Think Positive Thoughts

I've been a little down lately, so I'm going to list 10 positive things that are going on in my life:

1) I will be spending the 4th of July with friends, not alone, like I thought I was going to be. AND, we are going to BIKE to the fireworks! :)

2) Creativity calls for cutting yourself slack. That means I need to stop beating myself up for not writing a ton every day. I am making progress on my project, and I think it's actually good.

3) I love my job.

4) I live in California. And the past two days have been sunny.

5) Today, I invented a new type of yoga. And tomorrow I am going to write it down, and then make a book deal, and then I will be RICH.

6) I've found it in myself to start doing yoga again.

7) I have solved the problem of the water heater. (The neighbor's water heater is RIGHT NEXT to my bedroom wall, meaning that when they wake up at 6 am every morning, I do too. Now, I wake up at 5 am and move to the couch. It's working very well for me, seriously.)

8) I learn something new every day.

9) Tomorrow, I'm going to go see Toy Story 3, with my grandparents. And, they decided to drive up to see me, instead of me driving far away.

10) Tonight, I made a mini-molten-chocolate cake in the microwave. Yay for Trader Joe's!

It's not much, but it's something. If you can come up with 10 good things in your life, things can't be that bad. :)

Big Decisions: Part 2

A week ago I frantically debated whether or not to lose sleep and money in order to buy the much-anticipated iPhone 4. It was a lengthy debate, and many of you weighed in. In the end, I did not buy the phone. I wanted to spend my money when my boyfriend comes to visit in August. It was probably for the best because the next day, the LA Times wrote that people started lining up at the stores before they even closed Wednesday night... So really, by the time I was even writing about it here, I was too late.

However, there would not be a part 2 to this story if there were not further developments... Developments that have since strengthened my belief in God. I can't decide if that's blasphemous or not.

I mentioned in my previous post that my entire family back in Minnesota ordered iPhones because they (unlike me) were eligible for the early upgrade. It turns out that AT&T, overloaded with the iPhone demand, made one tiny error. They duplicated my mother's order and sent our family ONE EXTRA iPHONE. It arrived on Monday. For those with ethical dilemmas out there, they charged us for the order (so I am not stealing the phone), but they did not charge us the extra $200 it would have cost me to upgrade. So, my parents Fed-Ex-ed it out to California, I plugged it into my computer, then called AT&T to activate it. Now, I have a BRAND NEW iPHONE 4!

Was it a complete waste of money? I. Don't. Think. So. Every time I look at it I think, she's so pretty! (Yes, it's a she). I've downloaded new "Happy" apps on there-- an app to track my sleep patterns (it's incredible), a new Yoga app, a new relaxation meditation app... I'm determined to use this phone to make my life better. I see it as a fantastic opportunity.

The takeaway lesson I've gotten from all of this (whether or not it's a good thing) is that I made the right decision, not buying the phone, saving my sleep, and deciding to do exciting things. But, it all worked out for the best in the end--even better than if I had bought the phone because I saved my money and my sleep. In other words, if you do good, then good things come to you (sometimes in the form of a mysterious clerical error). It's all just part of the wonderful happiness circle of life.

The Great Failure Questions

I'm having dinner with one of my friends this weekend and we strike up a conversation about the happiness project. "So, what is it?" she asks me, "I haven't had time to read your blog." I start explaining the Happiness Project book, how it's one woman's personal project to make herself happier and find fulfillment through resolutions and months dedicated to themes like "work" and "relationships." But then I start to explain that while Gretchen Rubin's ideas are amazing, I'm not exactly doing the same thing. My friend wanted to know why. I didn't have the heart to tell her.

See, Gretchen never failed during the project, except when the project was to "embrace failure." She started her project knowing exactly what she needed to do in order to be happy, and it made her happy.

I, on the other hand, have only a vague sense of what I have to do in order to be happy-- and more often than not, once I try it out, I either a) fail the first time around or b) realize that what I thought would make me happy doesn't after all.

Does that just mean I'm young?

Maybe. But I also think I just plain disagree with the book. It seems like a stretch to me to expect someone to know what will make them happy right off the bat, and then to never fail (or almost never fail) to achieve it. I'm constantly telling myself, okay, this week I will do better. Last week, I was a horrible putzer. BUT, I putzed (i.e. played on my computer, watched movies I didn't need to and generally did unproductive things) less than I did the week before. This week, hopefully, I will hardly putz at all.

I'm not concluding (like Gretchen did) that failure is integral to happiness. She had to embrace failure at work in order to not be afraid to try new things. That's not my problem (well, it sort of is, but that's not what I'm talking about here). Instead, I'm deciding that failure is integral to life and we have to accept it in order to be happy, because let's face it, we're never going to escape it. Once we fail, that's when we get to ask ourselves the GREAT FAILURE QUESTION # 1: Can I change it? If I can, then I will try and try and try until I succeed-- provided the answer to the GREAT FAILURE TO QUESTION #2 is yes. GREAT FAILURE QUESTION #2: Does it matter that I failed?

If the answer to Great Failure Question #1, or #2 is no, then we have to accept failure and find a way to move on with our lives. I suppose in that sense, that is the moment when Gretchen would say we need to embrace failure. But, I argue that until we reach that moment, continuing to ask ourselves these two questions will lead to great happiness--the euphoria in the moment that we finally succeed at something we never have before... well, I can't wait to know what that feels like.