Elections

This has been a few months full of politics.  Back in October when I was in the states I filled out an absentee ballot. In that election it turned out that my vote didn't seem to count for anything.  Here we are a few months later with another election today, this time in Israel.  Everyone that I talk to has been making a huge deal about voting and I get it.

We live in a democracy and we should be celebrating our ability to control who is in our government, but has anyone ever sat down to think about what if we don't know who we want to be in our government?  Do we really know who the candidates are? Are they going to keep their promises?  Did they just say those things to get elected?  There are too many questions. And I just don't feel like I have the ability to choose who is going to be put into office. What if you end up making the wrong decision? Over the weekend I read over summaries of the parties that are running and they all made points that I agreed with and I had been hoping that reading over their points on key topics would help me to choose one. Turns out that didn't work.

I kept getting stuck on this feeling. What do I know about foreign policy? I've been living in this country for less than 3 years, heck I lived in the US for 20 years and don't know what to look for in a presidential candidate.  I was reading Seth Godin's blog other day and he had a post about "With great power comes great irresponsibility" and I agreed with his ideas. When we give people power then they can do what ever they want and all you can say is "I can't believe I picked this guy."

If the guy who gets elected turns out to be a terrible person, is it all okay because a majority of people wanted to put him there?  I was too conflicted, a friend of mine said that not voting in a way is a form of voting.  I do want to live in a better world, I just feel like all this politics isn't helping, there is so much lying and just saying things to get the votes. That I don't feel properly informed to make an informed decision. I know there are going to be a lot of angry people about this post, but this is my honest opinion on the situation.

Zen Art Of Happiness - Part 2

This is my second post in a series that I am doing while working my way through the book "The Zen Art Of Happiness". Part 1 of this series can be be found here

We are the authors of every next moment

In our lives we are always striving for control. I always want to be in control of the situation, and when I find myself not in control it makes me uneasy and insecure.  For my birthday my boyfriend planned me a surprise party, he did a really good job keeping it a secret but I had this feeling that there was something he wasn't telling me.  I like knowing what is going on, I like being able to plan things and have thing that I plan happen.  Recently I have found that I'm having to more and more deal with this lack of control.
We are powerful beings, creating our futures with our thoughts and actions.

 There are many times when I just feel like I'm not that powerful being, that I can't create the future because someone else is making decisions for me. That I make plans and get excited when I know that I'm going to be seeing my boyfriend only to get a phone call telling me that he's not coming home this week, or that my friends actually aren't available to meet up tonight. It feels like I put the thoughts in and the actions just don't happen.

Personal Philosophy

I like most people have never sat down and thought about my personal philosophy. The book makes an interesting point that I have never really thought of before. It says that if your personal philosophy is to always view life positively then the things that happen in your life are all for the best, but conversely if you view things that happen in life negatively and are always saying that life is bad then you will have a hard time seeing the good.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - William Shakespeare
How many times has it happened that something bad happens and you let it ruin everything?  This is what happens to me all the time, I'll be having a great day and then I spill something and make a mess and then view the whole day as ruined.  According to this way of thinking because I let one bad thing cover everything else up I am causing more unpleasantness to come to me.  Wouldn't it be so nice if you were just able to turn off that one part of the brain that is always throwing in the towel and saying "that's it you ruined everything!"  Maybe that is just the next thing that I have to work on.

As you belive, so it is for you
The true man sees what the eye sees, and does not add to it something that is not there. He hears what the ears hear, and does not detect imaginary undertones or overtones. He…is not busy with hidden meanings. - Chuang Tzu
There is a quote that says a lot. We are always digging, looking for that hidden meaning in what someone else has said to us. Asking ourselves what did they mean by that? What did their tone of voice mean?

You have to change the way your mind works. Stop thinking about the hidden meaning and work on being in the moment and trying to stay positive.  The metaphor that the author brings is that you have to look at yourself like a railway track, there is a switch to see things positive or to see things negatively. Every occurrence that comes your way has the chance to go down the positive or negative track, you just have to decide which one your going to go down.

