The Ministry of Happiness

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. ~ Buddha

When my arrow pointed to Mt. Everest

There is a new singer whose music I like quite a bit her name is Kasey Musgraves and there is a song on her album entitled Follow Your Arrow.

I like the idea behind the song, that you only have one life to live so be who you are and don’t worry about what others think, because if someone wants to think ill of you they will regardless of what you do or who you try to be.  Great advice and something I’ve written about before here at the ministry.

Today though I want to take the idea of following your own arrow in a slightly different direction.  You see sometimes our arrows point in the wrong direction.  The world can get to you, I recently talked about a bad month I’ve had, and when it does your arrow can point down the well.  When it does, you need to reboot, very much like when your computer freezes up if your arrow is pointing the wrong way reboot it.

So how do you do this?  First, you need to make sure you’ve felt and dealt with whatever is happening to you, whether it’s anger, disappointment or grief.  Truly feel what has happened to you, let it wash over you, do what you have to do to get closure.  The worst thing you can do is avoid feeling what has happened to you, suppressing emotions and bottling them up is a sure recipe for an explosion or meltdown later when you least expect and can afford for it to happen.

Once you’ve gotten closure the best way to reboot is to take a couple of days and shut out the world as best you can.  Take a down day or two to be mindful all day, to be quiet, leave the television and the radio off, read, swim, take a walk or work in the garden.  Do something most of us never make time for, take a nap, hell regress to kindergarten and have milk and cookies before your nap.

Personally I like to fast for a couple of days over this period and literally try to reset my body and my mind.  I know a lot of you will say, I’m too busy or sheesh try this when you have three kids running around.  However, this is not something to take lightly, when you need this, you need to find a way to make this happen.  What good are you to your partner, friends, family, your children if you are running at half speed and just running down.  How quickly will you snap at people and be unavailable if you having fully recovered yourself.  So find a way, get someone to watch the kids, go to a hotel room for a day or two, whatever it takes.

I’ve just finished a reboot myself over the holiday weekend.  For the Fourth of July I took three days to fast, to shut out the world, to recharge myself.  I didn’t do much, some reading, some writing, I watched some movies, watered the garden, obsessed about food a bit more than I would like but mostly I rested both my mind and my body, I took a lot of naps.  I’ve just broken my fast with a couple of veggie burgers and am looking forward to having a tomato and some basil from the garden with some good mozzarella cheese, balsamic vinegar and oil for dinner.  I nice quiet meal to end my reboot.

Tomorrow it’s back to the routine hopefully with more energy and positivity than I’ve had for the last couple of weeks. Looking forward to getting the wheels moving again and being more of myself and of course, to having happy days my friends, hope you have some too.   ~ Rev Kane