Healthy and Simple » Happiness Series

Inspiration for a Yosemite Vacation!

admin — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:22:51 +0000

I was born and raised in California, but up until 4 years ago I had never experienced Yosemite!

So I don’t want you to suffer the same fate!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYTb3fhP9U8

Take your kids! Take your friends! Take the time! You deserve it!

I Can't Make You Love Me If You Don't

DavalosMcCormack — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:53:03 +0000

In most people’s lives, there is a natural yearning in the heart to be loved. There is a need to share a life with a wonderful person who loves you back. It is the urge to be a set, a partnership, a couple that makes us think all will be perfect when that someone enters our life. But so many times we are blinded by the need to be loved, to belong to someone that it makes us look outward for happiness. I have even heard the statement ” You complete me.” But we really need to complete ourselves and it is an on-going process!

How to be Lovable

In truth, it is really self-love that opens the door to sharing and becoming a person who is lovable. Everything is ultimately an expression of self-love from the way you take care of your health, how you dress, your posture, even what you say to yourself is a sign of self-love or self-hate. I have clients who become overwhelmed with self-doubt and are filled with judgments about their success or failure to be what they had hoped to become. They compare themselves to others and undoubtedly become filled with anxiety and doubt, which makes for a very unhappy person and a person who is hard to love.

It is a well known fact, that people are attracted to people who have a good opinion of themselves and exhibit a relaxed manner. If a fellow enters the room well groomed, confident stride and an easy manner, people in the room take notice. You can do that for yourself. It’s called self-love – that doesn’t mean you’re full of yourself! It means you are kind and loving to yourself. You don’t judge too harshly, you keep yourself physically and mentally strong.

Finding true love

The deeper you love yourself in the truest sense of the word means simply you are already loved. It creates a freedom to accept who you are already! It means you are free to become the person you want to be. People who are the architects of their of their own lives are people who understand that they can’t do certain things, they have no control over others, they realize that they are really fine and happy with themselves and stop yearning for someone else to enter their lives and make them “happy” or “complete” . They create their own lives.

So if you create a life you enjoy you are creating a future that will be one that you want. We create our futures everyday when we make loving, kind choices for ourselves, making sure we are healthy and strong and cared for. The future is not a place we are going, we are creating our future right now. It begins with kind, non-judgmental self-love, which is extremely attractive.

Take some time as we begin this new year. What 3 things do you truly love about yourself. Keep those in mind when you feel down about yourself and remember being complete just the way you are is always going to be a work in progress. But it’s a labor of love.

Small Things Add Up

DavalosMcCormack — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:32:46 +0000

Sometimes it’s the smallest gestures that have the most meaning.

In another place, at another time, it was a scene that could have been very ordinary or even slightly uncomfortable. But on this day it turned out to be something completely different – two very different groups of people coming together to help people in need.

Meeting the need

Project Homeless Connect (PHC) is an amazing program, bringing together hundreds of volunteers and an incredible array of services from mental and dental health checkups, to help in finding shelter, getting ID, even a bus ticket to go home. By bringing all this together, under one roof, on the same day, it makes it possible for a homeless person to get services that it might otherwise take months to get.

Army blankets

On this particular day dozens of students from a high school in Santa Rosa (just north of San Francisco) showed up with boxes and boxes of brand new army-issue blankets, ready to donate them to the homeless. They unloaded them from a truck and stacked them up in the hallway leading into the auditorium where PHC was taking place.

Directly across from the students was another group, the Taiwanese Buddhist Association, who had also showed up with boxes and boxes of blankets (theirs were made from recycled plastic and were amazingly soft)

Each group had stacked their boxes up as high as they could go, so that they created a kind of towering cardboard corridor down which the homeless clients would walk as they left the event.

So, here you had two very different groups: one consisting of very white high school students, the other a decidedly older group of people from Taiwan. Both groups were standing there, blankets in hand, unsure who should approach the clients when they came by.

Service with a smile

It was, to say the least, uncomfortable. Then one lady with the Buddhist group walked across the narrow divide, smiled at the students, and picked up one of their blankets. She then showed the students how she hands the blankets to the clients – not just holding it out for them to take, but placing both her hands underneath it and “offering” it up to the client and presenting it to them with a slight bow.

She also showed the students how, as she bowed, she always tilted her head slightly to the side so she could maintain eye contact with the client throughout the process. It was her way of giving the client a blanket and a show of respect – two things in very short supply for many of the homeless people attending the PHC event.

When she had finished the students picked up the blankets and began practicing their bows, with the lady offering tips on how low to bow, how much to tilt their head, improving their technique and style. Soon there was a line of eager teens, their heads bobbing up and down, blankets held out, ready for clients.

Winter warmth

As more and more of the homeless left the auditorium they passed down the line of people offering them blankets and a warm smile.

For some of the clients it may have been the last kind gesture they would experience in days, or even weeks.

Some were visibly moved by the show of respect. All were grateful for the gift of a warm blanket to help protect them in the cold, wet wintry weather.

For a few brief moments there were no distinctions, no barriers, between the groups. Just people from different backgrounds, living very different lives, coming together to help others in need.

A few hours later the students and the Buddhists left. By then their boxes were empty. But their hearts were full.

Happiness Series: 8

DavalosMcCormack — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:00:41 +0000