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Archive for category: Happiness

Gratitude, Happiness, Kindness, Mindfulness

A Moment of Grace

Happy woman handshaking with a mechanic after a good serviceMany years ago, I walked into a retreat center in rural Missouri on road-shaky legs. I’d driven 9 hours from my home in Milwaukee through driving rain, and the last 3 hours led me deep into the rural Ozarks on snaking, hilly roads. I remember saying, “Where am I?” as I passed homes flying Confederate flags and a roadside revival meeting place. At last, I turned off the main paved road and crawled along for another mile on a graded gravel road, crossing two low concrete bridges that went through rather than over the creek, until I reached a hill top and the place I thought I was supposed to be… Read more

March 18, 2016/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2016-03-18 16:58:352022-04-13 20:23:42A Moment of Grace
Happiness, Intuition, Mindfulness

Got Expectations?

“Sow an expectation, reap a disappointment.”Skier in the air

This adage confounded me for a long, long time. How can I not have expectations?  For example, if I pay for my groceries, I expect that I will be allowed to take them home. If I’m in a relationship, I expect to be treated with kindness and not be abused. These seem like reasonable, even healthy, expectations.

It finally dawned on me one day that I was confusing standards with expectations. The clear, hard light of reality shone through this word and revealed it to be illusory, a dream. Aha!  If I expect things to go a certain way, then when they don’t, I will surely be disappointed. Yet another way that I create my own suffering, again and again.

I’d like to say that I came to this realization years ago and have been so much more peaceful ever since, but I’ve only had hold of it for a few weeks. It took the process of selling two homes and buying one to open my mind to the truth about expectations. Almost nothing met my expectations. Read more

August 1, 2013/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2013-08-01 15:22:092013-08-01 15:22:09Got Expectations?
Happiness

What do you do?

Postman delivering mailThis question causes me to stumble and trip over my words more times than I like to admit. I have so many answers, and they’re all true: I coach, facilitate, teach, train, consult, advise, coordinate, manage, lead, design, write.

This morning, this thought popped into my head: “I will do anything I can to help people see things from new perspectives.”

Hearing someone say, “I never thought of it that way,” excites me more than just about anything on the planet. It means there is an opening, a loosening, a letting go of a fixed idea about How Things Should Be or the way we want them to turn out. It means stepping out of certainty and into curiosity and creativity.

So that’s what I get excited about in my work with people and organizations.

I think it’s really important for each of us to redefine what we “do.” Instead of listing our tasks, job titles or functions, what if we stated our guiding principles and passions?

What is your guiding principle? What is the value that you can find in your work, no matter what you do?

For example, if you work at the post office counter, your guiding principle could be, “My goal is to make each person’s day a little brighter and give them a reason to smile.”

Guiding principles transcend the tasks, such as selling stamps or whatever it is you do, and focus on the value or the nature of how we go about our work. When we commit to caring about what we value, we maintain satisfaction in our roles even if the tasks themselves aren’t what we feel called to do in life.

And, we can change the world. There’s a lot of research that shows that just being in proximity to happy people increases your own happiness.

What if everyone you encountered in your day was living according to their guiding principles, values and passions? What if you did? You’d generate happiness and contentment in yourself, and everyone around would benefit.

As the saying goes, it’s not what we do, but how we do it that matters. And we all matter, no matter what we “do.”

April 1, 2013/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2013-04-01 11:25:582013-04-01 11:25:58What do you do?
Happiness, Mindfulness

Life Unplugged

Happiness on the Oregon Coast

My partner Doug and I loaded up the Subaru and pointed the car west.  We had fifteen days ahead of us, and a loose plan to spend time in the redwoods, on the Oregon coast, and in the Cascade mountains.

The only firm plans we had were to spend the last two days before the long drive home resting our trail-weary muscles in hot springs and taking time for yoga, meditation, and awesome vegetarian meals while camping at Breitenbush Hot Springs retreat center.

My intention for our trip?  Be completely present.  That’s really it.   I knew that if I could be present, I wouldn’t miss out on the trip I was actually on, if that makes sense.  I could get so much more out of each day, make the days seem much longer,  and create deeper experiences and memories.  I could be fully present to Doug, and to myself.

This turned out to be the case.  Both of us practiced being mindfully present, and we found that when we were in the mountains, our time in the redwoods seemed like a long time ago, even though only a week had passed.  Each day unraveled slowly, new delights and sensations unfolding luxuriously.How often in our regular routines of home, work, home, work do we find that another week has zipped by?  The time between Monday morning and the weekend zooms, months flutter past like the calendar pages in old-time movies when they want to show time passing.  Birthdays arrive ever more quickly, the older we get.

The antidote to all this zippiness is presence. Read more

September 28, 2012/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2012-09-28 11:52:372022-04-13 20:24:41Life Unplugged
Facing Fear, Happiness, Purpose

Google Yourself – You Might End Up in Croatia

My friend Linda posted a fun idea on Facebook. Google your name and see what comes up. Are you a lead dancer with the San Antonio ballet?  An artisan cheesemaker in Idaho?  A retired music teacher in Miami?

To play:  go to Google, enter your first and last name in quotes, and that’s it. Example:  “Jennifer Wilson”

There are approximately 1,294,672 Jennifer Wilsons. Okay, I made that up, but there are a lot of us, so I took the very first entry that came up. Apparently, I wrote a book that was heralded as “Best Nonfiction Book of 2011” by the American Society of Journalists and Authors.  (Note: Please leave a comment below with your results!  A friend of mine discovered he was a 15 year old ping pong champion.)

Written by Jennifer Wilson, it chronicles the adventures she and her family had when they moved to Croatia for a year in search of her ancestral ties. She and her husband and two young children were living the American Dream in Iowa – a house they fixed up, soccer schedules, two careers, and frequent pilgrimages to Target. And, they felt they were missing something vital despite their privilege, primarily time together as a family and a simpler life that didn’t involve consuming, watching tv and playing video games crammed between errands. On the basis of a yearning and a late night of giddy dreaming (a bottle of wine was involved), they uprooted themselves and moved to Croatia for a year. As you can imagine, that year changed them all in deep and unexpected ways.

I was immediately intrigued by the book’s description because my partner and I have a similar ambition. Read more

July 11, 2012/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2012-07-11 18:08:432022-04-13 20:25:17Google Yourself – You Might End Up in Croatia
All, Happiness, Mindfulness

A Pebble in Your Shoe

Imagine yourself walking on a gentle path on a hill beside the sea.   It’s  a glorious sunny day, warm but with a slight cooling breeze, puffy white clouds drifting across the bluest of blue skies.  Your destination is a seaside cafe where a dear friend awaits.  Perfection.

And then…

You get a tiny little pebble in your shoe.  All of your focus immediately shifts to the pain in the ball of your foot and the need to not have it hurt.  You might try to ignore it and hobble along, hoping it will shift or somehow just disappear.   After all, it’s a bother to stop and take off your shoe to deal with it, and your friend is waiting.  There’s no time to deal with this, and it’s so annoying to have this intrude on what was a perfectly good walk.  Darn it all!

Of course, it doesn’t go away but just gets lodged more firmly.  Unicorns and rainbows might suddenly appear for all you know, but you won’t notice because you’re so distracted. Read more

November 17, 2011/0 Comments/by Jen Wilson
https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png 0 0 Jen Wilson https://consultnewleaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/logo-300x100.png Jen Wilson2011-11-17 11:57:282011-11-17 11:57:28A Pebble in Your Shoe
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