, though it did seem to change my mental outlook.
I have cleans scheduled through this coming Monday, Tuesday off, clean Wednesday, next three days off, a clean next Sunday, then the whole week of Christmas off. A whole week!! I know this could change before getting there, but part of me is really holding out hope that Christmas week stays unscheduled. Not because of Christmas, but because having a whole week off would give me some serious downtime, with more than enough of it to get things in order at home and still have plenty of time for just plain recharging of the mind, body, and soul. Who knows? I may even get out with my camera, again.
Part of what Deepak Chopra says in The Ultimate Happiness Prescription is that whenever you feel yourself having thoughts/feelings of anger, discontent, depression, whatever emotion/feeling along this negative line, you should stop and ask the body what it needs and silently wait for the answer. I decided to give this a shot last night as I was falling asleep because I have been having a lot of these emotions come up and it bothers me. The response I received was sleep, time to just wander.
I don’t know if I trust this response as being the answer received from my body because these are both things I have been going on about for a bit. I don’t know if it is a body response or intentional thought. If the week of Christmas stays completely open, I’m going to keep trying this approach and see if the response changes as the week off progresses. I’ll be using this approach, nightly, anyway, because it sounds like a really good addition to my daily/nightly system self checks, but I think it will be interesting to see what actually having the time to sleep/nap and do some aimless wandering will have on my body’s response to my inquiring what it needs. I’m going to put Deepak’s Ultimate Happiness Prescription to the test. Worst case scenario: I’m still right where I am. Best scenario: I find that Deepak is on to something here and my soul begins to grow in happiness. Should be interesting. I’ll be sure to share to process on here. 😉
Dragonfly Gypsy USA 