24 Days of Prompts-1/Elimination for Happiness

HAPPY FALL EVERYONE!!!🍁🍃🍂🍃🍂🍁

You all know how I love Fall, you all know how I love counting days/making them count, and you all know I love a project!!! Yesterday I had no clue what our next segment of days would be about, but I didn’t sweat it, it always reveals itself. Last night, I was laying in bed reading, Bill was watching Tv, and I asked him to remind me today that our next segment would be about journaling/prompts. He kindly did remind me this morning, although I didn’t forget, I formulated instead! I need to back track to get to today’s prompt, the purpose of that, and why that day count. Ready?

Last week, I finished up a photo gallery at about 11:30am, I showered, put on cozy pajamas and decided to kick back in the recliner for a while. I felt extremely good, not just accomplished, but really good. As I was laying there thinking about how good I felt, I realized that I wasn’t accurately seeing my own feelings. I know I felt really good, but this went beyond physical, in to mental and emotional…and it startled me to realize what I felt. I was HAPPY.

I honestly could not recall the last time I was actually happy. I feel positive and good emotions all the time, but happy is something I have not been in years. YEARS. At first, o felt the need to tamp my happiness down, just as I was made to do all these years, and I thought, no, if anyone cannot handle my happiness, that is on them. I am just going to bask in it, feel it, absorb it, love it, be it. I was just going to be HAPPY. When Bill walked in the door about 20’minutes later, he stopped in the doorway and just stared at me. He told me that I was glowing, I said I felt glowy. He said, no really, you look so at peace and happy. I said I am at peace and happy. He said, it really looks good on you, I said, why thank you, it feels great. And then I walked him through my morning, up to the point of him walking in. And my happiness and glow, made him happy and glow too.

If you are a regular here, you probably know how elusive happiness has been for me, for a long time. Truly, when I started getting mean, enforcing boundaries, and being ugly honest(way past brutally honest), that is when things started changing around here. I figured I wasn’t happy anyhow, how bad would it be if I started speaking incessant truth…to pretty much everyone? What is the worst that would happen, people would stop talking to me? What would be so bad about people that stress me out, leaving me alone, without their bullshit behaviors to deal with? Seemed pretty appealing, so that is what I did, you know what happened?

I became less stressed, less anxious, more productive, more cognitive-seriously my brain is working well again, more grounded in intentions, and it resulted in my finding myself happy one afternoon. Who in the hell would have thought that eliminating was the answer, and not addition?! Completely mind blowing.

Let’s get real. Did I eliminate friends? Yes, but they were not really friends with me, just who they needed from me. I no longer provide what they need. BYE. Did I eliminate relatives? Yes, same thing as the friends, they no longer got what they needed from me. BYE. Did I eliminate associations? Yes, but you want to guess or have you caught on? That’s right, they no longer got what they needed from me. Bu-BYE.

As you may have figured out, I wasn’t getting anything from these people. Nothing, except stress, distress, or anxiety. No drops of anything good, so severing the attachment was not all that hard. I simply told them how I felt, they walked away on their own. I like to give people choices as to what they want to do, or how they want to value me. And with their choices, comes the desire of my own. Elimination.

This all sounds very harsh, a bit one sided and cold. Trust me, I consider all things, I weigh out the good and the bad, and am fair to circumstances that could be temporarily altering things. Simply put, I am looking toward the long game and not the quick payoffs these people always got from me, resulting in long term one sided relationships. So how does this lead to journaling or prompts?

My epiphany of suffering unduly for others, made me realize that I can eliminate for better feelings and happiness. We often cling to people because of shared history, comfort or to keep from fear of being alone. It is a shit place to be, and I no longer wanted to be there, especially if it constantly cost me, and didn’t fill me up in any way. So, can you eliminate anything to make your life better, happier or lighter?

We will take these next 24 days of prompts, serious, silly, or centering, and feel our way into this favorite season of mine, FALL. This will lead up to an event I am really looking forward to, Tales of the Undead, as performed at Sugarloaf Mountain Ampitheatre, where I will accompany my husband and my sister to our second annual performing arts night venture!

Drop me a line, let me know if you are ready for 24 days of Prompts! I would love for you to come along, and share your adventure with all of us!