Have you ever had an event that you were able to look back on and realize that it really was a great thing to have happened? How have you been able to change the way that you think about how event have unfolded in your life? I'd love to hear what you have to think in the comments below.

Unraveling

Working towards finding happiness in your life is not the most simple thing to do, and for the past week I have been putting in a pretty big effort. In my last post I wrote about my starting the book "The Zen Art Of Happiness" and this past week was an effort to take what I read in the first few pages and use them in real life. I spent much of this past week telling myself that everything that happens is the best possible situation that I could find myself in and for the most part, this has helped a lot.

One of the recurring themes I have seen when reading about ways to reduce feelings of being depressed or sad have been to dissociate yourself from people who make you feel this way.  Last week I kept myself from thinking about the people that really put me down in a poor mood and I can honestly say that it helped a lot. The only problem I have run into is that no where does any one have suggestions for how to deal with people who put you in a foul mood when you cannot avoid being around them?

There is one person in my life who we just seem to see things differently and there are times when I feel that whatever I do is not the right thing.  While for the past week I did a very good job keeping myself far away from them over the weekend it was unavoidable and I just feel that everything I did for the past week seems to have unraveled and I'm feeling like I'm going to have to start this week again from scratch.

Does anyone else ever feel that there are people who are in your life and put you down? Any suggestions for way to keep them from ruining everything?

Zen Art Of Happiness - Part 1


I have begun to read the book “Zen Art Of Happiness” and have decided that since the purpose behind my starting this blog had been about self improvement, I will be documenting my progress through this short book. While the book itself is only about 50 pages long I know that it is going to take a good long while to get through these pages.
The first step towards solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.
The first step is always the hardest. I have been living for a few years with a problem that has been growing. I have been keeping it deep down and hidden and like a tumor it has grown out of control. I have become frustrated with everything in my life, lost all motivation for anything and even have been pushing away the one person who means the most to me. I have been taking him for granted, every time I push him away he has been coming right back, but recently we got into a fight that could have ended it for good.

This has forced me to take a step back. To look at what is going on in my life and realize that it is time for me to make a change. As hard as it was I decided that we were going to take a break, I am scared that we may not go back to where we were or who knows in a few months things can be getting back on track. While he may never see this, I want him to know that he is the reason that I am taking these steps towards fixing whatever it is that is wrong with me.
The first question that the book asks is
Would I want this to be true: “Every event that befalls me is absolutely
the best possible event that could occur.”
When I read this line, my honest answer was no I don’t want that to be true. There are so many things that happen every day that I have a hard time seeing the good in them. Like this morning I missed my bus to school by 30 seconds and all I could think was how I was going to be late and if I just left the apartment just a minute earlier I would have caught an earlier bus and I would have made it on that one and I could have been on time to class. This makes it difficult to see the world in a way where everything that befalls me is the best possible even that could occur.
The next question that the book posses is:
Will I give that a chance to be true?
My honest answer here was no I don’t want it to be true. But reading on I come to realize that it really is true. We have to learn to retrain ourselves, to stop thinking in terms of every event that occurs individually but as pieces of a whole part. I did miss my bus this morning but it turns out even if I were on the earlier one I would have ended up just sitting in the sun waiting for the bus to school that I took any way, but because I had missed the 567 I was sitting in a bus stop shaded from the sun and I had a minute to relax and I even got a seat on the bus.

I have to stop looking at every event that happens and right away jumping to the conclusion that someone out there is out to get me. Maybe these things happen for a larger reason than we can see. Maybe this fight that we are in is just a bump in the road to where ever it is that we are going. Neither of us can see it today and not even tomorrow but what ever happens, it is for the best.

More Posts on Happiness:

Why its so hard to just be happy?
The difference between kindness and charity