Take a shot of POSITIVITY….
Tag Archives: happiness
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 11
Choose to be 5% more responsible for your happiness….what does that look like?
Domestic Violence Awareness Day 5
Surround yourself with beauty.
Cultivate LOVE…..
What is the meaning of Cultivation?
The dictionary says it is the process of trying to acquire or develop a quality or skill.
When you read the title “Cultivate Love”, what did you think?
Take just a few moments now to meditate on the words, CULTIVATE LOVE.
This is very much an action phrase, it implies activity and intention.
How can you cultivate SELF love?
Here are a few ways to increase the bounty of your SELF love:
1. Reduce self-judgment. Tell yourself you REALLY are doing the best you can.
2. Have a designated STOPPER…someone who will say “Hey, STOP that negative self-talk.” This means you have to have a conversation with a trusted person and tell them your game plan. In my own life, I am a STOPPER for many even though they don’t know it. I hear their negative self talk and I remind them of something that is great about them.
3. Plant a small, living plant and take excellent care of it. Research the right amount of sun and water it needs and devote yourself to its care. Be a good steward of a living thing.
4. Stand for a few breaths in the mirror every morning and tell yourself a few good things about you.
5. Look at my video called “What’s right with you?”.
Try these easy steps for a few days, then for a few more. Keep a journal of your thoughts around Cultivating Self Love and if you feel inclined, we would love for you to share your experience by leaving a comment below.
Love and light,
Indrani
The FULL COURT PRESS… You CAN stand up to them!
Do you know what the phrase “full court press” means?
My novice understanding of basketball tells me it’s when the opposing team exports most of its players to guard your players the whole length of the court. Especially the greatest players on your team like the one who scores a lot or the one who is the 3 point expert…the player most like a young Michael Jordan. I think that Michael Jordan was the recipient of many a “full court press”.
When faced with the wrath of the opposing team, one must use all of one’s wiles and wits. One must pull every trick out of the hat…make any move, even if it seems counter intuitive. It’s either make a move (a swift move), find someone to pass the ball to or just go for the shot anyway, before the ref blows the whistle that you’ve held the ball too long.
Ok, big deal, why should you care about the theory of the full court press?
So glad you asked!
Let’s use our eagle eyes to zoom out from the basketball court and soar way above our lives and take some close looks at the predicaments that we have gotten ourselves into.
When you were a kid and another kid hurt you, did you want, even long for, your parents to come to your rescue? If the answer is yes, then you longed for the full court family press to save you because you could not save yourself. You wanted your team to surround you and help you to navigate the challenge at hand.
Did your parents ever go to your school to stand with you against an unfair accusation by a teacher? If so, you were the recipient of the Full Court Press. You see the full court press does not always work the way you want it to. You may not get the teacher to admit that they were wrong BUT you will have seen that your family came to your aid and that may be all that you needed. You were NOT being blamed by your people, only by the opposing team. Your people had your back!
The full court press can work in the exact opposite way.
Take for example, your spouse hits you, so bad that you had to go to the hospital. The doctor BY LAW must report alleged domestic violence. The police begin to question you and you finally break down and all the secrets come tumbling out. The secrets of many years can no longer be held in.
Be aware that the Full Court Family Press is about to be UNLEASHED on you. The press will probably be from the side of the battering spouse, maybe even the battered spouse side may jump in.
You may be pressed and pressured with words like;
He didn’t mean it.
What did you do to upset him?
What kind of mother are you to put your children’s father in jail?
What kind of wife are you to not know how to make your family happy?
What will the rest of the family say?
What will the priest/imam/rabbi/guru/scientologist say?
When you start being barraged by the Full court press, whose only goal is to get you to go back to being abused in silence, you MUST find someone on the outside that you can “send the ball” to.
This will be someone who wants to help you live a life of JOY.
This will be someone who understands your pain.
This will be someone who has your back.
The Full Court Press to repress your rights to a peaceful life may NEVER go away.
They may vow to make your life miserable and spread rumors about you throughout the town/village/Internet.
You cannot control their actions. You can only control your own actions.
So suit up and look around. Identify those on YOUR team and give them a heads up that you may be calling on them.
Gather your team slowly and purposefully. Don’t accept people who make you feel bad even when things are good. These people may not be able to hold your pain and be a part of your full court.
I hope this got you thinking about who is REALLY on your team.
You deserve a wonderful team.
Love and light,
Indrani
Life Imitating Cinema…..
I recently had a long flight and got a chance to watch some movies. The one that intrigued me most was Happiness Therapy.
Short version:
Guy seems to be bipolar, freaks out when he catches his wife having shower sex and has a big fight with the shower sex guy. Wife leaves him. He is released from a Psych hospital to live with his parents and he is hyper-focused on getting his wife back. His father is a bookie and has major OCD issues, expects the son to just sit and hold two remotes while the Eagles play whoever they are playing. Guy meets a girl who is also struggling with her issues and invites him to be her dance partner in a competition, in exchange for giving the ex wife a letter.
As I watched it, I was mesmerized by how simple the lesson was for the world.
Here is my take….
This guy is struggling to deal with his mental stuff and trying to think of ways to get back his wife. The girl gives him a chance to help her fulfill one of her dreams and with that promise, he begins to think of someone other than himself and to think of something other than the ex wife.
He practices the dance moves constantly and he is physically exhausted and seems to be getting more mental clarity.
The girl shows him how to tap into real emotion and how to sit with the feelings, also how to bring the emotions to the dance floor.
Meanwhile his father talks him into going to the stadium, where he gets into another fight and he gets arrested.
His father makes a bookie bet on what score he will get in the dance competition and puts additional pressure on his son.
Lessons for all of us
- Do something significant for someone else.
- The something must be out of our comfort zone, so we can rewire our brains.
- Stay away from people who try to put us back into their dramas, even if those people are family.
- Do our best in the new commitment and with feeling and purpose.
- When people make bets on whether we do well or not, ignore them, they are toxic.
- Give wholeheartedly to the people we are helping.
I know that this blog may seem a little “pie in the sky” but it is really a good formula for permanent change.
Watch this movie, Happiness Therapy…it may help to cement these lessons.
Love and light,
Indrani
Are you an approval junkie?
Approval junkies MUST have people give them a constant supply of their drug of choice…APPROVAL.
“The most sensitive of approval junkies are reluctant to take any action that might be in their own best interest because they’d risk incurring anyone’s disdain.”
How do you handle disapproval?
Do you crater?
Do you feel like you cannot breathe?
Do you feel like your world is falling apart?
Can you ask a good, TRUSTED friend to tell you what you tend to do when people are likely to disapprove of you?
A good friend of mine finally had the nerve to stand up to her cheating husband. He accused her of being frigid and cold and not at all sexy, so that’s why he had to have affairs. After a few years of hearing these words and often believing them, one day she said, “So why would you even want to stay in this marriage if I am all of those things?” He was shocked. She asked for a divorce and told him to leave the apartment. He dragged his feet for almost 8 months and she KNEW that he was not even looking for a new place to stay.
One day when he was at work, she traded apartments with the neighbor across the hall and when he came home and used his key he found himself in someone else’s home and his clothes were in garbage bags at the bottom of the stairs. He was shocked.
That is how she managed to escape the tyranny of a lousy marriage.
He knew all of her hot buttons and he pushed them regularly. Further, he was a financial contributor and she needed his help. When she finally woke up, she had to get out.
She is happily married today and we both laugh at the experience.
What MUST you finally accept about yourself to avoid the hot buttons being activated?
One of the things that I had to accept about myself was that I have a loud voice and I speak my mind.
So now when people accuse me of speaking up or talking out of turn, it no longer hurts my feelings and I say… YEP, that’s who I am and I love myself!
What do you LOVE about yourself?
Love and light,
Indrani
Make my day….compliment me!
Do you remember the movie with the bad guy saying “make my day”?
I think it may have been Clint Eastwood.
It just occurred to me the other day that a simple compliment or soft and genuine smile can make everyone’s day.
I saw a little boy today sitting with his Dad and next to him was a hat he had made. The hat was covered with glitter, stickers and red, white and blue pom-poms. I complimented him and he beamed up at me and let me try it on!
He made my day!
How can you make someone else’s day today?
Love and light,
Indrani
My Emotional Palette…I make great vignettes!
When I was growing up in Trinidad, I was repeatedly told that I was “too emotional”. I have struggled with that label for most of my adult life and certainly felt the weight of non-acceptance the whole of my childhood. Heck, why would I expect others to accept me as an adult when I was not even ready to accept my OWN self. It has ONLY been in the past 10 years that I have begun to fully embrace who and what I am.
Who am I?
I am an emotional creature.
I am a creature with MANY different emotions.
I love my emotions…they serve to protect me.
What am I?
I am a woman who is PROUD to paint with her emotions.
I paint pictures and vignettes that work for me.
I am a woman whose emotional palette is too vast to be contained in any one closet of feelings.
I need several and they are all different styles and designs.
I am all in!
Wow, Indrani, you sound kind of boastful and egotistical and kind of scary!
Ummmm, yes it may sound like that and look like that, AND that too is OK with MOI!
You see, those perceptions belong to others, not me!
I am finally ok with ME and I am also ok with you not really liking me.
I sure hope that you like YOU though!
I have given myself permission to shriek in delight, to guffaw out loud and to cry when I want to.
I can feel frustration and disappointment and NOT turn it into anger.
I can feel somber or elated or frightened or thigh slapping loud, AND they are all ok!
I can be quiet when I choose, talk a mile a minute when the mood strikes and love others as much as I now love myself.
I can do all these things without requiring permission from anyone.
I have finally given myself permission to inhabit all the colors of my emotional palette.
Have you given yourself permission to use all of your emotions?
Love and light,
Indrani
What will people think?
What is the basis of this question? The basis of this question is approval or disapproval.
Will people disapprove of my actions?
What actions are we usually concerned about? Actions that involve what society will think?
Should you stay or leave an abusive situation?
Should you give up your whole life to take care of others?
Should you continuously loan money to people who waste it and come back for more?
When we base our decisions on “what others think”, we make decisions that put other people’s happiness before our own. Our happiness will come last. There will always be someone else who needs to be accommodated.
How then, do you take actions that are in your best interest?
You MUST know what those best interests are.
Be strong. Be brave.
Love and light,
Indrani